While a lot of this road trip is not in the Midwest, It is fairly convenient travel route for the majority of Midwesterners. The path we took also essentially makes a circle. That way you are able to see as much as possible, and not have to do any major backtracking. This trip was the first “legit” road trip that I’ve ever done. The night of my college graduation was when we took off. Clearly, I didn’t waste any time on trying to travel. We packed my little Buick Verano to the brim with blankets, clothes, snacks, meals, and everything we thought we might need. And off went this broke college girl on her first big trip.
We left Minnesota at around 11PM, and we drove entirely through the night. At the time I had been working a lot of overnight shifts, so I was able to do most of the night driving. Of course with my luck, it down poured rain almost half the drive through South Dakota. And if you have ever been to South Dakota, you already know that It’s an extremely boring drive. So that mixed with the rain and the darkness, weren’t the best driving conditions. If you aren’t completely positive that you are comfortable driving at night, please don’t. Start early in the morning, like a normal person.
We arrived at Mount Rushmore EARLY in the morning. I believe that the “standard” hours are roughly 5AM-11PM. This being said, their visitor center does not open until 0800. My guess is that’s when the Park Rangers start collecting an entrance fee as well. So luckily, we did not have to pay to get in. Before you criticize, I know that these parks need all the money they can get. Again, I was a broke college kid and we weren’t going to sit around and wait to pay them. Since we arrived there so early, the park was almost completely empty! It was awesome, we were able to get some quality pictures without a million people. We could also freely walk through the paths and have a good time.
Nearby the monument, there are many lookout points. I’d suggest stopping at least one. Especially if you’re looking for some pictures that are farther away. We did not stop, but there was a cute little “town” nearby. Normally I am not the biggest fan of those little tourist traps, but It looks like a cute place for families. It had a country/western vibe to it. Again, since we were there so early, nothing was open.
A little over 2 hours later, we arrived at Devils Tower. While I wouldn’t plan on spending a lot of time here, it was more interesting than I expected. There were some nice hiking trails that wrap around Devils Tower. None of the trails were very challenging, but it was super nice to be able to stretch our legs a bit. Also make sure to stop and watch then prairie dogs as you are leaving! They are super cute! They have a lot of issues with people feeding the prairie dogs. As hard as it is, try not to! The animals get dependent on humans after a while.
Yellowstone National Park is where I learned some things VERY important about road trips. 1.) ALWAYS have a back up form of Navigation. Us being idiots, forgot all our detailed plans at home. That included a physical map, and where exactly we needed to go. So, once we get into Yellowstone National Park, guess what happened??? Zero cell phone service. So now we are driving around lost in the dark, after being on the road for roughly 30 hours. 2.) Expect the road trip to have mishaps and don’t over plan. At this point I believe we both wanted to kill each other. Luckily we were a fairly new couple, and still in the “honeymoon phase”. Because if we were in this type of situation now, there would have been A LOT more tension. This was mainly due to lack of sleep. 3.) Make sure you actually BOOK a campground spot. I have no idea why, but we just assumed that we could pull up and there would be a million open camp sites. Every single camp ground was full! After driving around lost from camp site to camp site, we eventually turned around and drove into a full one. We set up camp on an RV spot, and made sure we were out of there before the Park Ranger got there in the morning. Again, I don’t suggest not paying for these types of things. But since we got there so late and left so early (5ish AM), we didn’t pay. We were able to get to Ole Faithfull before most people, and ate sandwiches for breakfast while we waited. After that we drove around the park looking for wildlife. The Buffalo’s are amazing to see up close! We got lucky and had a whole heard come right past us!
Sadly, we were only able to drive through Salt Lake City. Lucky for us though, we stopped for dinner!! Of course, we stopped at no other place than the Red Iguana. If you only have time to stop one place, I would make it here. Amazing Mexican food. There is often a bit of a wait. So, If you come here on the weekend, expect to be waiting outside a bit.
Zion National Park still holds the title of my favorite National Park! This is mainly due to one experience in particular. I do not know how, but I was able to hike Angel’s Landing. If this is something you have never heard of, I highly suggest searching a video of the hike. After you’ve searched it, put into perspective that I’m extremely bad with heights. This is one of those things where I’m super glad I was able to do it, but would NEVER ever do it again. The hike is stupid dangerous (but also stupid beautiful). Yes, you have a chain to hold on to, during most of the “sketchier” spots. But one slip and you are instantly dead. I would like to go back and be able to spend a few more days here. As well as hit up some of the other National Parks in the area. We were crunched for time and were not able to. Again, you need to ACTUALLY book a camp ground spot. We drove all over looking for spots. Zion was actually more crowded than Yellowstone! There wasn’t even a spot for us to sneak into. Luckily this ended up being a cool experience for us though. We started searching for BLM land (bureau of land management). This is essentially public land owned by the Federal Government. This being said, anyone can stay on it. We found a camp ground back in the middle of this field. The only way we even notice, was some random tire tracks. But we followed it, and low and behold. A small makeshift campsite!! You could tell a couple people had possibly been living there, but again we did not care! The awesome thing is when we woke up, we actually found out where we were! We stepped outside of our tent and noticed we were just on the outskirts of Zion! We were right beside a giant cliff! Waking up to a sunrise and that site was something I will always remember!
Viva Las Vegas! Do I need to say much more?? Funny enough, we were SO tired from the previous days. We basically just slept and laid out by the pool. Sounds extremely lame for my first trip to Vegas, right? It was perfect though! We ended up staying an extra night in Vegas, since we needed to relax a bit.
The last big stop we made was in Denver Colorado. Driving through the mountains was a new experience for me. Especially once we got into the Colorado area. I’m not good with heights. Especially when you are driving alongside cliffs where almost certain death will occur if you drive off….. My palms are getting sweaty just thinking about that. So make sure someone comfortable is driving. I also noticed that there really isn’t many stops driving across Colorado. We even passed some areas, that informed us that we needed to fill up on gas because there wouldn’t be a gas station for miles! Once we got to Denver, we didn’t get to experience much. We stayed with family friends, who housed and fed us!