Background

In the Winter of 2015, Angela and I set off across the country (Florida to California) in our 1971 VW Karmann Ghia. To immortalize the adventure, and to assist our failing memories, we wrote a blog - GRT 2015 (http://grt2015.blogspot.com/), which stood for Ghia Road Trip 2015.   It was an incredible trip, and I immediately wanted to do it again.  In fact, we began another trip not long afterwards... but family emergencies cut it short, and Angela had to return as soon as we got out west.  Hopefully, things will go a bit smoother this time.

Once again, we will attempt to write a blog and post some interesting pictures.  To me, blogging works like a diary and serves to fill in all those gaps where I forgot what had happened. This time, the blog is Diesel Road Trip 2016  (hence the DRT name), and our choice of vehicles will probably be more reliable and comfortable than a 45-year old car that was virtually unchanged from its original 1950's design.

I have spent months researching and planning this trip, and I still don't know exactly where we will be on certain days.  You'd think that I would have every minute of every day completely committed, but no.  The Ghia trip was extremely fluid with only a few dates being clearly defined (the day we left and the day Angela flew back from California).  There is definitely more of plan this time around; however, it is far from cast in stone.  I have made a few key reservations with this trip, but there's a week in there where I only have a vague idea of where we'll be.

Here's the general plan: My son, Briggs, and I will take off from Amelia Island and zip across the southeast to Van Horn, Texas. We will hit some National Parks in Texas and New Mexico... gradually making our way up into Utah.  We will spend some time in Moab before Briggs flies out of Salt Lake City.  At that point, Angela flies into Salt Lake City and we wind our way up to Yellowstone National Park via Idaho.  We'll cruise back down through Utah hitting even more parks, over to a tiny bit of Colorado, back west to Arizona and then the southern part of New Mexico.  Currently, the plan is for Angela to fly out of Houston.

For the Briggs portion of the trip, I have calculated the daily mileage and estimated the amount of time we will be together in the car.  I have no doubt that Briggs is completely unaware of what it is to which he has agreed.  We will be together non-stop for six days - almost exactly the same amount of time that the astronauts on Apollo 13 spent together on their flight to the moon and back.  The difference being, I expect our trip to be slightly more tense.