On the 11th of April we fly to JFK. We're not spending much time at all in New York City because we've both visited it before, and can easily visit it again. Time is precious on this trip (even if it is a whole year) and better spent in harder-to-reach places. The next day we get a bus to Philadelphia, spend a couple of days there and then take another bus to Washington DC. After a couple more days we pick up the first of our many rental cars and drive inland, via Shenandoah National Park (Virginia) and Mammoth Cave (Kentucky), to Nashville, Tennessee, to spend a few days with Kate's friend, also called Kate.
This will be the first of many pauses where we stop moving for a little while to unwind. Once recharged, we drive back to the sea, to the southern town of Charleston (South Carolina) - dancing not compulsory - and then along the Georgia and Florida coast, including a stop at Cape Canaveral to (hopefully) see a rocket launch, arriving at Miami at the beginning of May to see some ex-colleagues from Miniclip.
From Miami we fly to Montserrat (via Antigua) to stay for a week in a guest house that, as it happens, is the same house Kate lived in for a few years as a little girl when her father was posted out there by the Civil Service. Montserrat being one of the sleepiest Caribbean islands of all, this will definitely be another pause to recharge:
Suitably refreshed then we fly back to Miami and pick up a new car to drive across to the west of Florida and all the way up the Gulf Coast and round the panhandle to Alabama and then New Orleans, where we plan to visit the bayou, eat Cajun food and absorb a bit of Louisiana culture...
On the 21st of May we get the train from New Orleans to El Paso... an epic cross-Texas railway ride that deposits us in El Paso at lunchtime the following day:
We pick up another car and embark on a long, winding route from El Paso, right on the Mexican border, up to Canada. We begin with Carlsbad Caverns (New Mexico) and head up to Santa Fe, then west to Flagstaff via the Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley. At the beginning of June we're doing a four-day trek in the Grand Canyon, hopefully before it gets lethally hot, after which we head north and then east to my favourite spectacular national parks of Utah - Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches. From there we continue east into Colorado, stopping off in Boulder before turning north again to head to a great little ranch in Wyoming that Kate went to a few years ago, just before we got together, where we will take another week to pause and recover in mid-to-late June:
After the ranch we drop the pace a notch and wind our way westward through the plains of Montana, diverting to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border, then onward through Idaho and across Washington state, from the eastern plains and over the mountains in the west, to arrive in Seattle on or around the 4th of July - a suitable date to celebrate the end of part of our US journey:
The schedule is quite relaxed from here - at some point in July we cross into Canada and drive a huge loop from Vancouver, heading to Calgary and Edmonton and back again via Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper. We'll also be dropping in on another of Kate's friends in the Kamloops area. Either before or after that loop we'll be nosing around Vancouver Island for a few days too - another of Kate's favourite places:
Once we're back in the USA in August, we drive from Seattle to LA on a route that hops between the Pacific coast and the mountains, via Olympic National Park (Washington), Portland and the Columbia River Gorge (Oregon), Redwood National Park, bits of the Pacific Coast Highway, Yosemite, Death Valley and San Diego (California). We don't plan to spend any time in LA... not either of our ideas of a fun place:
We fly from LA on the 10th September, to Hawaii, where we spend a few days before a side-trip to Tahiti for another week 'off' - in a low-key local-style house rather than honeymoon-style Bora Bora indulgence - and then after another few days in Hawaii, hopefully seeing volcanoes and Jurassic Park scenery, we start the second 'half' of the trip in Australasia, flying out of Honolulu on the 26th (and due to crossing the Date Line, landing in Sydney on the 27th):
Due to awkward climates and flights, we go almost immediately to Melbourne and fly across the entire continent to Broome in the north west. From there we'll join a tour that goes through the Kimberley, a particularly stunning and remote part of the country, which we have to visit first because the climate makes it impossible any later! Once we've made it to Darwin we'll visit Kakadu and other spectacular national parks before heading south to Alice Springs - possibly as an epic outback drive, or on the famous Ghan train. After checking out Uluru and the other 'nearby' sights (nearby by Australian standards...) we fly to Cairns to visit the Daintree rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, before working our way down the east coast to Brisbane, with stops at Fraser Island and the Whitsundays. From Brisbane we fly back to Melbourne, as I'm not too enamoured of the rest:
In Melbourne for the second time, we'll be staying with Phil, a friend I met on the way to Mt Kilimanjaro on my first big trip ten years ago, and hopefully seeing the Yarwood family, old friends of the Dixons, as they gather for a wedding of one of their number at the end of November.
Post-celebration we fly to New Zealand for December and January. We'll probably start in Christchurch (we haven't actually booked those flights yet), drive around South Island via Queenstown, Milford Sound, perhaps the Routeburn Track or similar classic hiking path, Abel Tasman and so on, then hop across to the North Island to spend Christmas/New Year time with Kate's relatives in Auckland (or more specifically, on their boat!). 2015 will then start with touring the rest of the North Island in some kind of loop before heading back to Melbourne from Auckland:
Finally we start the last phase of the trip - after hopefully catching some of the Australian Open tennis in late January, we're (probably) going to drive around Victoria, fly to Tasmania and do a loop including the wonderful Overland Track hike before flying to Sydney in mid-February.
With time just starting to run out, we'll stay in the city (which I really enjoyed) for a week or more, then we'll make our way to Adelaide through the Blue Mountains and the New South Wales outback, probably including Broken Hill and possibly Coober Pedy. We'll hopefully visit Kangaroo Island before we get on another epic train journey all the way to Perth on the famous Indian-Pacific.
Budget and timings will then determine how much of Western Australia we can explore before we fly home! With luck we can stretch to as far as Karajini in the north via Shark Bay, and Esperance in the south, via Margaret River. We expect we'll end up staying in Fremantle enjoying the weather as long as we can. Either way, we will have only a brief layover in Dubai before we land back in Heathrow at some point in March (or possibly early April if we hang on as long as our tickets will allow!)
