Review my itineray to Badlands, Black Hills, Yellowstone, Tetons?

[KrisM]

Plan to do Custer Wildlife loop first thing in am (early!!) or at sunset. Too hot in the middle of the day to see much.

Wall Drugs can take a few hours if you want, so be careful. Look for the T-rex animatron. There are water fountains for the kids to play in so wear water friendly shoes/clothes there

You can sign kids up for a cool dig program at mammoth site. We loved it!! I would pick Mammoth over Wind Cave any day, but I've been in a lot of caves and haven't seen a lot of mammoth bones.

Spring for the extra $$ to get Thomas Jefferson Vanilla at Mt Rushmore. Sooo Good!

SKIP the evening show in Medora (can't remember the name but "EVERYBODY" does it). It's lame and you have way too much packed into your trip already. I don't see you have planned to do that, but don't get sucked in to that.


Be prepared to let a few things go. Weather can be unpredicatable and wild. We took 9 hours to do 6 hours of driving to get to Wall SD (bad storm, accident that shut down highway)

GET GAS before you leave SD to Medora ND- there are long stretches of highway with no visible living creatures for hours. It'd take a LONG time for AAA to get to you with extra gas.

Thank you for all this. I am sure things will change as we go, but I like to have a reasonable plan to get through what we'd like to see.

I need to find more info on the Mammoth site. I'm not sure on that. I don't know if my kids will go in a cave. We had a bad cave experience 2 summers ago that may still affect them, unfortunately. So that's just a maybe.

[mskitty]

For the drive home I'd crunch more miles into the Denver to Topeka day. It's a boring drive and you have the time zone changes working against you, but you will fly across I-70 until you hit Topeka/Lawrence. Pushing to Columbia, MO would be another 2 1/2 hours but get you enough miles to drop the third day of driving. Fair warning I-70 across MO is awful and you'll want to time your STL rush hour.

Completely agree with this. My kids routinely ride 700+ miles on a long drive day several times a year. It definitely would be worth it to be home a day sooner.

[mskitty]

For the ride home, there are enough cities that I think we'll wing it. If we can go further, we will. The weather can always affect the distance you go too. I do not plan to make any hotel reservations past Denver. I will probably also not make one for the La Crosse area. I probably will for someplace in SD though. I'm considering not having one for Billings MT either. If we can go further, we can stay somewhere else. But, I'm not sure.

I'd disagree with this logic. Smaller towns are MUCH harder to find open hotel rooms, especially during peak travel season. I would definitely have a room reserved a couple hours ahead of time. I'd call around at lunch time to secure lodging for that night at the very least.

I-70 rolling east out of Denver would be fine as there are multiple hotels in Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence, Kansas City, Columbia, etc.

[KrisM]

So you think I need something for La Crosse?

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

[SnuggleBuggles]

Make all possible reservations and make sure you can cancel them. We got screwed on our last road trip, never anticipated the places we were trying to go would be a problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[KrisM]

Make all possible reservations and make sure you can cancel them. We got screwed on our last road trip, never anticipated the places we were trying to go would be a problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Maybe. I hate guessing where we will be in a drive. Most hotels seem to want 24 hours to cancel, so not a lot of flexibility. We can always sleep in the minivan. We do that yearly for 2-3 hours and it's not ideal, but is enough sleep to get us going again.

[ahisma]

I'm excited to see this since we're planning a very similar trip. We were going to tack on Glacier at the end, but pulled it back off after adding Acadia on to a trip later in the summer.

I do schedule hotels for every night. I've found lots that allow you to cancel up through 6 pm that night, and I've done so many times. More of the chains than the local ones that we tend to prefer, but chains work great for driving days.

We're doing 600 miles our first day too - the kids roll just fine with it. I kind of hate it, but it's worth it to get west ASAP. I plan it all on Roadtrippers.com and really like that format.

[KrisM]

I'm excited to see this since we're planning a very similar trip. We were going to tack on Glacier at the end, but pulled it back off after adding Acadia on to a trip later in the summer.

I do schedule hotels for every night. I've found lots that allow you to cancel up through 6 pm that night, and I've done so many times. More of the chains than the local ones that we tend to prefer, but chains work great for driving days.

We're doing 600 miles our first day too - the kids roll just fine with it. I kind of hate it, but it's worth it to get west ASAP. I plan it all on Roadtrippers.com and really like that format.

I think you are going right before us. Do you have an outline yet? Care to share? I'll relook at hotels, but I tried a few chains and they are all 6pm the day before. I will check others and see. Maybe I just picked the wrong ones to look at!

I'd rather do a really long first day in the car and then a shorter 2nd day and be somewhere. I asked my kids and they all said 12-13 hours in the car is fine for a couple days in a row to get there. Not fun, but they do really well. They do better on the long trips than going 30 minutes

[ahisma]

It still need a lot of work, but here's what we have so far. Some of the driving probably seems like a bit much, but we travel like this every summer and the kids like it.

Day 1: GR to Blue Earth, MN (623 miles) leave at noon, arrive after midnight.
Day 2: Blue Earth to Badlands (411 miles) Corn Palace (exterior only), 1880 Town (only if time), Minuteman (arrive by 2 pm, closes at 4, buy tickets ahead)
Day 3: Badlands to Custer (126 miles) Badlands NP, Wall Drug (picnic), Mount Rushmore (stay for evening lighting)
Day 4: Same hotel - Custer loop (am), Mammoth Site (plan ahead), Needles Hwy, Crazy Horse
Day 5: Custer to Cody (400 miles) Bighorn, Cody by 5 pm for 6pm gunfight (this is cheesy, but we're related to Buffalo Bill so we're going to roll with it)
Day 6: Cody to Red Lodge (60 miles) Cody, Trail Town, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Buffalo Bill SP
Day 7: Red Lodge to Yellowstone: Drive Beartooth Hwy to Yellowstone - stay at Canyon Lodge
Day 8: Yellowstone - Canyon Lodge night 2
Day 9: Yellowstone - Old Faithful Inn night 1
Day 10: Yellowstone - Old Faithful Inn night 2
Day 11: Tetons - Signal Mountain Lodge cabin night 1
Day 12: Tetons - Signal Mountain Lodge cabin night 2
Day 13: Tetons - Signal Mountain Lodge cabin night 3
Day 14: Drive home (day 1)
Day 15: Drive home (day 2)

[KrisM]

Very similiar! You're doing Cody and Red Lodge while we are in ND. And then we are adding the Denver part on. Otherwise, it's pretty similar for sure. I could only get 2 days at Signal Mtn. Lodge, so that lead to us leaving a bit sooner, too.

I didn't know they added the ability to get tickets to Minuteman Missile site ahead of time. Thank you for mentioning that. We will get them as well. I wanted to do it, but was not sure we'd be there early enough for tickets.

Do you have reservations for the Mt. Rushmore area yet? I don't, but plan to have them by the end of the week.