In September last year, I went to the USA. As is the case for all my itineraries, I like to plan them super detailed. Having not been able to travel for the past few years due to covid, with borders suddenly opening up and only 3 months to plan and book the holiday I opted to do an organized group tour mixed with some independent travel. In this post I’ve included:
- The criteria I had for planning the trip
- 3 week itinerary (overview)
- Copy of my 3 week itinerary (super detailed), which you can download and replicate, or get ideas from to create your own itinerary
- What I liked about the itinerary
- What I’d change about the itinerary
The criteria for planning this trip
- Didn’t want to go any further to the west of the USA than Arizona (trying to keep it to the west coast so shorter flight times from Australia)
- National parks – we particularly wanted to see Bryce Canyon and The Arches
- No driving. Neither my Mum or I are comfortable driving on the opposite side of the road so the national parks would need to be an organized group tour via bus
- Due to day job work commitments, we could only travel during September but I still wanted to see some autumn colours
- No flying via LAX (I hate that airport!)
- Preferably a direct flight from Brisbane (where I live), to the USA
- As many stationery shops as possible!
The 3 week itinerary
Here’s the itinerary summary I made using my travel planning spreadsheets
Detailed 3 week itinerary
You can download the itinerary HERE (free, no need to subscribe to access it). I spend hours upon hours creating my itineraries – they’re super detailed so I hope you find it helpful. The dates for this trip were: depart Australia on September 9th and arrive back in Australia on October 2nd. The first half of the trip was on an organized tour by Globus called ‘Enchanting Canyonlands’ visiting national parks across Arizona and Utah. The rest of the trip was just my Mum and I visiting west coast USA cities (with day trips) in Portland, Alaska, Washington and then a day in Vancouver before flying home.
Globus ‘Enchanting Canyonlands’ itinerary
You can find the template I use to create my itineraries in my shop.
Some of the highlights of the trip
I visited a few national parks on this trip, my favorite was Bryce Canyon. I didn’t edit this photo, the orange colours really are this bright in person. Seeing autumn colours in Alaska and moose at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. People say moose are big… but they were even bigger in person than I thought they’d be! Finally seeing the famous Seattle skyline. Going back to Las Vegas. This is the view from the Eiffel tower on a Monday night. And of course.. going stationery shopping at Michaels, Joann and Hobby Lobby! Read more: Stationery shopping in the USA
What I liked about this itinerary
- Got the longest flight path out of the way first – one long haul + 1 internal flight
- Train from Seattle to Vancouver was much less stressful than going to Seattle airport (which is a long way from the city) and worrying about security and checking bags. The train was much more relaxing
- Because the Globus tour started on a Saturday (i.e. people needed to take an extra annual leave day on the Friday), there were only 11 people in the tour group but there was 27 in the group departing the next day (it was a much more enjoyable experience having a small tour group)
- We used Alaska Airlines for all of the internal flights within the USA. I liked them better than Air Canada – the seats on their domestic planes were better than the seats on Air Canada’s long haul planes
What I’d change about the itinerary
- I wouldn’t do the Globus Enchanting Canyonlands tour again. The pace of the tour was far too slow for me, there was usually only 1 activity per day (which might only be for 1 – 2 hours) and the rest was spent sitting on a bus or sitting at a hotel. There was a lot of time at the visitor centres of national parks. I’m like.. I’ve come all this way I want to go experience the national park not just read info about it on plaques and look at pictures. Whoever within Globus planned that itinerary had the timings for everything all wrong! E.g. only 3 hours of daylight in the afternoon at the Grand Canyon (1 of the 7 wonders of the world), yet 2 days at boring Lake Powell where there’s nothing to do and no transport to go into town (not much in town anyway). I like itineraries where there’s a lot packed in. I’ve never been on holiday and felt bored.. until I took this Globus tour. The tour was also very overpriced.
- If the Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas hadn’t been included as part of the Globus tour, I’d have preferred a hotel in the middle of the strip so didn’t need to rely on the deuce bus to get from one end of the strip to the other. There weren’t really any attractions or things to see at Treasure Island and the hotel itself is looking a bit tired and rundown
- If I had the flexibility, I’d have done the trip in October so I could seen autumn colours in Portland and Seattle.
- I wouldn’t fly Air Canada on long haul again if I can avoid it. The flight on the way home was delayed 2 hours but they loaded everyone onto the plane. I’d watched an entire movie before we even pushed back from the gate! They made no attempt to make up the time in the air on what was already a long flight (14 hours which became 16 hours). The food wasn’t good, there was food substitutions, only pretzel’s for snacks and lazy flight attendants. They’d never walk around with water bottles offering refills so you had to disturb other people to get up and get water yourself (Singapore airlines on a similar flight time that I’ve taken are always walking up and down the aisle checking if you need anything). The return flights were also the same price as it usually costs to go to Europe (which is 2 long haul flights for me x 2 ways. This route was only 1 long haul flight x 2 ways). Air Canada was really overpriced and not good value for money. They also had a very frustrating online check in process. I was able to upload my covid vaccine certificate but when I did the exact same process on the same computer for my Mum’s covid vaccine certificate immediately after I uploaded mine, the website would crash. It was very glitchy when trying to do seat selection too
- Portland is not a place I want to go back to. There wasn’t much to see and do and the downtown area felt very unsafe. We always made sure we were back at the hotel before dark. I got the impression it’s still recovering from covid. Downtown was empty, there were many boarded up shop windows, homeless people and really only tourists walking around – not many locals. Though it did have plenty of stationery shops in the Clackamas suburban area with an easy to navigate (and cheap) public transport system
I hope you found this itinerary helpful! See some of my other travel itineraries here:
- Best of Tasmania Road Trip (10 Day Self Drive Itinerary)
- Best of Brussels in 2 days (Itinerary, where to eat, stay, things to see and do)
- 5 Day Amsterdam Itinerary (including 2 day trips)
Travel planning tips
- Travel Planning: How to choose a hotel (my step by step process)
- 50 Things to consider when planning an itinerary
- 115 Things to Google before your next vacation
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