Well it's that time again....time for me to hit the road on my next Adventure. When you read this you will wonder what the heck I was thinking when I planned this one! I can tell you I am already thinking the same thing. However it is planned and as always I will keep you posted on how it goes!
Things to Consider
When we decided to plan this vacation there were several things that we were taking into consideration and things that we wanted to accomplish during this vacation.
1. We want to get to Glacier National Park. - This is easier said than done because of the limited time that The Going to the Sun Road is open all the way due to snow cover. It is usually open by the end of July through part of September. We figure it will be open in August so that is why we planned this vacation for the time period that we did. This was our starting point. There really is no easy route to get to Glacier so we decided to be a bit creative and accomplish some of our other goals along the way.
2. We wanted to get to North Dakota. - I am currently sitting at 48 states in my quest to visit all 50 and North Dakota is one of the ones that I have not visited. (Arkansas is the other one.) When you see the crazy path that we are taking you know why we are doing this!
3. My husband is also close to getting to all 50 states but he is a little behind me. In addition to needing North Dakota he also needs Iowa and Nebraska. To be honest I don't have a real desire to drive all the way through either Iowa or Nebraska again but we compromised and are doing a little side trip and hopefully have found some interesting things to see along the way.
4. We decided as long as we were traveling around this area, we would try to hit as many National Parks as we could along the way. We have been to Mount Rushmore (which is not a National Park), Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park and since they are all great places and we were close (relatively) we decided to take a little longer path.
5. Once we got to the Grand Teton planning, we had to decide between returning home from Denver or Salt Lake City. Since Salt Lake was cheaper (even though the flight connects in Denver) and I have family in Salt Lake City, we decided to head that way.
Our Itinerary
So you all can follow along here is our crazy itinerary for this trip:
Day 1: Fly from Cleveland to Minneapolis. Check out the Mall of America and catch the Indians
Twins matchup in the evening.
Day 2: Drive from Minneapolis to DesMoines Iowa and on to Omaha, Nebraska before ending up in
Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the evening.
Day 3: Drive to Mitchell, SD to see the Corn Palace and then on to Badlands National Park
Next stop is Wall Drug because you can't travel through South Dakota without going to
Wall Drug! From Wall Drug we will be going to Wind Cave National Park before calling
it a day and staying in Rapid City, SD.
Day 4: We will get an early start and head to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse before driving to
North Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We will then head into Montana and
end our day in Billings.
Day 5: We will detour a little bit and head to Little Big Horn Battlefield about an hour south of
Billings and then head to Kalispell, Montana for the evening. This is going to be a very long
travel day!
Day 6: We will be spending the day in Glacier National Park and again staying in Kalispell for the
evening.
Day 7: We will revisit Glacier in the morning and then head south to Bozeman, MT
Day 8: We will drive in from Bozeman to Yellowstone National Park and through Grand Teton
National Park before ending our day in Jackson Hole.
Day 9: We will head back into Grand Teton National Park. One of my favorite spots is Jenny's Lake
I want plenty of time to take it in! From there we will head to Idaho Springs for the night.
Day 10: We will drive from Idaho Springs to Salt Lake City in time to catch up with family and then
head to Park City for the night.
Day 11: We will fly from Salt Lake back to Cleveland.
We shall see how this plan actually works out! It's always interesting to see how it starts out and how it really plays out!
We have our National Park Pass purchased and ready to use along the way!
See You All When We Get Back
I will try to tweet and post to Facebook along our way but start looking for blogs once we return!!
