My wife and her cousin have been conspiring and just announced that we are going on a “Family Vacation” this summer. We will load up the Family Truckster and drive from the Chicago ‘burbs to the Grand Canyon. I figured since we will be making the ride we might as well visit some other places of national heritage so I thought about Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone. I tried using Rand McNally’s trip planning site and that was when it finally dawned on me: This is a freaking big country!
Basic route is:
• Chicago
• Mt. Rushmore
• Yellowstone
• Salt Lake City (it’s an in between point)
• Grand Canyon
• Oklahoma City (another mid-point)
• Chicago
Each car will have 2 kids ranging in age from 6 to 15. Each car will also have DVD players with headphones (thank God). We’ve done 8 hour drives OK but the trip from Chicago to Mt Rushmore is 14 hours and there is nothing in between (my apologies to everyone in Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota). We have a total of two weeks to do this.
What is the maximum driving day do you think I can reasonably handle with kids? Any suggestions on how to do this without killing each other or tying the kids to the rear bumper? When I was a kid we did these trips and my folks gave me Dramamine so I usually slept through most of Iowa. I think DCFS would frown on that so does anyone have any ideas? What is the minimum time I should plan at the parks?
Hell, why do you think I agreed to this trip in the first place?
OK, let’s suppose we cut out Rushmore completely and limit OKC and SLC to just places to spend the night… What would you consider a reasonable driving day? And, again, what is the minimum time you would recommend staying at the parks?
It kinda depends on what you’re into. Yellowstone is great if you like the outdoors, seeing wildlife and scenery, camping, etc. If that’s just not your thing, a little goes a long way. I suggest you skip “Old Faithful” though. When I saw it, the thing was more than a little underwhelming. No massive plume of spray…more like a little gurgle, sorta like a toilet backing up. In the summer, that park will be pretty crowded, and may be more hassle than it’s worth.
Mt. Rushmore is cool…but it looks pretty much like what you’ve seen on TV. The Custer National Battlefield is somewhere in that general vicinity, and was more interesting to me.
When I was a kid we did these family road trips (both my parents were in education so we all had the summer off) and I remember seeing Yellowstone a couple times. Yeah, Old Faithful isn’t that hot (sorry) but the rest of the park was breathtaking. I’ll never forget walking along the wooden walkways around the hot springs, my mother panicking that I was going to leap out into some sulfurous pool of water. We saw moose, bison, bears and a rattlesnake. For a 9 year old, that was better than anything else.
I just want my kids to see some of the amazing scenery that I enjoyed so much. I wish I had the time and money to show them the Grand Tetons, the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Glacier National Park, the Snake River and all of the other beautiful places out west. To this day, my all time favorite place was Jackson Hole, WY. Our hotel faced the mountains. Every morning we would look out and see the peaks wrapped in clouds. Slowly they would pierce the veil of white and reveal their beauty. We could walk across the plains there and watch prairie dogs popping their heads out of the ground.
But that was back in the early 70’s and I’m afraid that time and “civilization” will have destroyed most of what I remember. They’ve probably turned that prairie into a giant “Whack-a-mole” game.
Do you mean Custer State Park, with the spectacular “Needles” granit spires? Custer National Battlefield, long since re-named Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, is more than 300 miles away from Mount Rushmore.
In the past 8 years my family has made three ~7,500mi voyages from Jersey to Washington state, to California, and back. With children. With many stops between.
Go for it!
Some advice from my travels:
[ul][li]Try to keep it down to <500 mi/day. It sucks to be running hell bent for leather even if you are driving across the Great Plains. If I were you I would go from Chicago to Sioux Falls, SD and from there to Rapid City, SD (right next to Mt. Rushmore).[]Meals and lodging are going to cost a buttload. Plan ahead.[]Take a laptop with you. Any decent hotel has wifi these days, and you can scout out places and hotels along the way. I typically spend a half hour in the hotel room choosing our next day’s destination and then reserving a hotel room there. That way we know that the place is waiting for us.[/li][li]You may wish to check for telltale signs of crappy hotels: call them and ask about the age of the property, last time renovated, ask if you can get a room on the floor you desire, stick with a chain you know.[/li][li]Take a journal along with you. Write in it as often as possible. You’ll enjoy reading it years later.[/li][li]Take tons of photos. Use the shotgun approach – out of hundreds of shots, you’ll get a few really good ones.[/li][li]It sounds like you are going in two cars? That sounds like a pain in the butt. Trying to follow someone or be followed is tiresome even for a short time. I can’t imagine doing so across the country. You may wish to simply establish a few common meeting points and drive out of sight of each other.[/li][li]Check your cell phone coverage. It’s really nice to be able to call each other, but you probably want to be aware of any huge vast uncovered regions before expecting to be able to call each other.[/li]Contact the parks and ask for advice about peak days and such. I was concerned about vising the Grand Canyon last year, but we got there in the last week of August, and it turned out that most kids had already started school by then, so there was no line whatsoever to get into the park.[/ul]
Just a tip - For Salt Lake City, use priceline.com to book a hotel. You can almost always get one of the downtown Mariotts for $50/night, while if you booked a Holiday Inn or similar it would run you $90 even if you book online. They are well located and have nice pools/workout rooms.
Skip Mt. Rushmore. It is a total and complete waste of time and driving. Buy the kids a postcard of it somewhere and call it good. That alone will save you a ton of driving and a couple of days. Unless you have made arrangements already, Yellowstone is going to be a zoo. Way too crowded. Skip it and see someplace less touristy, like Bryce and Zion and Canyonlands.
Be sure to stop by Cabela’s in Sidney, Nebraska. Worth a road trip by itself!
Eh…300 miles is a day’s drive or less. That counts as the same neighborhood in my book. They renamed it? Didn’t know that. I was there in the late '70s, on a day so hot the road was melting. Interesting place. Custer bit off way more than he could chew…
Custer State Park is cool, but you really need to camp there for a few days to appreciate it. If you do, go see the Crazy Horse Monument. It’s going to be truly impressive when it’s finished.
If Salt Lake City isn’t a top priority, you could always head straight south from Yellowstone towards Dinosaur National Monument, located on the Utah-Colorado border (the Utah side has the famous wall of bones in the rock). When I took a similar trip with the family, it was one of the highlights for me as a kid.
From there to the Grand Canyon heads through the Canyonlands area, which might be worth a stop or two.
If you do stick with the Salt Lake City route, try heading a little out of the way to Zion National Park, which is nice just driving through.
As for the two-car thing - consider getting two-way radios (the kind with several mile range) if you’re not going to have cellphone coverage everywhere.
Taking the key elements of your trip into consideration:
the spots you plan to hit
4 kids, aged 6 to 15
two weeks to do it all in
My initial reaction is that the “driving to seeing/doing” ratio is off: you are cramming too much distance to cover into the 2 weeks. Do-able, but you’ll end up doing the Clark Griswold visit to the Grand Canyon (about 20 seconds of viewing the canyon itself).
If you look at the places you plan to hit, you kind of head west staying somewhat north. Then veer south (big time), and then make a diagonal back to Chicago. Looking over that route, there is a LOT of empty road (from Rushmore to Yellowstone is pretty blank, as well as Yellowstone down to SLC, and of course SLC to the Grand Canyon).
My recommendation: change the focus to either Yellowstone OR the Grand Canyon, but not both.
If you stick to Yellowstone, you could stick with Mt. Rushmore (it is kind of a waste of time, but worthwhile for the kids to see), and throw in things like:
Devils Tower (“Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind”)
more time in the Grand Tetons
Maybe continue west/north and hit Glacier Natl. Park
maybe swing up into Canada and hit Banff and Jasper
If you stick to Grand Canyon, head directly south/west to do so. Then when you get there you could throw in:
Monument Valley (all those westerns and SUV commercials, not to mention “Forrest Gump”)
Just a note from my experience: growing up I always thought of Mt. Rusmore as a national treasure, on par with the memorials in DC. On seeing it in person though, I came to the realization that its just a roadside attraction; about on par with the Corn Palace or the Worlds Biggest Ball of Twine. Skip it and spend some time visiting the Badlands National Park.
I love a good road trip, and I’ve happily driven distances like that (and more!) in a single day, but I never would have thought of that as “the same neighborhood.” Different strokes…
The re-naming was in 1991. I guess someone eventually figured out Custer was the loser. I was there in August of 1998. I didn’t recall it being overly hot then, myself.
BTW, to the OP: I disagree with anyone who says Mount Rushmore isn’t worth a visit. I find it awe-inspiring that human beings were able to carve a mountain into fine sculpture, and the programs demonstrating how the busts were designed and made were extremely interesting. Also, the surrounding area has other fun attractions - visit the Black Hills Reptile Gardens, Custer State Park (which I mentioned earlier), Flintstones Bedrock City (don’t need to spend long, it’s no Disney World, but anyone who’s ever watched the Flintstones will enjoy walking around a full-size “Bedrock”), and the Black Hills Caverns.
If you’re going to do Yellowstone, try to fit the Cody Nite (sic) Rodeo (about 60 miles east of Yellowstone’s eastern border) into your plans. A very fun show.
Some above have suggested Zion and Bryce Canyon. If you’re going to go that far east in Utah, I’d also recommend adding Arches National Park to the itinerary. I’ve done my share of traveling (though I’m sure others here have done more), and in my opinion, Arches had the most spectacular scenery of those I’ve seen…and that list includes Grand Canyon, Hawaii Volcanoes, Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Some excellent suggestions, folks! OK, I’ll save Yellowstone for next year provided it doesn’t blow up.
So, we’ll do Grand, Zion, Bryce, etc. Any other suggestions for things to see along the way would be appreciated. I’m going to show my wife and her cousin what you all have come up with and we’ll start planning accordingly.
If you’re going in two cars (and even if you’re not) I’d make an investment in a pair or a set of GMRS radios. You’ll be able to keep in touch with each other even if you are a good few miles apart, and won’t have to use cell phones and roaming minutes.
