It’s been a few years since Louie and I did a really long camping road trip, and after our trip last year to the south we started talking about going back to Yellowstone. This led to me setting aside dates, starting to make reservations (if you want specific places in some National Parks you have to reserve months and months in advance) and planning out a trip that would be possible without undo levels of stress and driving, that would be fun, and that we would really enjoy.
In case you are reading this and saying, how? How does she do this? Or, how do YOU do this? I will try to explain along the way how I figured things out and give you advice if you want to plan your own trip. As far as how do I do this? The answer is to be self-employed and/or on a school schedule. I’m both self-employed and teach at universities, which means that my summers are much more flexible. My boyfriend Louie also works at a university, which is why we were able to take the time. It doesn’t come easily, and requires a lot of advance planning and unfortunately a bit of checking in (and yes, I have to turn down jobs, and I feel bad and worry that people will stop hiring me if I turn down jobs for a trip, but I don’t regret it, and I tell myself that it doesn’t matter because living life is more important!). I took off three weeks from teaching and work, so that means three weeks of missed income, but I planned ahead for it so it wasn’t a big deal. In my budget, those three weeks just didn’t exist TO make money.
How do I plan? First, I come up with some general destinations. Louie and I wanted to go to Yellowstone again and also to Glacier NP since it is all the rage these days. I looked at the map (google map is SO your friend in trip planning) and saw that Banff wasn’t tooo far away, and since he’d never been there either, I added it in. Then I started to get into the nitty-gritty of details…when would we leave, how long would it take to get to Yellowstone, etc, and realized that oops, I needed to make my reservations for there first since they were open. Luckily it was no problem and I booked our first camping reservation in late September of last year. I also booked another lodging then, and then did enough research to discover I had months to figure out the rest before reservations opened.
The next step is to research, research. I use guide books to get the gist of a place, I use google to read blogs and reviews, I love the trip advisor forums to get you to slow down and not try to do too much in a given day and to read about other people’s road trips. I use various hiking sites and of course I zoom in on the maps online to see what I’m not seeing and I love the NPS site to see what parks and sites there are in each state along the way. If it takes 10 hours to drive somewhere according to google, don’t forget about stopping for gas and rest stops, plus perhaps a meal or two, unless you have packed something (also a good idea if you are in a rush, pack food). And know yourself: how far can you drive in a day? Oh, and so many campsite photos are available online…you can literally see what your campsite looks like and try to pick exactly the one you want!
There are hundreds of other considerations and things we’ve learned along the way. One modern problem is charging all your devices. We have various plugs in the car for phones, watches, and camera batteries. We also have a few portable batteries that you can charge in the car, and then bring into your tent to charge your phone or have with you on a hike in case of emergency. We set up the car as a wi-fi hot spot, and I downloaded dozens of podcasts ahead of time and we had satellite radio for the first time on this trip as well. It’s a lot to think of, and it’s not all necessary, but other the years we’ve added more and more things to our list. I think for our next trip we will mostly be figuring out what to leave behind rather than adding, as we brought some things we didn’t need!
As I was planning everything during the year, I kept a google doc with all the information in order. I like to leave each day open when we can, so instead of saying do this hike on this day, I had a list of possible activities for each location and then we could decided based on our mood. It’s also important to know that Louie is not as much of a planner as I am, and he would prefer to simply hit the road with a general destination in mind and see how the road takes us. But if you do that these days you’ll arrive at an overcrowded park with nowhere to stay, and end up spending (in my opinion) way too much time seeking out accommodations and driving around instead of enjoying your preplanned destinations. Yes, you lose some flexibility, but that’s why I try to leave it in our day to day activities. I think this trip I did a good job giving enough wiggle room to poke around here or slow down there, while making sure we knew how long we had to get to each major destination.
So! Perhaps you didn’t care about any of that, but I told you anyway. If you’ve skipped down to here because there’s a picture, great!
Day 0: We loaded up the vehicle. Louie recently got a new car, a Subaru Forester, and we were excited to take it on this trip. In the past we’d taken the Corolla (including when the bear attacked it) so we thought the Forester would be roomier and better for this sort of trip. We were correct, though it wasn’t as roomy as we hoped!
(This was some sort of statue at a rest area in Nebraska.)
Day 1: St Louis to Gering, Nebraska. Our first stop would be to visit Scottsbluff National Monument. First we had to drive about 12 and 1/2 hours to our hotel in Gering, which wasn’t ideal, but not bad when you are fresh and excited to go on vacation. We left before 8 am, and stopped in St Joseph, MO at a place called “Le Peep” for lunch. The drive was mostly uneventful, but notably we drove along some major flooding on I-29 in Missouri (the Missouri River was way out of line) before heading into Nebraska. I know Nebraska had a lot of flooding as well but we didn’t see it so much from the highways we were on. We didn’t stop for dinner as I’d packed sandwiches (they weren’t great, but Louie and I have the philosophy of, not every meal has to be amazing) and plus, it was getting to be a long day. We were enjoying the view…it isn’t particularly scenic in Nebraska, but it’s different than St Louis.
Here you can see there’s a storm in the distance, and yes, we drove through it. Finally we arrived at the Arcadia Motel in Gering, Nebraska. This was a highly rated two star motel, a place to sleep and nothing more. I would recommend it to other travelers, as they were very nice. The a/c unit was loud, but that’s to be expected.
Little towel animal was a fun touch.
Day 2: The next morning we got up early and got breakfast at a nearby Taco John’s. The hotel sold $2 vouchers for breakfast, which was a pretty good deal. Neither of us had been to a Taco John’s before, so it was a bit of an adventure. I recommend going if you can, so you can experience the oddity of all the menu items being approximately the same thing, and also the potato ole’s which are my new favorite thing. We didn’t finish our meals so we brought the leftover ole’s along. (They are sort of like tater tot’s). Anyway, according to my itinerary we had up to 3 hours to spend at Scottsbluff National Monument, and so we headed there!
You might think of Nebraska as flat and boring, but that’s not all!
We hiked the trail to the top of the monument first, and it was very nice after being stuck in the car the whole day before.
This sign says, “Hiram Scott, employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, died in the vicinity of this bluff in 1828, after being deserted by his companions near the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers.” I saw that and said, wow that sounds terrible, and there must be a story to it! We ran into a ranger a bit after and asked him, and he said it seemed that Scott was quite injured and was needing to be carried and the whole party was starving to death, and they needed to catch up with some people they saw way in the distance, and had to leave him behind or they would all die…very sad either way!
My constant fear: falling!
Louie standing in a tunnel blasted out of the bluff to hike through.
After we hiked up and down, we did another hike along where the Oregon Trail would have gone (there are wagon ruts and such) and then we drove to the top of the Bluff and down (I generally hate hiking up to where one can drive, but the first hike was highly recommended anyway).
Not real oxen, but they were real.
Then we hit the road, heading for Red Lodge, Montana where we would spend the night. We drove through Wyoming along the way, and made it to our hotel by dinnertime. I chose the Yodeler Motel because I remembered seeing it once when we drove through Red Lodge a few years ago, but it was also recommended by Moon Travel Guides. It was a nice place, but I’d decided to save a few bucks and get a lower level room and I wished I hadn’t done that. It was fine though, and we walked to dinner at Bogart’s and had tacos and margs and relaxed after two long days of driving!
Day 3: We woke up and walked to a place for breakfast called Prindy’s Place. It looked okay, but as we sat waiting (the service was slow because they were short staffed) we started to realize there were some right-winger signs around, and in retrospect, we wished we had left and found somewhere else—not JUST because of the rude signs about Obama (that we didn’t notice for 20 minutes or so) but also because of the bad service (probably nobody wanted to work there for a reason, honestly) and then the food wasn’t too good either. It took over an hour to get and eat a few pancakes and eggs. Oh well! I hate to ALWAYS google a place and sometimes like to find something that looks busy and convenient, but mistakes can be made. We hated giving them our money though.
After breakfast, which frankly made America less great, it was time to drive the Beartooth Highway into Yellowstone! We’d left Yellowstone via the highway before, but Louie enjoyed driving it so much we wanted to do it again, so that was the plan!
The Beartooth Highway is an real feat of engineering, and a windy and amazing road. Personally I would be terrified of driving it, but Louie really enjoys this sort of thing, so it works well! The views are amazing and we stopped as often as we could to take pictures and soak it all in. OH, and one time we stopped because I REALLY needed a bathroom and we finally found it…you know you are in a hurry when you tell the driver to pull up as close as possible so you can run out. Best bathroom ever.
You can see the road in the background there—I believe that picture is from the highest point, or one of them. There is lots of hiking around, but we only did a tiny bit of walking here and there, and the bugs were honestly pretty bad. We had a little lunch at the Top of the World store (well, tried to eat hummus/pita and string cheese outside but the mosquitoes were unbearable) and then kept going. The road shoots you out into Cooke City finally, then Silver Gate, and then before you know it you are showing your National Parks pass at the gate for…Yellowstone!
And that’s where I’ll stop for now.
I’ll add one more thing: no matter how many pictures I take, and I took a lot, I always wish I had a few more! No pictures of Cooke City to show you, no way to truly capture the awesome views from the Top of the World, no picture of the cute little store called the Top of World, etc.
Next: Yellowstone! Stay tuned and let me know if you have any questions!
