Jen's Epic Road Trip

Thanks for all the birthday wishes via the blog and social media! I had a lovely day, including a workout at Uplift Studios with Theodora and dinner at Pure Food and Wine with Sourabh. 

I'm so excited to share with you that I have a big announcement: today, I'm leaving New York for almost 6 weeks and heading out west. 

In an attempt to always live up to the title of this blog and live my best life, I am using the last few weeks before I start working at my firm to visit my family and take an epic road trip of the West Coast and western national parks. 

To say I'm excited is putting it mildly. I looked up synonyms for "excited" since my brain has been mysteriously creaky lately, but "hot and bothered" seemed like an inappropriate description for "OMG I'm going to see so many mountains!!!" 

I'm starting in LA with Sourabh. He has a few interviews there so I'm going along. Any Los Angeles tips? Anywhere we should definitely eat or hike or hang out?

Then, Sourabh flies home and I fly to Washington to spend time with my family for a week before Katie flies in to Seattle and we head on the Epic Road Trip! Over the course of eight days we'll hit up Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Monterey, the Pacific Coast Highway, and Los Angeles. The California portion of the trip I did two years ago with Sourabh, but I haven't been to Oregon since I was a little kid so I can't wait to visit.

In LA, Katie will return to Chicago and Sourabh will fly in again to head out on the second part of the road trip. If the first part is all cities, the second part is mountains, mountains, mountains! We'll be traveling through Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Salt Lake City, Glacier National Park, and Banff up in Alberta.

I KNOW. You cannot believe how excited I am for all of this. The best part is that my parents are lending me my mom's car for the trip, so the trip won't be crazy expensive -- no flights -- and hotels in most of the national park areas are quite cheap. (Katie and I already booked the city hotels and were pretty happy with the deals we got via Hotwire, by the way!)

Once I get back to Washington, I'll be spending another week with my family -- which will include running my dad's first half marathon with him! -- before heading back to New York to start work at my law firm at the end of September.

Just to give you a taste of the mountains I'll be seeing places I'm going...

Yosemite National Park
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Zion National Park
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Bryce Canyon
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Glacier National Park
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Banff
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Okay, enough of the mountain porn.

I have no idea how to pack, besides knowing I'll need a ton of workout clothes since I'm going to be continuing marathon training throughout this travel.

I will continue to post my training updates and I want to share as much of the trip as possible, but some of the driving days will be long, so I don't know if I'll keep posting every weekday during the next few weeks. However, I will be posting lots of photos on Instagram, so if you want to keep up to date with my adventures, make sure you're following me there! 

What's the best trip you've ever taken? Any travel tips for a long road trip? Any things I have to do in the places I'm going??