April 15-22, 2023 —
Road trips are the best, aren’t they? Some of the most memorable moments of my life have occurred in the not-so-comfortable confines of a car driving across the country. In 2019, my friends and I ended up all the way in Nevada on a climbing trip where nothing went as planned. I witnessed the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country as I drove to Joshua Tree from Indiana and back with those same friends in 2020. Later in 2020, my fiancée, Maria, underwent an emergency appendectomy in South Dakota. In 2021, Maria and I braved the heat of Texas & New Mexico in August when wildfires derailed our plans in Colorado. Last year, we saw the best parts of Florida on a national park adventure that was surprisingly hiccup-free. In 2023, it was time for another. Welcome to the Great 2023 Father-Son Southwest Road Trip.
As an Indiana resident who happens to love national parks, I’m no stranger to road trips. Often, 20+ hours of driving is the cheapest and easiest way to see our country’s most beautiful places.
In 2023, I decided it was finally time to subject my dad to one of these trips. He’d expressed an interest in visiting national parks on several occasions. With my wedding in July fast approaching, it seemed high time for a father-son adventure that we’d never forget. And so, the Great 2023 Father-Son Southwest Road Trip was conceived.
An Overview of the Road Trip
To make sure we’re all on the same page, here is the rough itinerary we followed:
| Day 1: Saturday, April 15 | Drive to New Mexico from the Midwest |
| Day 2: Sunday, April 16 | El Morro National Monument, Petrified Forest National Park |
| Day 3: Monday, April 17 | Grand Canyon National Park, Day 1 |
| Day 4: Tuesday, April 18 | Grand Canyon National Park, Day 2 |
| Day 5: Wednesday, April 19 | Horseshoe Bend, Monument Valley |
| Day 6: Thursday, April 20 | Mesa Verde National Park |
| Day 7: Friday, April 21 | Great Sand Dunes National Park |
| Day 8: Saturday, April 22 | Drive back to Kansas |
Day 1: Kansas to New Mexico
On Friday night, my dad and I drove to Lenexa (near Kansas City) to stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins there. Following a night of discontinuous sleep, we awoke at 5 AM to thunder and lightning and began our drive. Our first hurdle? The long, LONG trek across the most boring state in the country: KANSAS.
To break up the drive, we made a stop in Hutchinson, Kansas at the Cosmosphere: an air & space museum that houses an impressive collection of artifacts from the history of space exploration. The museum contains the Apollo 13 command module, WWII-era missiles, artifacts from the Space Race, Mercury-era spacecraft, and much, much more. I still don’t know why this impressive museum is in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, but my dad and I loved it.
After the Cosmosphere, we drove 6 tedious hours through Kansas and Oklahoma. We listened to classic rock as wind turbines whizzed by in Kansas and dust storms buffeted our car in Oklahoma. The Rocky Mountains finally appeared on the horizon shortly after reaching New Mexico, in mid-afternoon. We continued to Albuquerque, where we stopped for Mass and Mexican food. Finally – at 9 PM – we reached our cabin in El Morro in western New Mexico.
We had successfully left Kansas behind us, and the Great 2023 Father-Son Southwest Road Trip was properly underway.