Making Vacation Plans - Thanksgiving

I know what you're thinking, we haven't even had Halloween yet and you're already making plans for vacationing in November? Well, YES, we are...and, let me tell you, it's going to be the road trip of a lifetime!

Over the Thanksgiving holidays as well as for the first week of December, our family will be taking a road trip from California to Nevada to Arizona then back again to California! We'll be covering several hundred miles of roadway, and we're in full planning mode already - reserving hotels, mapping out our routes, highlighting our points of interest along the way. It's really getting exciting now...

Our road trip agenda includes a visit to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas, a stay in Sedona, a trip to the Grand Canyon, then finally a roughly 9-hour drive down to Southern California where the twins and I will spend the first week of December sightseeing and playing poolside while Mike attends a work conference. At the conclusion of Mike's work conference, we'll take yet another road trip back to Northern California to our home! Of course, it's a lot of ground to cover, but it's going to be a blast! This will be our 2nd family road trip and we simply can't wait. Our 1st road trip as a family was last year when we traveled to Southern California for the twins' birthday - destination Disneyland.

For us, our road trip can and will be done for a bargain. One of the perks of Mike's many travels with his work is that he is constantly accumulating reward points at hotels which we'll cash in for this vacation allowing us to stay at some pretty awesome hotels for absolutely nothing! Lodging is always one of the more expensive items associated with any vacation; so that we can take this vacation and not have to spend the typical $150 - $300 per night for hotel rooms makes this road trip totally do-able for our family. Aside from the cost of gas, food and whatever little attractions along the way we might take part of, we will enjoy an awesome vacation for next to nothing, and THAT truly is the best part! Oh, and the experience and the memories, of course, rank up there pretty high on the list as well.