Steve has been an Overland Bound member and represents exactly what we stand for. It doesn’t matter what you drive, outfit and explore! We’ve followed Steve’s Subaru Outback build as he’s prepped for this grand adventure, and we are following along  as he hits the highway with his Wife Deb. We’re looking forward to the trip reports, and the pictures that are bound to follow! If you’d like to follow Steve’s adventure, follow his trip updates in our forums and the links at the bottom of this story. Perhaps you will plan your own road trip soon!

Trip Thread

Here is Steve’s report! 
A quick re-cap: Our youngest daughter graduated from high school this past spring, and on September 18th, we will be taking her to Seattle for college.

Heading out (from Ohio) will be a straight through Interstate trip. Coming back will be exploring as many out-of-the-way places as we can find for anywhere from two weeks to two months.

After this trip, our plans are to spend long vacations exploring the US, going to places where other folks don’t, as I hate crowds in general, and especially on vacations. We want to get to those out-of-the-way places that don’t necessarily *require* an offroad vehicle, but having one makes the trip more enjoyable, such as dirt and gravel roads, forest roads, easy trails, etc. Of course I want the ride to be comfortable getting there on the endless miles of highways, too.

We’ve been watching a TV show on The Smithsonian Channel called Aerial America. Each episode covers a different state, filmed entirely from the air. It covers historic, geological, and cultural sites, making each state more enticing than the last. I’ve watched with my tablet in my lap, looking up especially interesting sites, and bookmarking them for possible visits. I think we have close to 100 bookmarks now, so we have plenty of places to visit over the next years!

Subaru Outback Gallery:

Since our westbound trip will be the quicker, less adventuresome, I don’t want to take one that will go through areas we want to explore coming back. But then, our return trip will be meandering, so we might end up going through some of the same areas in both direction. I’m thinking heading out on the highlighted route, and then wander across the upper two tiers of states on our return. We don’t plan to go as far south as California, Colorado, Utah, etc. this trip, as each of them could take weeks or months on their own.

Our return trip ought to be something like this: 😀

Suggestions on places to visit (or avoid) are welcome. We’ll be using Roadside America and Trail Damage in our planning, as well as the previously mentioned Aerial America bookmarks.

If you want to follow along on our upcoming cross-country trip, follow or like one (or all) of these social media accounts:
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I’ll be posting occasional photos here on the forum, keeping you up to date.

See ya!

Steve