Road trip expenses and food

Gas: $330 (not bad for almost 4,000 miles)
Hotel: $799.40, for an average of $114 a night
Food: $883, which included groceries, road food, coffee, ice, and one nice dinner out every night, for an average of $110 a day total for 3 people
Souvenirs: $66 (mostly postcards)
Tickets and admissions: $62.50 (the rodeo and a tour of Wind Cave; all other national park admissions were included in our annual pass)
Parking: $14

For a grand total of: $2,155. 81 for eight days (and I'd budgeted $2,000, so yay me!), which is about $270 a day all-inclusive.

The iced coffee lasted exactly one day. Then it was back to buying crappy gas station coffee every morning. But hey, we had our own mugs, and gas station coffee in that part of the world was less than $1 each. We refilled the water bottles every night, made new sandwiches every night, and returned with nothing in the cooler except half a jar of jam.

Not included: one windshield replacement, $440. Still not sure if that should be considered a road trip expense, or car maintenance.

Road trip wildlife

Buffalo, bighorn sheep, elk, pronghorn antelope, marmots, prairie dogs, and wild horses (not pictured).

Little Bighorn National Monument and Battlefield, MT

Our last stop of the vacation was Little Bighorn National Monument and Battlefield in southeastern Montana. We ended up cutting the road trip short by a day; my husband had a phone interview he needed to get back for, and there was that pesky cracked windshield to repair. (Turns out we also had a dented splash guard underneath the car, which popped loose and scraped the highway a couple times on the drive home. Montana is not well-designed for low-clearance automobiles.) But we managed to work in everything we wanted to see, except one thing, which was a scenic drive anyway and so no great loss.

The drive home was long, but we were road-weary and butt-sore and ready to sleep in a real bed and see the cats again.

Hopefully the mental images of everything we saw will sustain me through a few weeks of working continuous doubles.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND

Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota is one of the least-visited national parks, but well worth the four-hour detour from Rapid City, SD. First, the drive up is perfectly straight and perfectly desolate; no towns, very few other cars, nothing but farmland and buttes as far as the eye can see. (Do be sure you pee first, as there are not many opportunities for it on that road.) Great driving, though not as scenic as Montana.

The park itself is like an older, rounder, more colorful version of the Badlands, with more greenery. And a resident buffalo herd and a few wild horses, all of which we saw.

Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave National Park, and Badlands National Park, SD

We spent a full day exploring the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota. We started at Mt. Rushmore, first thing in the morning, largely so the boy could see it. The Black Hills area is generally the Gatlinburg of the West: crowded, tacky, and full of tourist traps. Mt. Rushmore doubly so. And it’s a shame, because the area is so pretty.

We continued to Wind Cave, which was a new national park for all of us. We took a quick tour underground, and the boy loved it. He ranks the geysers of Yellowstone and Wind Cave as a tie for his favorite experience of the trip. We drove through a bit of Custer State Park on our way out, and saw more buffalo and a herd of pronghorn antelope grazing by the side of the road.

I dropped the men off at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, right outside Ellsworth Air Force Base, and loaded up on groceries at the nearest Target.

Then we headed to Badlands National Park, and during some road construction on the interstate, we took a rock to the windshield and had our first bad thing happen on the trip: a cracked windshield. We sat and watched it crack across the passenger side and I completely panicked. I’d never had a cracked windshield before, and despite my husband’s protestations that it was purely cosmetic damage and not anything to worry about, I had visions of the windshield popping out at high speed. I had to call our insurance guy, the local dealership, an auto glass specialist, and my dad before I could be convinced that we were in no immediate danger.

We cleared the Badlands and since it was crowded, we had a picnic dinner at the city park in Wall, SD, before browsing the infamous Wall Drug and returning to Rapid City for the night.

Devils Tower National Monument, WY

The posts of the road trip have been admittedly a little sparse up to now: I was generally posting something quick, with a few pictures, very early in the morning from a Motel 6 somewhere, in order to just get something up. Don’t let that fool you; we had an amazing time, and every day was a revelation. Amazing scenery, amazing driving, good family times, and all of it was pretty affordable.

After a couple of days spent in Yellowstone/Grand Teton/Jackson, WY, we headed out across Wyoming toward Devils Tower. The last time I drove across Wyoming, I remembered it being completely empty. Apparently everyone else has discovered Wyoming in the intervening four years, because it was definitely not empty. We drove across the Wind River plain and the canyons of US 16; I highly recommend both drives, especially US 16, but we were caught behind slow-moving RVs more times than I care to remember. Ditto Devils Tower: our nerves were so frazzled by the time we arrived that we had no patience for RVs, tour buses, or other people in general. We zipped in and out, got some pictures, and high-tailed it for Rapid City, SD, where we were planning to spend the night.

Verdict: neat to see, no need to stick around if you're not a climber. Cute prairie dog colony at the base, though.

At dinner that night in downtown Rapid City, we discovered yet another street fair. Not as exciting as a county fair and rodeo, of course, but still an unexpected bit of fun. We stopped into an old-timey candy store, bought a bunch of rock candy and Sioux City Sarsaparilla, and made sure the boy was loaded up with sugar right before bedtime.

A general observation: Wyoming and South Dakota have gotten very vacation-y in the summer. Everywhere we went, we were surrounded by other tourists (generally slow-driving ones). Granted, we were in the most vacation-y parts of both states. But still. Montana, on the other hand, was almost always empty-feeling and comparatively devoid of other tourists. Flathead Lake was a little touristy, but even on the interstates and inside Glacier National Park and in Livingston, gateway to Yellowstone, I never felt the kind of frustration I felt in Wyoming and South Dakota.

So. I officially revise my favorite national park to Glacier, and my favorite driving state to Montana.

Rodeo!

We just happened to hit Jackson, WY, at the same time as their County Fair. With rodeo.

Of course we had to go.

My stepson had never been--to either a county fair or a rodeo. It was exactly what you'd expect--a lot of rinky-dink rides, tons of junk food, livestock exhibitions. We ate cotton candy, rode the Ferris wheel (and watched the sun setting from the top), and bought tickets for the rodeo.

He was a little unsure ("People ride cows? What?") but he loved it. I loved it. We all loved it. I loved that the beer stand only sold Coors Light, and the guy apologized for charging me $5 for it.

Mountains, beer, AND a rodeo, all in one day!

Grand Teton National Park, WY

Grand Teton is like a breath of fresh air after Yellowstone (almost literally, given the sulfur fumes). It's less crowded, smaller, and involves only one thing: enormous mountains, jutting up from flat prairie.

It's breathtaking, as you can tell from the pictures. We stopped and had a picnic lunch overlooking Jackson Lake. The next morning, we took in the Snake River Overlook (where Ansel Adams took his famous picture) and ended the day by driving down through Idaho, on the other side of the Tetons, and back through a vertiginous mountain pass. It's a long drive (out West Yellowstone, down route 20, across the mountains on 26), but prettier and way less frustrating than sitting in all the park traffic.

Yellowstone National Park

Old Faithful

The first time I went to Yellowstone, I hated it. It was crowded, hot, full of dead burnt-out trees, and as far as I could tell was nothing but a monument to swamps and slow people.

However, I discovered the secret to liking Yellowstone this time around. First, go early. Very early. Even the remote parts will get crowded by lunchtime. Second, go to the eastern side of the park.

The western side is all geysers, fountains, burbling mud, and weird smells. Some of it is interesting--we saw Old Faithful erupt (and even got a little on us), but this is of course the most crowded part of the park. The eastern side contains the lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and all the bison/bison grazing fields.

Also, the drive from Livingston, MT down to the north entrance is spectacular. Especially at sunrise.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Highway 89, Montana

I just had the best drive of my life.

It was on 89, through central Montana.

89 is a two-lane road that cuts down from near Glacier National Park through Great Falls and the Lewis and Clark National Forest to Livingston. It skirts the Rockies almost all the way. The speed limit is 70. It passes through a few towns, but very few.

So it is a long, straight, high-speed road that has the Rocky Mountains on one side and plains on the other, with very few other cars. There are other cars, of course--but because the road is mostly long and straight, in a treeless country, it's very easy to pass them. To blow past them doing 95, perhaps, because what cop would sit out there to catch speeders?

And oh, it was gorgeous. Truly the best drive of my life. Beautiful, easy, fast, and clear. The topography changed going through the Lewis and Clark National Forest, of course, but then it opened back up in mountains and plains. The only problem was the relative lack of bathrooms, and the lack of good places to pull over and take pictures. It's probably just as well--I would have been taking pictures every mile or so.

And on a beautiful clear, sunny, hot day--we played the music loud, drove fast, and exclaimed over the scenery.

Spectacular. Just spectacular.

Glacier National Park, MT

Words. I can't even. Pictures instead:

Into Montana (again)

Columbia River, Central Washington

St. Ignatius, Montana

Flathead Lake, Montana

I can't tell you how good it feels to be on the road again. To be not working. To be able to relax a little. To see some of the most scenery ever.

We started the day early. The climb into Snoqualmie Pass through the Cascades was a little foggy, but the instant we crested and started going downhill, the sun came out. Central Washington is flat and rolling, much like Oklahoma (but not quite as green). All the rest areas we stopped at had fantastic views. Idaho was mountainous and forested and the interstate got much twistier at that point.

Once we got off I-90 in Montana, we began the trek up 70-mph two-lane back roads to Kalispell. We passed some ridiculous mountains (how did I miss St. Ignatius the first time I drove up here? I've never seen a more beautiful small town) and Flathead Lake, which is a prime vacation destination and so was full of slow-moving people.

We grabbed dinner at a joint called Moose's Tavern, which was a strange combination of bar and family pizza joint. With sawdust on the floor. Never fear, though: the pizza was excellent and the beer was cheap. We lingered for a couple of hours, playing Uno.

My stepson is having a fantastic time. We spent most of the day talking and laughing in the car, everyone exclaiming over the scenery. In a few minutes I'll wake everyone up and we'll go to Glacier National Park, then continue down central Montana to spend the night in Livingston.

Two thoughts: when I made my solo road trip four years ago, I couldn't imagine doing it with another person. Now? I love having a driving buddy (my husband). We work very well together in a car, and it's so awesome to be able to share the experience with someone.

Also, I realized my favorite thing ever is this. In a car, driving, pretending I'm an outlaw. Seeing the sights, driving fast, paying for everything with cash.

Next stop: Glacier!

On the road again

It's hard to believe it's been four years.

Four years ago, almost to the week, I was road-tripping through the same part of the country that we'll be road-tripping through all of next week. Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas.

I had been laid off from my job in New York, spent a few fruitless weeks searching for work, and decided one day that if I couldn't solve the problem, I could at least make the problem irrelevant for a while. I took off on a solo, ten-week, cross-country-and-back mother of all road trips. I covered 19,000 miles--all of the continental U.S. states, plus brief forays into Mexico and Canada--and reconnected with the man I would marry less than a year later.

It was quite a trip. As soon as it was over, I packed up all my stuff in New York and drove it back across the country to San Diego, where I moved in with the aforementioned almost-husband. And then started this blog.

When we moved here, to Seattle, I wanted one of our first vacations to recreate the upper Western part of my solo road trip. I drove from Seattle to Glacier National Park, down to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, across Wyoming to Rapid City, SD and the Badlands. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip; incredible scenery, very few people (outside Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore, anyway), and amazing driving. My husband hasn't seen many of the places we'll go next week, and my stepson hasn't seen any.

So, I'll be blogging it all again. In the meantime, here are my thoughts from 2009, when I was seeing it all for the first time:

Driving from Seattle to Glacier
Glacier National Park
Jackson, WY
Rapid City, SD
Badlands

And hey, some pictures!