Cross-country Trip To East Coast - Fall Color!

With our 30th wedding anniversary coming up in January 2023, we wanted to take a fall trip so see the leaves change back east. We have great memories of living in upstate New York for the first three years of our marriage, living there during fall was pretty spectacular season for us California folk (we only have fire and flood season, though the grape leaves in the vineyards do turn colors here in Napa and Sonoma Counties). We have done several cross-country camping trips in the past, but very few in the fall.

We decided to aim for New England during peak fall color, then follow the leaves changing colors all the way down the Appalachian mountains. California to Maine to northern Florida and back. It was a 3 and a half week trip, and we covered 7900 miles through 34 states (and had an average of 20.6 mpg over the entire journey). It was a bit of a mad rush, but as everyone who is still working knows, there's only had so much vacation time. We did a lot of single-night stops, but had several places in the northeast where we had a couple of nights in the same spot. Fortunately, our setup and breakdown is very easy and quick with a teardrop trailer.

Though we had previously been to all 50 states, Lisa and I both had a handful of states that we'd never camped in, and all of them were east of the Mississippi River. So, we decided to hit those, too. When we camped in Mississippi on the way back, we were finally able to say we had camped overnight (or boated overnight in the case of Aaska and Hawaii) in all 50 states.

Hope these photos help inspire others to do similar trips. Life's short. Go see stuff.

 

Sounds like a great trip. But I'm not sure I could have handled all the one and two night stops. I did that when bring home my CI from Wisconsin over 3 weeks. It was tough. I like getting somewhere and then staying put. ;-)

 

We like staying in one spot, too...those kinds of trips can be the most relaxing! About half of our trips are of that flavor. The other half of our trips, however, are like what we did this time...action-packed adventure and exploring, the kind where you have to come home to recover. This was maybe our 10th or 11th cross-country camping trip, so we've got the process fairly dialed in (although, doing it with a Camp-Inn is realtively new, having only had it for a couple of years...so there's a few minor tweeks we're still making). At any rate, we love both variations, and we keep our camp setup and logistics such that either of them are easy to do. I think when I eventually retire, our preference would be to stay somewhere for a week, maybe two if we really love the area, then move on to the next place.

 

Wow! Epic, great pics!

 

Being retired, I assure you, this is an excellent plan. ;-)

You should make videos of those cross country trips. Youtube needs better quality content.

 

Haha, that sounds like a pain in the butt! Hours of video editing for a few minutes of content...I think I'd prefer to just enjoy my camping trips; taking a few pictures here and there is about my limit. Besides, people generally prefer videos with perky, energetic young whippersnappers, not crusty middle-aged fartsters like myself!

 

Hey, thanks! I have a ton more, but I tried to keep it to the more Camp-Inn relevant shots as well as the more scening or interesting of the non-Camp-Inn shots. Plus, there's the 25-photo limit...might break the forum in half under the weight of the gigabytes!

 

I was hoping you wouldn't notice the work involved.

 

Nice trip. Your site at Oconee State was the first site we camped with our 560. We camp there a once or twice a year. Thanks for sharing all the pics.

 

Awesome! That was a great site, and had such a nice view of the water while we ate dinner. It was beautiful in the morning, too, when the fog layer that settled overnight was moved across the water just as the Sun came up.