With fall coming so fast this year, I’ve decided that a westerly route through Utah would be my safest bet. There are a lot of things I want to see on my way down in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota, but I will be coming north quite late next year and better able to take time off to have a proper vacation (I’ve been taking too much time off lately!).

The route through Utah will serve a greater purpose. There isn’t much left on my North American bucket list. Off the top of my head, there’s only L’anse aux meadows, Yellowknife, and Zion National Park. Guess which one is directly en route between Haven and Nogales?

This route has me off highways all the way to Nogales and will let me see a good part of western Wyoming, quite a bit of Utah and Arizona. I’d like to drive pretty hard to Springdale and then stop there for a week or so to work and explore Zion State Park.

I’ve routed myself through Billings rather than Great Falls, which is a more direct route, for two reasons. First, I haven’t been to Billings. Second, going through Billings will have me cross at Scobey rather than Opheim. I haven’t had good experiences crossing at Opheim just to get packages, but I had a very good experience at Scobey last time.

Now, I need to sort out accommodations along the way. I really do want to sleep in my truck for the first few days before taking a hotel for four days or so, but I’m struggling with having enough room in the truck to both sleep and carry everything I want to bring. Moreover, the bed setup I’ve been using for camping just isn’t going to work for this trip.

I bought an inexpensive cot at Cabela’s in Regina that I was hoping would work well, but it’s two inches too long for the bed of the truck and a bit of a pain to set up and take down. I’m rather disappointed. I’m going to take it apart again today and see if taking a hack saw to it could help solve the length issue. If so, that’s what I’m going to do and just store stuff on top of it while I’m traveling (it has a weight rating of something like 200lbs, so it can definitely handle a few totes) and store the stuff on top of it in the cab of the truck at night.

Besides working out the bed issue, today’s plan is to get the front room all packed up and clean. Somewhere in all of that, I am going to drive up the hill to better cell reception so I can make a Skype call to Mexico about an apartment that would be perfect if it’s still available. All appendages crossed!