Live Your Road Trip Dream

I read Live Your Road Trip Dream by Phil & Carol White because I do have a "road trip dream". Doesn't everyone, really? Hubby and I talk about our retirement days (yes, we're only in our 30s, I know!) and how we'll buy an RV and drive all around the country. HIS dream is to attend every NASCAR race for a year. MY dream is to see the museums, national parks, and historic sites that show the history of our country. Will we ever actually go on this dream road trip? I doubt it ... but that was before I read this book.

To be clear, this book is actually called Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel for a Year for the Cost of Staying Home. I showed it to hubby when it came in the mail (thanks to Online Publicist!) and he immediately skipped to the section on financing your trip - he wanted to know "secret". I did too, but I'm much more patient ... and I have a thing about skipping ahead in a book ... it's sort of like a crime for me.

The book is split into three parts. Part One shows how it is that you can plan, finance, and organize a year-long road trip. In just over 100 pages you get tons of info: what to do with your house while you're gone, how to deal with negative people who don't think you can really do this, pre-trip planning, handling emergencies en-route, and much more. Part Two, by far the longest, contains excerpts from the travel journal the Whites kept during their dream road trip. The final part is filled with worksheets to help you budget and plan your itenerary.

I loved reading this book! The planning section (part one) was simple and straight-forward. I quickly switched from reading it and DREAMING to reading it and PLANNING - we WILL do a road trip, and it will happen BEFORE we retire. Those worksheets in part three will be very handy but we will have to update the gas prices; the highest price the White's saw on their trip was $2.49 - I'd drive 100+ miles for that price!

Part two was entertaining, but I'm suggesting that hubby skip it when he reads the book. For one thing, our dream trip differs from the Whites so much of what they did won't interest hubby. For another, you have to remember that this section was taken directly from their trip journal just as they wrote it from the road. Imagine writing a quick email to a friend about the wonderful national park you visited today ... you'd have sentence fragments, lots of exclamation points, and you'd ramble quite a bit. That's what this section is like. It is valuable though; it gives the reader an idea of what it's like to really be on the road for an entire year.

Usually I read books then give them away or swap them for new ones, but THIS book will be staying on my shelf. I plan to browse through it every month to remind me that this is one dream that WILL become reality!

The White's have a website chock full of planning resources and tips in case you're interested: http://www.roadtripdream.com/.

If you've reviewed this book too, I'll be happy to link to you here:
Random Wonder