Hot Springs National Park and the start of our 2025 Spring roadtrip
After a few years of focusing more on international travel for the family and the camper only being used for local recreation activity, we dusted off it’s long haul abilities and hit the road again for a two and 1/2 week adventure to some of the desert lands of the United States that we’d not explored yet. This trip was actually on our list to do in 2020 but didn’t happen for obvious reasons. So, 5 years later, here we are. We used the RoadTrippers app and website to plan our route and scope out the majority of our stops along the way. We try to book our biggest stops ahead of time to ensure we are where we want to be and have the type of amenities we want for longer stays but leave some flexibility between destinations incase we want to drive further or not as far or stumble on something that we didn’t realize we’d want to take part in. That’s where roadtrippers helps with routing and planning the days. It shows distances and details between each stop and is easy to rearrange the stops and it automatically adjusts, allowing us to play with different routing options to make the most of our time. Evan typically has some anchor points that the trip is based off of and then we add in things along the way. The 5 main anchors for this trip are White Sands National Park, Guadaloupe Mountains National Park, Carlsbad caverns National Park, Big Bend National Park and San Antonio Texas.
We love to roadtrip and see the country (and Canada). The US is such a huge place with so many amazing sites, nature, cities, history and we especially love the national parks. Out of the current 63 US National Parks, Evan has been to 45 so far (with 4 new ones planned for this trip) Gray has been to 38 and Meagan and the other 3 kids have been to many. Many of the visits to these parks have been on roadtrips. It’s a great way for us to getaway as a family, pulling the camper to some awesome places. It’s like having a small part of home with us so and ends up being a good bit cheaper so we prefer it to flying to a destination, renting a car, getting hotel rooms all along the way and eating out every meal. Those costs add up fast so if we have enough time to make the trek with the camper we do. We do eat on the road but we love to have good home cooked meals in the camper often. It provides a place for Evan to get work done and a place for the kids to hang out on “in between” days. Camping allows us to stay in places that put us nearer to our destination or even right in the middle of it all while still having a bit of routine for the kids as far where they sleep and how they take care of their daily needs. It also allows us to make quick stops for the night as we go without being costly or taking a lot of time out of our schedule. We’ve stayed in some pretty epic locations and we’ve stayed at plenty of walmart parking lots.
Roadtripping and RV camping creates some unforgettable memories and has allowed us to take this camper to 44 states and 3 provinces. Leave us a comment below if you have any questions about how to get started or need some ideas of places to go.
So, off we go! We pulled the camper to church on Sunday, March 16th and after worship and lunch we hit the road. We noticed pretty quickly that it would be a windy start to the trip. We made it 8 or so hours down the road with a stop at Tops BBQ in Memphis Tennessee to our grand overnight location of Walmart in Benton, Arkansas. We always call ahead and make sure a Walmart allows overnight parking. The confirmation that they do is usually doubly confirmed when we pull-in to find several other RVs or vans as well and this was the case in Benton. Since all we needed was to sleep, this was a great stop for us and cost us $0 (and provided the perk of Walmart bakery donuts for breakfast the next morning).
Monday was for more driving but with a few hours stop at our first National Park for the trip at Hot Springs National Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We’ve planned over and over again to stop at this park and add it to our list to check-off but it’s previously been planned towards the end of our trip and usually by that point we just skip it so we can get home. This time we planned for it on the front end and hit it first. It’s not a National Park that needs a full day and to us is one of the most bizarre National Parks honestly. It was an interesting spot to stretch our legs for a few hours, have the kids learn something new and collect their first Junior Ranger Badge for the trip. Phoenix was beyond excited to be old enough to to complete his book alone now that he can read and write. He’s gotten several badges in the past but always needed to help. He’s basically untouchable now and no-one is more serious about the Junior Ranger program on this planet than him.
**The Junior Ranger program at the National Parks is a real gem and something we appreciate so much. At each National Park Service location (over 400 of them around the country) you can ask a ranger for a junior ranger book and they are free of charge. They include age specific activities to be completed by the kids (and we’ve seen adults do them too) that are completed by learning about the park and completing “assignments.” It’s like a Highlights magazine but park specific. Once you have completed your book, you show your work to a ranger and you are rewarded with a park badge. These badges are park specific and an awesome souvenir. Our kids LOVE collecting the badges as a memory of each park they have been to and we know that they have learned important information by doing so. The fact that this is FREE is a huge parenting plus because they get a souvenir and we aren’t shelling out money at every stop.**
After Hot Springs and some quick sandwiches thrown together in the camper from our roadside parking, it was more driving.
Living in Alabama it takes a few heavy driving days to get to the areas that don’t look the same as home. We had planned to find another free parking lot to sleep that night but we’d done pretty well getting down the road so after a quick cross-search on Google Maps and AllStays we found a full hookup option along our route for $27 at the Catfish Roundup outside of Shawnee, Oklahoma. We decided we could stop a little earlier in the day than we originally thought and cook supper and let the kids burn off some energy. We basically traded the money we would have spent for a meal on the road for a home cooked meal (camper perks = groceries traveling with you) and an earlier bedtime. I (Meagan) ended up being a bit sick that night so I was thankful for the earlier stop at the camping spot and the ability to go to bed early while the rest of the family enjoyed a movie in the living room.
We took our time Tuesday morning getting up and making breakfast and then headed off to the Oklahoma City Memorial.
The kids have been to the 911 Memorial and now the Oklahoma City Memorial and while it’s hard to explain to them why tragedies happen, the education through these parks certainly helps explain a lot of the specifics. They collected their second Junior Rager Badges of the trip and we found a Del Taco for lunch and set off for Texas. It was obvious at this point that the wind we’d already been facing for the last few days was greatly picking up as we headed west. While winds in in the midwest is obviously normal, this was far beyond that. Weather Apps were happy to tell us that wind and dust storm warnings were all around. We persisted on because what else were we going to do?
We made it to Amarillo by morning
(by supper time really) and had seen where Palo Duro Canyon State Park had pretty scenery. Since we were again ahead of schedule we called the park and were able to snag a spot for $42 (including our entry fee) and headed that way. By the time we got there, however, unbeknownst to us the wind had damaged the outside of our camper. Our awning (beautiful and original to this 1980 Airstream) flew off at some point on the road taking parts of our air conditioner and vent units with it. Since there was no service in the state park we patched what we could and hunkered down for the night in some of the heaviest winds that Texas has experienced in the last 3 years (according to the park ranger). Needless to say, there wasn’t much sleep that night but thankfully we did not fly away like our awning and other parts had and woke to some pretty gorgeous views amongst the crazy wind. After everything had looked the same (flat) for several days the canyons were a welcome sight. We were eager to get on our way to our next destination that was expected to not be so windy and get cell service so we could call about a few camper parts. We hit up the park museum where Cruz greatly enjoyed the taxidermy animals and were on our way.
Six hours later and after passing our destroyed camper pieces in a dusty field along the Texas highway, we pulled into our pre-booked spot at the Alamogordo/White Sands KOA in Alamogordo, Texas. KOA reservations are usually pricier than other places we stay but we like to sprinkle them in because they usually guarantee a great bath house, laundry facilities and activities for the kids like playgrounds and pools (more on that in our next post). So, we’ve made it to our first anchor destination on the trip and White Sands is a beautiful spot that we’ll dig into in the next blog chapter.
