wedding road trip

14,000 miles, 200 friends, two lives, one big decision

Why We’re Not Taking the Scenic Route

I recently received a Facebook email from Josh, a friend of mine from back in the day. He commented that our trip “is city-centric (i.e. you’re bypassing some of the most beautiful scenery in the world).”

Josh… and others with this same question… come gather around the virtual campfire. Mama Jaime has a little story for you…

Once upon a time… ok, three years ago… I was fortunate enough to walk across the United States with twelve other people as part of Steps Across America, which  you can still Google stalk, thanks to the Web Archive. This makes me incredibly happy, as I love that people can still find really bad mugshot-like pictures of me on the Internet forever. And ever. And EVER.

During the trip, we saw things like this:sunset in new mexico just outside of santa fe


And this…

Somewhere in the middle of rafting down the Grand Canyon

Now, if Wedding Road Trip was all about seeing our country majesty, sweet land of liberty, we’d be KOA’ing it up from West to East and North to South. Okay, that’s a lie. I do not KOA.  I Holiday! But still… we’d be taking more time to smell the citrus and be spending less time figuring out the fastest route from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Wausau, Wisconsin.

Nope, our voyage is about seeing the people. And seeing the people means spending a lot of time seeing this:

interstate 320 signs

And this:

road closed sign
Turns out, it burns a lot of daylight trying to hit more than 35 cities in a short period of time. Which means that we might have to give up some pretty pictures in favor of some time-saving interstates.

But Josh, I promise that we’ll check out the Maroon Bells when we’re in Aspen.

Tags: , ,

Posted in planning phase.

9 comments

9 Replies

  1. laceymcfadden Apr 9th 2009

    We did a scenic road trip through Utah and Colorado- amazing! But I totally understand where you’re coming from. you can’t do it all!

  2. Alina Apr 9th 2009

    “i thought the website was gone FOREVER!! i’m so happy that you found the archived site :)

    ps when are you coming to philly???”

  3. planetofme Apr 9th 2009

    I agree with Josh- if you are in Aspen, you def. need to check that out.

  4. Hope you’ll be able to make some time for just the two of you.

  5. Oh Ken, I promise you we’ll have plenty of time for the two of us. Those ten-hour drives will be magical…

  6. And I’m sure you’ll come across lots of scenic stuff you never imagined, that you couldn’t have planned for. That’s the cool part - who knows what you might see!

  7. Josh M. Apr 14th 2009

    Glad to hear it. You won’t regret it. ;)

  8. Thanks for the push- we can definitely make the most of our trip- your suggestions helped :)

  9. casey kilpatrick Apr 14th 2009

    Make sure you take as much of Route 66 as possible!


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