Planning the American national and state park camping road trip

The planning has been tricky, as we are trying to balance the camping and hotels and also stay where it’s reasonably warm at this time of year. I’ve got five drafts of an itinerary on a Google sheet allowing for school and work schedules, varying start and return dates, weather, and Covid-19 regulations and positivity rates. We’ll need to pay attention to Internet access so we can get the work done that we need to on the road, but this is mostly Vagish's territory. We want to somewhat play it by ear to maintain flexibility, but a lot of campgrounds fill up, even in the winter, and we'll need to have reservations made in advance if we want to stay in the most popular/desirable places.

We planned the first stop to be Nashville. We aren’t going to do much tourist stuff there since we want to get south to the warmth as quickly as possible, though I do want to have barbeque, check out the Parthenon, and go for a socially distanced walk with a friend who lives nearby. The Internet also recommends something called “hot chicken,” so that may be a necessity. We talked about the Jack Daniels Distillery Tour but ultimately decided against it. Not sure if it would be kid-friendly and it’s not exactly on route. There will have to be a separate Whiskey trail tour for Dad and some of his friends at another point in time.

From Nashville, we will drive the Natchez Trace Parkway and learn some history. The plan from there is to go to the Gulf Islands National Seashore, to New Orleans, then Padre Island, across Texas, and into Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California. We’ll be posting from the road, so you can hear how things are going and get our recommendations.