Chris McCabe's 2023 Solo Road Trip Through The Desert Southwest To Big Bend National Park

Every good road trip needs a feasible plan, a great itinerary, and lots of materials to help one find where to go and where to stop - road maps, trail maps, guidebooks, atlases, tourist brochures, etc.  As I've done in past years, I tapped the official state tourism bureaus (this time Arizona and New Mexico and Texas) for their free and informative vacation guides and maps. Here are a few of the road trip planning materials I've consulted for this upcoming road trip. This year I discovered the  Wildsam  Field Guide for Big Bend National Park and the Desert Southwest. The Wildsam Field Guides are a pretty cool addition to the road trip this year - they're compact, they're jam packed with neat tidbits, stories, and miscellany, and they can easily fit into your back pocket (if you have one). I highly recommend them.

Believe it or not, this road trip will be my ninth road trip in the last 12 years (starting with the first in 2012 with a 3-day weekend road trip to Cleveland with Clare and Conor to visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame , with stops along the way at the Johnstown National Flood Memorial and Frank Lloyd Wright's famed  Fallingwater ).   This post from the blog for my post-pandemic road trip  in the summer of 2021 will give you a mini rundown on six of the nine road trips (Rock & Roll HOF in 2012, Grand Canyon National Park in 2013, Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2014, Yellowstone National Park in 2016, Nova Scotia/Canada in 2017, and Key West in 2018). Here are a few photos from last year's solo road trip in September 2022 in the Pacific Northwest, with travels from Montana to Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and back to Montana, with Glacier National Park as the ultimate destination. Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument Glacier National Park Mount Rainie...

Welcome to the "official" travel blog for my third solo road trip, which will take me from Phoenix, Arizona, to Dallas, Texas, through the varied landscapes of the Desert Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) to the vistas, canyons, and scenic drives of Big Bend National Park (Texas), with stops at various points and sights in between and beyond. Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Big Bend National Park Desert Sunrise in Big Bend National Park The road trip starts on Saturday, September 9, with a nonstop American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and ends on Monday September 25, with a nonstop American Airlines flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Philadelphia, with 15 days of driving in between. After arriving in Phoenix, I'll stop in Phoenix for some fry bread at The Fry Bread House , and then head to Tucson, for a visit to Saguaro National Park and other local sights. After ...