America,  California,  Death Valley,  Grand Canyon,  Las Vegas,  San Francisco,  USA,  Yosemite National Park,  Zion National Park

Itinerary and costs of our Jucy Southwest road trip

After getting back from our three weeks jucy road trip in the West Coast / Southwest of USA is time for a balance. If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a lists geek and in this posts we want to share our itinerary, its costs and what we would do differently in case we would take the same trip (well, I don’t think we would take the same trip, but I think it’s a good help to anyone who is planing a similar trip).

southweast itinerary & costs

When we were deciding the route to follow we took the following points into consideration:

Our must see places were San Francisco, Napa, Yosemite NP and Grand Canyon. In fact the last one was the most relevant in deciding the route, as we were sure we were starting in San Francisco. The end of the route was depending on the Grand Canyon.

Our “nice to see” places were Death Valley, Zion National Park and the Highway 1 down to LA.

– The whim of our trip was sleeping in the Queen Mary in Long beach, it costs 150$/night.

–  We set a limit of 160 miles a day (250km) as Liam gets bored in the car and two hours driving is already a lot for him. He sleeps every day 1-2 hours in the morning and that’s the time we’re planing to hit the road. I think we drove two times more than 160 miles and it was really a learning point.

– We wanted to book the camping’s in the national parks in advance as they get filled quickly and we didn’t want to rely on “first come, first serve” spaces. I mean, when it was the two of us, it was no problem. But with a baby, I prefer to be sure I have a place for the night.

At the end we end up with the itinerary below.

For those looking for inspiration, here one picture per place. I will add links for each place as soon as I publish the dedicated post for each one. So come back again to check our amazing pictures 😉

Itinerary

What about the cost? We have a jucy campervan, which was partially free as I won the jucy glampervan competition. In the National Park, we stayed in the campgrounds, which were cheap. Well, the best campground was in Zion National Park. It costs 18$ and it has electricity!!!

Camping Costs Southwest road trip

As you see there’re some differences in the prices. San Francisco seems very cheap, but it wasn’t. 65$ was what we paid for parking in the hotel and breakfast, as I booked the hotel with rewards. If you are on a budget, you can save 150$ by not staying at the Queen Mary 🙂

What would we change in the itinerary? Well, travelling with a baby takes time, so basically we would reduce the times we were only one night in a place. We would stay longer in Yosemite National park. We had planed 2 nights, but decided to stayed 3, therefore we shortened our stay in the Death Valley to just one night.

Other mayor change would be to end the route in Las Vegas instead of Los Angeles. It would have been less miles and Las Vegas is very cheap and really fun place during the week days.

We would visit the Bryce Canyon National Park, as well as the Antelope Canyon. We could have stopped at the Antelope Canyon, but Paul was not really convinced. Also the Mammoth Lakes should be included in the plan.

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