Our Plans For 2020: Mardi Gras, Grand Canyon, Utah National Parks, Alaska, Europe & More

Shae and I are pretty excited about what 2020 will bring.

We sat down in the summer to start penciling in which states we’d be visiting over the next few years for the rest of our 5 year, 50 state road trip. The order of some of the states has since changed, but we have a pretty good idea of how the coming year will shape up.

With Mardi Gras, the Grand Canyon, National Parks in Utah, Alaska and more on the list, here’s what we have planned for 2020.

1) Mississippi

We’re currently in Knoxville, TN and are heading back to Nashville for one night for New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day, we’re leaving Tennessee and heading down to Mississippi for 3.5 weeks.

We’ll be spending a week in New Albany, 10 days in Jackson and then a week down in Biloxi on the Gulf Coast. I don’t think Mississippi is likely to be my favorite state of our road trip, but I also thought that would be the case with Kentucky and I loved it there, so I’ll hopefully be pleasantly surprised.

2) Louisiana

Our second state of 2020 will be Louisiana. We tend to head south in the winter to have more temperate weather, so that’s one reason we’ll be there. The main reason though is so that we can go to Mardi Gras in February.

We’ve booked a hotel in the French Quarter for the busiest time, but we’ll also be spending just over a week there earlier on in February to explore the city a little more.

We’re also planning on staying in Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and Lafayette. That means we won’t be staying in the top half of the state, but we might take some day trips a little further afield if there’s any stuff we really want to see.

While we’re in Baton Rouge, Shae will be doing an otter encounter, so she’s super looking forward to that!

3) Arizona

Shae and I aren’t taking the most efficient route on our road trip, so after finishing up in Louisiana we’ll be heading west to Arizona. The drive from New Orleans to Tucson is about 20 hours, so we’ll spread that out over several days as we don’t enjoy long drives (kind of ironic given we’re on a road trip for 5 years!) We might also spend a few nights in Texas on our way through to meet up with a friend of Shae’s that we didn’t see while in Texas last year.

We’ll likely only be in Arizona for a couple of weeks before the next stage of our road trip comes into play.

4) Grand Canyon, Utah National Parks, Yellowstone National Park & More

In mid-March my parents are coming to visit from the UK. They’ll be joining us on the road trip for 7 weeks, so we’re trying to fit in as much bucket list stuff for them as possible.

They enjoy hiking, so we’ll be hitting up all five National Parks in Utah. We’ll then make our way up to Wyoming to visit Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park for a week before heading back down to see the Grand Canyon.

I’ll also be turning 40 during that time and Shae has something special planned. I’ve no clue what that is, so I’m looking forward to being surprised 🙂

5) Half Of Washington State

My parents head back to the UK at the beginning of May. From there we’ll be driving north to visit the eastern side of Washington State for a week or two. We won’t be seeing the entire state at that point because at the end of May we’re heading proper north.

6) Alaska (& A Bit Of Canada)

One of the places Shae and I have been most looking forward to visiting is Alaska. We’ll be driving there and back, spending a few days in Canada along the way in both directions so that we can visit Vancouver, Banff and more.

Considering how long it takes to get to Alaska and how large it is, we’ll be spending ~2.5 months there. It’ll be prime tourist season, so we need to start booking accommodation and activities ASAP so that we don’t miss out. We’ll be applying for the Denali Road Lottery, so the plan at this point is to stay in Alaska until the end of September as that’s when the event takes place. The lottery drawing takes place in June, so if we’re not successful then we might head back a little earlier in September so that we’re less likely to encounter bad weather on the drive back.

7) The Rest Of Washington State

We’re due to visit the eastern half of Washington State before Alaska, so we’re planning on visiting the western half after that. This includes Seattle which, being a 90s grunger, is something I’m looking forward to.

8) Europe

Several years ago we visited Scotland and England with a couple of our friends, then we spent a week in Ireland with them in 2017, the summer before we set off on our road trip.

We enjoy traveling with them, so we’re planning another trip to Europe this fall and this time their kids will come along too. They can only get so much time off work, so we’ll be spending a couple of days in London, then a few days in Germany.

Shae and I can work from anywhere though (hence this 5 year road trip), so we’re planning on spending 2-3 weeks in Europe. We might end up visiting an additional country while there, but we haven’t booked anything yet and so that’s still up in the air a little.

9) California Or Nevada

After spending our first New Year’s Eve of the road trip in the Mountain time zone (Denver), Shae and I thought it’d be fun to celebrate New Year’s Eve in a different time zone each year.

We’re in Nashville this year which is in the Central time zone, so December 31, 2020 is when we’re planning on celebrating New Year’s Eve in the Pacific time zone. We haven’t decided where to do this yet, so it might be somewhere in California, but we’re also considering Las Vegas. If you know of somewhere fun to celebrate New Year’s Eve on the west coast though, let us know in the comments below.

Final Thoughts

To see 50 states over 5 years, we’re supposed to visit 10 per year on average. However, our Europe trip and 2.5 months in Alaska means we’ll only be crossing 6 states off our list and parts of 2 more. Getting to spend so much time in Alaska will be worth it though, as will all the beautiful scenery we’ll be encountering in Utah, the Grand Canyon, Wyoming and more.