My late wife didn’t like tent camping. She really tried I’ll give her that, but it just wasn’t her thing. But she wisely encouraged me to take our two kids on “adventures” typically weekend but sometimes week long trips that involved tubing rivers, hiking, fishing, canoeing and tent camping. However, the trip they still talk about today was a 1988 meandering 10 day road trip through the Rockies, all the ways up to Red Lodge MT. I’m a professional geologist and much of the trip went to places I’d visited while in college during summer field studies. After 10 days on the road I can still hear my kids plaintive cries as I slowed down to stop at yet another mountain road-cut to discuss geology “Ohhhh nooo, not another road cut!!!” Here it is thirty years later, when we get together on holidays, my adult kids still talk about those adventures I took them on.
On the 10 day road trip we visited:
Capulin Volcano National Monument, NM
Great Sand Dunes NP, CO
Mesa Verde NP, CO
Black Canyon of the Gunnison, CO
Dinosaur National Monument, UT
Flaming Gorge, WY
Grand Teton NP, WY (on the spur of the moment I took the kids on a helicopter ride)
Yellowstone NP, WY (where we enjoyed a buffalo chip campfire)
Route 212 from Yellowstone to Red Lodge MT (a beautiful alpine drive)
Red Lodge, MT (home of my summer field camp)
Thermopolis, WY (where we enjoyed a dip in their huge hot springs swimming pool)
Rocky Mountain NP, CO
Pikes Peak, CO (a looong drive to the 14,114’ summit)
I was a really mean dad, no head phones, video games or TV were allowed on our adventures. We had simple meals (so we wouldn’t get bogged down with elaborate food preparation and cleanup) and we exclusively tent camped in National Forests and State and National Parks.
Steve
BTW, when I returned to work and showed my boss (another geologist) the photos from my trip, he borrowed my trip map and did literally the entire trip I took with his own two kids.
