Just a Nutter Road Trip Western USA: 20 States and 14 National Parks in 27 Days

By Kris Nutter

Follow along on this epic American road trip from Cincinnati, Ohio through the Southwestern United States to California and back. The Nutter family takes readers along day-by-day to National Parks such as Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and more. They also share hidden road side gems in out-of-the way places such as Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas and a thumbs-up campground in Durango, Colorado. This un-censored documentary-style adventure will inspire readers to embark on their own road trips - hopefully avoiding the mistakes and pitfalls honestly shared by the Nutters. From wild animal encounters to informative park rangers and tour guides, this book shares the best and worst of their experiences with full color photographs. Readers will also find honest recommendations, tips, and a list of "Bests" at the end of the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kris Nutter
• Release date: Sep 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370422739

Kris Nutter

A gypsy by nature, Kris grew up in western New York and wandered south in her college years. Since then, she has lived in various cities throughout Kentucky and Ohio - getting married, raising a family, and working as a professor, designer, and sustainable building and green living consultant. Kris has an AA in Art, a BA in Interior Design and an MS in Architecture. She's been practicing commercial interior design since 1996 in the Northern KY / Cincinnati area, and has been a professor and administrator since 2001.She and her husband have built an award-winning passive solar, sustainable home which has also been featured nationally in Environmental Design and Construction Magazine and the ASID NewsFlash newsletter, and locally in Cincinnati Magazine, Cincinnati/NKY Home Improvement Magazine, and the Green Energy Ohio newsletter. The home has a solar hot water heater, and a rainwater catchment system. It also produces its own electricity with a roof-mounted solar PV system.Her hobbies include RV-ing, reading, writing, travel, supporting her children in their 3-sport-each insanity, and motorcycle riding. Along with her husband and two children, she has spent summers road-tripping across the USA in their RV - traveling from Maine to Florida, North Carolina to California, and everywhere in between. Her goal is to take her children to all 50 states before they graduate high school. You're invited to follow their adventures on her website where she reminds readers to "live well, dream green, and be a traveler, not a tourist!"

Book preview

The pages that follow were inspired by the book, One Year Off by David Elliot Cohen. It is a collection of emails that served as travel summaries and updates for his friends and family while he, his wife, and three children roamed the globe. Cohen and his wife sold everything, took time off from their careers, and packed their three children around the world. Upon their return, Cohen compiled his collection of email correspondence into a book to bring readers along, day by day into their global experiences – both good and bad. From visiting an emergency room in Thailand to losing one child in a crowded Paris square, the readers come along for the entire voyage.

While this book is not as broad in scope as Cohen’s – our trip did not encompass an entire year or international locales – it was still a trip of a lifetime of sorts, and worth recording and sharing. The purpose of this book is to allow readers to experience our road trip through twenty states and nearly as many National Parks, Monuments, and Memorials. From Cincinnati, Ohio to California and back, we share our experiences of the USA’s beautiful natural landscapes, as well as unexpected roadside attractions. We hope that readers will be inspired by our adventures (and learn from our mistakes).

Readers will find an abundance of photographs – both high quality, and snapshot varieties – of the various people, places, and sights we encountered, including wild animals! Professional photographers and purists will scold the inclusion of some pretty poor quality photos, but when you see a bull moose grazing along a bank in near darkness while floating down a bumpy river on a raft, the ridiculously awful photo becomes part of the experience, so we’ve decided to include those types of photographs in this book. Yes, I’m aware that they suck, and I’m apologizing now so you don’t have to email me; thanks in advance.

You can visit the companion website to this book, which features additional travel-related tools and helpful RV-ing and family travel articles as well. You can find it at www.nutterroadtrip.wixsite.com/justanutterroadtrip. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about out trip, please don’t hesitate to use our website’s contact form to contact us or subscribe to follow our site. If you enjoy this book, we also encourage you to Like/Share our website on your favorite social media outlets and consider writing a favorable review of the book on your favorite retailer’s website!

We hope you enjoy our journey!

***~~~***

Come Along for the Ride!

June 20, 2015

Join us and follow our trip of a lifetime (or in my husband's case, the second trip of a lifetime).

In the summer of 1989, at the age of 15 my husband traveled with his younger brother and grandmother in her motorhome from Kentucky along Interstate 40 and Route 66 through the US Southwest, through the interior of California up to San Francisco, and then home through the northern route via Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. This summer, our family of four will recreate a similar trip - traversing 20 states and almost as many National Parks, Landmarks, Monuments, and Memorials. We'll begin in Cincinnati, Ohio and travel nearly the same route to most of the same sights with a few unique ones thrown in just for fun. The 1989 trip was about three weeks, while ours will be approximately 30 days.

The reservations are made and we're counting down the days left for packing and preparations. For now - here's a list of all of the places on our itinerary!

(St. Louis was part of the original 1989 trip, but we just did that for Spring Break a few months ago, so this summer, we'll head through Louisville, KY, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and keep truckin' right on past St. Louis to Joplin, Missouri!)

The first few days will be just driving with stops only for sleeping at night. After staying the night in Missouri, we'll drive through a tiny part of Route 66 in Kansas, then Oklahoma along I40 and Route 66 to Amarillo, Texas for the night. The next day we'll make a stop in Albuquerque, NM to have lunch with my uncle who lives there, and then head up past Santa Fe to Durango, Colorado and into Mesa Verde National Park for our first National Park stay. From there, here's the rest of the list!

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Four Corners Monument

Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert, Arizona

Grand Canyon National Park - North Rim and South Rim, Arizona

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Zion National Park, Utah

Hoover Dam, Arizona and Nevada

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, California

Yosemite National Park, California

Pinnacles National Park, California

Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay, California (whalewatch)

Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, California

Idaho Falls, Idaho

Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

A scenic bypass through a small part of southern Montana

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore Monuments, South Dakota (during Sturgis Bike week - yikes!)

Through South Dakota to Iowa and then a short detour to clip Nebraska

Then back home to Cincinnati.

Whew!

Map of our route (pink/orange)

***~~~***

Let the Countdown Begin!

July 9, 2015

Just a few more days and we'll be on our way! Preparations are underway - packing, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning the house, running errands - it's exhausting! I can't wait to get on the road just to relax a little. I've been tying up loose ends at work, and hubby has been preparing his classwork for when school starts again in the fall (he's a high school math teacher). The kids have been away at summer camp, scout camp, lego robotics camp, space camp, and doing their regular activities like sports and music lessons. Meanwhile hubs and I have been preparing for this monster of a trip.

I've had to plan in stops for groceries, stops for doing laundry, and so on. I honestly probably should have planned in stops for refueling, but I didn't go that far (the GasBuddy app is our friend). We've got all of our campground reservations in place, all of our tour tickets purchased, and even set up boon-docking stays with some people in Reno, NV through BoondockersWelcome.com (we are members there - if you camp, check it out)

We've changed a bit of our plans because of some recent events in San Francisco. We try not to over react to news and media, but with all of the National Park deaths from falling, base jumping, and injuries from bison and bear attacks, the recent random tourist murder and subsequent muggings in the exact area of San Fran in which we would have been spending most of our time, was just the last straw for us. Sooooo, we're still planning on stopping at the Golden Gate Bridge, but we've cancelled our two nights of reservations there and will keep driving on through to Lake Tahoe and Reno, NV instead. This allows us to see a bit of Tahoe as well as gets us an additional day in Grand Teton National Park where we've also added a river wildlife viewing tour!

So aside from those minor adjustments to the game plan, everything is progressing forward. (Out of sympathy for my husband, I'm not mentioning his little escapade with the RV that landed it in the shop for repairs yesterday - 3 days before departure. It's fixed and we're heading out now to pick it up, so it's all good and we're ready to move on, lesson learned. This just goes to show you that you need to roll with the punches and be flexible!) Once the RV gets back, we'll set it up and finish loading food, clothes, and supplies throughout the weekend.

Then, we'll just tie up last minute details like arrange for our friends and neighbors to pick up the mail and keep an eye on the house for us, bringing in some of the outdoor furniture, and temporarily closing the pool. Right before we leave, we'll button everything up, set the thermostat to away settings, and turn off the main water shut-off. I'll be working from the road for the first few days, but then I'll take some much needed and deserved vacation time. I'll