One
written by Amy
Owner of Belle Bucket
We are a road trip family. It's brought us more joy than I know how to explain. Some people think we're a little wild, and honestly they're right. We love being out in the wild. We love seeing the world. We're the kind of family that will jump in the van on a whim and just go.
That's the part I wouldn't trade. The going. But I'll be the first to tell you that going on a whim has cost us some good stuff over the years. The thing that was closed the day we showed up. The ferry we missed. The trail everyone says you can't leave without doing, that we drove right past because we didn't know.
The first time we drove out to the Pacific Northwest, I wasn't ready for how beautiful it was. There's a stretch on the way where green mountains rise up on both sides of the highway, and then you drive straight into a cloud and lose the whole world for a minute. Then you come out the other side and there it is again, green and impossible. The whole PNW does that to you. Sometimes the cloud is fog off the ocean and the green is moss hanging off a spruce older than the country.
The drive from Port Angeles to Forks alone is worth the trip. Highway 101 winds through Olympic National Park and you keep thinking it can't get prettier, and then it does, for hours.
We still love to wing it. We still pull over for things that aren't on anybody's list, and we always will. But now we get to do it with a little context. We know what's worth stopping for and what we can skip, what books to have playing in the van before we get there, which corner is going to wreck us in the best way. The whimsy is still there. We just stopped missing the good stuff.
So that's what this is. Not a top-ten list. Not a Wikipedia page with affiliate links. The guide I wish someone had handed me before our first trip out there. The one that tells you when the ferry lines sell out, which beaches have sneaker wave warnings, where the good chowder is, and which Twilight stops are worth your time even if you've never read the books.
Twenty-one full routes, mapped day by day. From a quick weekend in Seattle to a three-week grand tour across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Pick the one that fits where you are right now.
A chapter for every part of the PNW. The Olympic Peninsula. La Push and Forks. Puget Sound and the San Juans. Mount Rainier. The Columbia Gorge. Portland. The Oregon Coast. Crater Lake. The Sawtooths. Coeur d'Alene. Each one gets its own deep dive.
Real recommendations. Restaurants we love and ones we've heard great things about. Hotels we've stayed at and lodges that get raved about. Hidden gems most guides skip.
And the practical stuff most guides never bother with. Car seat laws by state. Ferry reservation timing. Multnomah Falls timed permits. Budgets at three price levels. Packing lists that actually account for kids.
Then there's the interactive piece. A map you can click around, a planner that builds your itinerary, a budget calculator, a weather guide, a booking timeline so nothing slips past you. It all works on your phone, and it's yours forever.
Start with the routes. Open the 21 Routes chapter and find the route that fits your family. Read it cover to cover. The rest of the guide will make more sense afterward.
Open the trip planner. The planner takes your route and pre-loads your itinerary, calculates your budget, builds your packing list, and walks you through the booking timeline.
Dig into the regional chapters. Once you know where you're going, read the chapters for those specific places. That's where the real depth lives. Restaurants. Hidden stops. Photo locations. Pacing tips.
Print the planner pages. The Planner Pages chapter has every printable you need. Daily planners, packing lists, kids' adventure journals. Print them, tuck them in a folder, throw it in the car.
Come back any time. This guide is yours forever. Bookmark the page. Use it for the trip you're planning right now and the trip you'll plan three years from now.
amy + the family
coming soon
about the author
hey, I'mI'm a mom of six who decided we weren't going to be the family that just talked about doing things someday. So we built bunk beds in a big blue Ford Transit van called The O'Neal Mobile and just started going.
We've roadschooled across forty-seven states and counting. My oldest daughter Lily is on a mission in Paris right now. My husband is military, which is part of why we travel the way we do. We're a faith-led family, and that shows up in how we travel too, slow and grateful, with a lot of laughing and a few good stories along the way.
Belle Bucket started because I wanted families to have a way to make memories on purpose. Bucket lists, travel guides, roadschooling tools. Stuff that makes the trip feel doable instead of overwhelming. That's what this guide is. That's what all of it is.
more than a trip
a little something extraHalf our best learning has happened on the side of a road. We'd stop at a tide pool and the kids would want to know why the water leaves and comes back. We'd stand under a tree older than our whole country and they'd have a hundred questions. That's roadschooling, and it's how our family does a lot of our learning.
So I built a companion to this guide: the PNW Roadschool Curriculum. It follows the same regions as the trip, so wherever you are, there's a matching set of lessons. Each region opens with a morning scripture and a conversation to have over breakfast. Then it teaches you the place. The real science of how the tides work and how the sand got its color. The story of the people who lived there first. The animals to look for, the words to learn, a scavenger hunt, poetry, art, music, real math worked into the actual trip. There are bigger history units woven in too, the ones that don't fit a single stop, like Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail.
There's an optional project where the trip itself becomes the assignment. They help plan the route and track it on the map. They build the budget and keep the receipts. They watch what things actually cost against what they guessed, and they adjust as they go. By the end, a teenager has planned and run a real trip with real money, which is a life skill most adults never got taught. That's the kind of learning I wish someone had handed me at fifteen.
It's built for a whole range of ages, so the same stop gives your four-year-old something and your twelve-year-old something harder. And it's faith-woven the way our family is, gently, in the quiet moments.
And give yourself grace. Some days the exploring is the education. Standing on a beach watching the tide roll out teaches them something a worksheet never could. You don't have to turn every mile into a lesson for it to count.
A heads up, this is a learning companion, not a full curriculum. There's real math throughout, and the older-kid trip project leans on it hard, but if you're doing full school on the road, bring a complete math program alongside it.
If this guide helps your family make even one memory you'll talk about for years, I've done my job. Let's go find your trip.