Western US Trip Log – 1994

The Sequent Sabbatical Trip: Sep 24, 1994 – Oct 16, 2004

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I’m not sure when I first got the idea. After six years at Sequent, it’s time for my sabbatical and 4 weeks of paid vacation. At first I had visions of spending four weeks on an island somewhere, or going to Australia or some other exotic location (which I ultimately did).

As the date got closer, and the logistics starting becoming daunting I started thinking about maybe driving instead of flying. And maybe I should see some of the National Parks that I always wanted to see. That was the problem. There were too many. Should I go to Glacier Park or Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon or Yosemite.

I couldn’t decide. But the more I looked at the map, the more it struck me. You could see it all if you didn’t see any of it a lot. It’s all on one big loop if you do it right. It’s the ultimate road trip but it can be done.

Problem number two. Marion is working and Daniel is at school. It’s too much to try by myself. There’s only one person nuts enough to do this with me, Les. Les and I have done small scale trips like this before. Four day road trips where we covered 1200 miles in an attempt to see everything before we had to be back to work.

But can we sustain it for 22 days (and can he get the time off work)? Les didn’t hesitate. By burning every vacation day he had and then some he got 3 weeks off.

By my calculations, we can just make it. But there’s no room for error. We need to be mobile and we need to keep costs down. That means camping. I’ve spent one night in a tent my whole life. This should interesting.

Here’s a map of where we went.  The direction was clockwise. (There is a bigger map here.)

Pictures and trip logs

  1. Photo Gallery Full Tour (all photos, grouped by day, but no trip log)
  2. Full Trip Log (Photos and text description from each day – links below)