Planning a trip out west next summer

I agree with "coolmom". CGs are very crowded during the mid-June to late August, while all the schoolkids are on summer break. Since we did go out in summer, we usually did shorter trips, leaving home Sunday morning and get to our chosen first-night CG just as the families with working parents had left. Often, if the trip was going to be longer than a week, we could get to Fridays's CG early afternoon and get to stay Saturday also.

From our viewpoint, Yellowstone and the Black Hills are "back East".