I’m new to the “road trip” routine and no one ever called me a great navigator. I’m learning, though. The trip down was brute force “take me to this location, GPS” and it felt really long when you were looking at a total mileage of 550 and counting down.

On the way home I thought I’d try some actual planning. I have AAA and I’d heard great things about their travel planning, but that came up a bit short. Sure, I could give it the start & finish addresses, but beyond that it was a glorified Google Maps. My compromise: break the trip up into 2.5 hour chunks: Clearlake > Redding > Medford > Eugene > Home.

That seemed to work until we started throwing variables into the mix: food, drink, and varying tolerances for durations between bathroom breaks.

We arrived in Redding at 7am to have breakfast. The next bathroom break was 80 miles after that. Since we walked around a bit I made the executive decision to skip Medford and push on to Eugene for lunch time. We arrived there around 12:30, ate, and made the final stretch home arriving around 3pm.

We’re home in one piece and can’t wait to go back again.