USA Road Trip 2017: Intro

For the summer of 2017 Emilie and I decided we would visit some places we missed during our 2016 National Parks road trip out west. However, we would start the drive from Massachusetts instead of from Michigan (as we started the 2016 trip from South Haven, Michigan). This meant incorporating some stops on the way. Our plan included some city stops as we made our way to the Colorado and South Dakota region which was our actual destination. We also planned to spend a week with our daughter Suzannah who was spending the summer in Boulder, Colorado where she was attending college.

We had less time than the previous summer due to some teacher trainings Emilie needed to take in August. This USA road trip was 3 ½ weeks. Again, we took Emilie’s 2015 Subaru Forrester, and crammed what we could in anticipation of winging it along the way. The only reservation we had in advance was for a campsite in Rocky Mountain National Park. I made that reservation about a month earlier and there were still quite a few sites left but I didn’t want to risk it. No other dates had to be hit other than these two nights.

We mapped out a high-level itinerary:

Here is a summary of our USA road trip with hyperlinks:

Summary of Cities Visited (in order visited)

Punxsutawney, PA        Dodge City, KS                             Vail, CO

Pittsburgh, PA               Manitous Springs, CO                 Aspen, CO

Cincinnati, OH               Boulder, CO                                 Guernsey, WY

St. Louis, MO                 Estes Park, CO                             Hot Springs, SD

Hannibal, MO                Steamboat Springs, CO              Deadwood, SD

Kansas City, MO            Glenwood Springs, CO               Sioux Falls, SD

 

Summary of National and State Parks, and Monuments (in order visited)

Gateway Arch

Harry Truman Presidential Library

Rocky Mountain National Park

Custer State Park

Mount Rushmore

Devils Tower National Monument

Wind Cave National Park

Crazy Horse Memorial

Jewel Cave National Monument

Badlands National Park

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

Sioux Falls

 

Summary of 23 Nights in Total

12 nights in a motel

6 nights in a tent

3 nights in an Airbnb

1 night in a friends’ home

1 night in daughter Suzannah’s apartment

 

As with our 2016 National Parks road trip we packed our gear in color coded containers. We had all of our tent/sleeping gear in the Thule, so we could just grab the Thule bag and carry it from the car and we’d have all our camping gear to the campsite (and back) in one move. We referenced the spreadsheet for inventory location:

 

Next: Pennsylvania & Ohio