My brother and I planned a long road trip from Texas to California during Christmas break of 2017. Our plan was to go from College Station to San Francisco in a week, stay in California for 10 days and then drive back home in another week. We took the powerful Dodge Charger as our companion for the trip. We planned to cover Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California during the trip.
Day 1
We started our journey from College station to Amarillo at around 10:00 AM (started a bit late as I inevitably woke up late). I was very excited since it was the first leg of the journey and we had to cover 500 miles. We stopped for lunch near Fort Worth and continued to drive past Wichita Falls. The quaint little towns with hardly any activity across the western Texas were very beautiful.
Day 2
The next morning, we continued towards Colorado Springs via Pueblo passing through Oklahoma and New Mexico before entering Colorado.
The scenery turned very rocky and dusty as we entered west Texas and it continued to be so until Colorado Springs. The interesting places there include the Pikes peak, Garden of the Gods, US Olympic Training Center and the small town of Manitou Springs. Pikes peak is probably at its best in winter with frozen ponds and chilling winds. We covered Pikes peak in the afternoon and came back to the city in the evening. There are many good restaurants in the downtown area but we decided to skip downtown fervor and ate at a small Mexican restaurant near our Airbnb home. As the sun slowly set, we went to bed and had a super long journey to Blanding ahead of us.
Day 3
Blanding is a small town near the border of Utah and Arizona. We searched online for towns near Monument Valley to rest. Blanding was the one we found with decent accommodation. There was Super 8 there and we decided to stay there. During the journey, we passed by many ski resorts in Colorado, filled with winter tourists. A particular frozen stream of water caught our eye near Pagosa Springs. This little town had lot of streams around (most of them frozen) and many spaces for camping. We would have loved to stay there had we known about this place in advance. There weren’t any other notable places after Pagosa. So we proceeded straight to Blanding and called it a day right after we reached Super 8.
Day 4: Monument Valley
On day-4 we were to visit my favorite place in the whole world – “Monument Valley.” I fell in love with it the first time I saw it on my computer’s default screensavers list. I was eagerly looking forward to travelling on that straight photogenic stretch of road. As I expected, this was the best day in my whole trip except it was a tad too cold at 30 F. But the weather did not stop me from rejoicing in the sun bathed valley.
Day 5: Grand Canyon
Day 6: Hoover Dam
Day 7: Las Vegas
Day 8: Death Valley
Day 9-20: California
My excitement kind of diminished after Monument Valley. But the journeys were still incredible. We went from Monument Valley to Grand Canyon to Las Vegas and finally to Santa Clara. We stayed with our Aunt in Santa Clara and spent the week travelling in and around Northern California. We visited Lake Tahoe, Santa Cruz and the 17-mile drive.
Day 21-25: From the glitter of Los Angeles to the unmanned deserts across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas
We spent day 21 to 25 travelling all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles to El Paso. We passed by Joshua Tree National Park, Phoenix and Tucson. It was a sharp change as we left the crowded environment in LA and entered the deserts.
Day 25-30: Lazing around College Station
Finally I got back to College Station 25 days after starting our epic journey. I slowly got back into academic mode as I was looking forward to a great semester ahead.
One thing I realized in this trip was that the journey was more interesting than the destinations themselves. I look forward to many such wonderful road trips in the future.
The ever-busy streets of LA 
A defunct railcar in a quaint desert town in New Mexico