michigansandzilla wrote:
jlrmfc21 wrote:
michigansandzilla wrote:
jlrmfc21 wrote:
Sounds like a great trip! How much time are you giving yourself? Make sure you see Jackson hole as well.
16 days
Would love to see your itinerary specifics. I plan to do the same route next summer and we live in Detroit.
Here is our itinerary. We typically drive 650 miles/day to get to our destinations. This is not fun, but it is not new for us, we do it annually for family vacations. I have firm campgrounds planned out, but we keep our days pretty loose because we've found it is more enjoyable to be flexible and discover things on our own, rather than having every detail of every day planned out in advance.
Day 1 and 2: Drive 1150 miles from home to KOA near the Badlands.
Day 3: Tour Badlands and Minute Man National Historic Site at leisure. Drive 120 miles to Custer state park Game Lodge Campground.
Day 4 and 5: Visit Wind Cave and/or Jewel Cave, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, and Custer state park.
Day 6: Drive 430 miles to Fishing Bridge campground in Yellowstone.
Day 7-9: Visit Yellowstone.
Day 10: Visit lower area of Yellowstone/upper area of Tetons and move 60 miles to Colter Bay campground in Grand Tetons.
Day 11-12: Visit Grand Tetons.
Day 13: Drive 420 miles to Fort Robinson campground in Nebraska. It surprised me that of all the campgrounds I booked, this one filled first.
Day 14: Visit Fort Robinson.
Day 15-16: Drive 1160 miles home to Michigan.
Day 17: Go to work exhausted with no food in the house or clean clothes.....but we'll have some great stories and experiences!
We did nearly the same trip, but from Kentucky, summer. Louisville to Badlands, to Rapid city, to devil's tower, to fishing bridge, to colter bay. We went south to Rocky mtn NP though and then home. LOVED THIS TRIP! We still talk about it nearly everyday.
Around rapid city we did Custer to iron hwy to rushmore. Loved the drive in on the iron hwy. Then day 2 we did jewel cave, crazy horse, and over to wind cave. Jewel cave was hard to get into. We got there first thing and had to wait a couple hours for our tour. I wasn't a huge fan of crazy horse either, plus you can see it from the road. Wind cave was nice, but about an hour south of rapid city.
I was nervous about driving across WY. I had not driven through mountains with my TT. We stayed over at Devil's Tower and went to buffalo and took 16 over the Bighorn mountains to Worland, then up 20 to Greybull, and then 14 through cody and into the east entrance of Yellowstone.
All and all a fantastic trip. We have had so many people back home ask us about where we went, because they want to do an out west trip. It hasn't even been a year and I am ready to go back.
