Itinerary & a West Coast oil change coupon request

Sunday afternoon, Michael and I spent about 4 hours yelling at the kids to leave us alone so we could actually plan this family vacation.  "Don't you want to go to California with us and have a great time with our family?!?  Don't you care about family togetherness?!?  Then quit coming in the office and bugging us!"  Good times, good times.....  And yes, we are aware of the irony there.  But this trip isn't going to plan itself, you know, so we had to get serious about it...finally!

The itinerary is pretty set at this point.   We have reservations/a place to stay for 11 of the 16 days we will be gone.  Would you like to see the itinerary???  You would? Lucky for you, I'm feeling generous. Here you go:

Day 1:  On the road.  Driving 18 hours to Buena Vista, CO. 
Day 2:  Arrive in BV, CO and set up camp.  We have reservations at this particular campsite for 3 nights.  Cost:  $125 total
Day 3:  Vail or Breckenridge
Day 4:  Pikes Peak or Royal Gorge
Day 5:  Drive 9 hours to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We have camping reservations for 2 nights. Cost:  $36 total
Day 6:  Grand Canyon
Day 7:  Drive 7 hours to southern California.  Staying with friends for 4 nights
Day 8:  LA
Day 9:  LA
Day 10:  LA in the morning, Drive along Highway 1:  3 hours to Pismo, CA and camp on the beach that night.  Cost:  $43
Day 11:  Drive 3 hours toward San Francisco. (No accommodations reserved yet for the rest of the trip.) Along the way:  Monterrey, Carmel, Pebble Beach, 17 mile drive.  We will probably camp somewhere between Santa Cruz and San Francisco for 3 nights, but those plans are not set yet.
Day 12:  San Francisco
Day 13:  San Francisco
Day 14:  Drive 3 hours to Yosemite
Day 15:  Yosemite and start the 33 hour trip home
Day 16:  Driving--probably stop at hour 15 in Albuquerque
Day 17:  Finish driving home (17 more hours) and sleep at home sweet home tonight

The total trip is around 5,000 miles which means we will need to factor in an oil change somewhere along the way!  If anybody has any good coupons for an oil change around the Pacific Ocean, let me know.......

How could anything possibly go wrong?

Good intentions!  That's what I have for this blog.  However....good intentions get you nowhere.  When I dreamed (dreamt?) this up, I fully anticipated for this blog to be the best family road trip blog on the whole internet, but now I'm just settling for it to merely BE a family road trip blog on the internet (as opposed to a family road trip blog that exists only in my mind.)

That said.....I'm going to try to start firing off some posts.  Here goes my lame attempt at getting something up in the 15 minutes I have before we leave for karate.



Here are a few of the things I'm leary of as we embark on this 5000 mile trip:

1.  Running out of gas in the middle of Kansas in the middle of the night.
2.  The minivan we're taking currently has 147,000 miles on it
3.  We're camping (as in, a tent, not a camper....as in, outside, not in a hotel.....), therefore, rain could put a bit of a damper on the fun for this camper.
4.  Gas is expensive (that is, if we can find any in the middle of Kansas--see #1 above.)
5.  We're going to try to pack LIGHT.  I'm concerned we'll end up packing a little too light.  What if we're in the middle of Kansas and we need something....like, really bad.  And we've run out of gas (see #1 and #4) and there's no place to get gas or my favorite road trip snack (Junior Mints)! 
6.  What if somebody gets sick ??  (Daughter has had 4 stomach bugs since Christmas.  People:  FOUR STOMACH BUGS SINCE CHRISTMAS!! Can you even fathom how ridiculously terrible it would be to have that happen in the middle of Kansas in the middle of the night?)
7.  Car trouble....car wreck....etc.  And you know....if we had to leave the van in the middle of Kansas, the only rental car available will be a Ford Escort, right? 
8.  I've heard that there are bears in the Rocky Mountains.  'Nuff said.
9.  We have Verizon 3G service. 'Nuff said.  (Can you hear me now? I'm in the middle of Kansas.)
10.  One of the kids will forget their headphones and we'll have to listen to the KidzBop version of "Like We're Gonna Die Young" over....and over....and over again.

So, that's what's on my "be afraid, be very afraid" list at this point.

What would you be afraid of if you were joining us on L'WOW?