With all of the literature out there about the Donner Party (DP) journey, what I am quite surprised at is that there is no DP Road Trip Guide, at least that I could find. In fact, the situation is worse than that. Some do-it-yourselfers have a lot of information out there, including a nice customized Google DP Map, but they are wrong, as least compared to what appears to be an authoritative explanation of their route in the Frank Mullen book. If have to make about 250 miles a day of driving (five hours), set up camp (2 hours) and take done camp (2 hours), for a total of nine hours, so that does not leave much time each day to plan the day’s driving so that I do not miss the milestones of the DP’s journey, and plan on where I am going to camp each night. So, after several false starts of using other’s information, I decided to created my own itinerary based on what I believe to be the true DP route. This was no an easy task. My goal was to retrace the DP route as close as possible and find nearby state park camps along the route. So, after hour of working Google Maps, the below table is my result. My goal is to do about 250 miles a day, which would give me 14 days to make it to Donner Lake, and an extra day to Fort Sutter and the end of the road for me on this trip, Samuel Taylor State Park north of San Francisco. I also had to plan the camps so I could avoid camps near cities on Fridays and Saturdays, when it is impossible to get reservations in those camps. So, if I leave on the 12th, and it does take 15 days to get to SF, that would get me there on the 9/26. Since my reservation there does not start until the 29th, I have three days for contingencies along the way. Let’s hope that I do not need any.
Here is the daily miles chart and below it is the itinerary on which it is based.
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