I originally had planned this post to be a "48 hours in Yellowstone" post for people who are only able to visit for a short period of time, but in lieu of the recent floods and closures, I figured I can revamp this post to share about all the things you can still do even with the closures.
WOW it's been a while since I posted. My last post was in the beginning of February and even that was kind of a half-assed post! So figured it was about time for a life update post about where we've been, where we are now and what we have in store!
Grand Teton National Park has a large variety of hikes that you can do for any experience level. We stayed in the area for a little under a week so we got a chance to explore a few different hike options. String Lake Loop was one that we did on our third day in the park just as a short option to get moving.
I'm back with another campsite comparisons post! The campsite comparison post I wrote discussed the variety of one night stays we had from Florida to Iowa on the first 10 days of our trip. The rest of September, we had much longer stays at boondocking spots across South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Each location had it's unique pros and cons but all of them were perfect opportunities to enjoy the areas we stayed in.
Jumping out of chronological order a little bit to tell the story of our most recent misadventure! When we hit the road with everything we own in our camper and truck bed, we knew that there was a chance that theft could be a possibility.
The Grand Tetons is one of those National Parks that flies under the radar, but once you experience it, it changes you. When we arrived to the Grand Teton area, we quickly changed our plans from only staying a couple days to staying an entire week. Since we extended our trip, we were able to really slow down and enjoy our hikes. If I had to choose a favorite, it would be the Jenny Lake to Hidden Falls trail.
South Dakota is a truly underrated state. The entire western half of the state is filled with parks, monuments and endless wildlife. Rapid City specifically has tons of history and culture that is worth exploring. The town also acts as a perfect home base for exploring a variety of different parks all within day trip distance. Here are some of the best day trips you can take from Rapid City, South Dakota!
Badlands National Park is one that I had neither heard much about nor had at the top of any bucket list. After taking a full day to explore this park, I'm glad to say that the Badlands is well worth the trip out to explore. The park is located in South Dakota which I believe is a rather underrated state. Since we had traveled up from Florida and through endless states of corn fields, we were happy to see scenery changes, especially ones as out-of-this-world as the Badlands. You can absolutely spend more than one day exploring this park but if you have only 24 hours in the area, here's an itinerary to follow so you can make the most of you time here!
So we've been on the road for a month and a half now and have stayed in a WIDE variety of campsite locations and overnight options. There are paid campgrounds, free campsites in forests, Walmarts, Breweries, Casinos, and more. I figured It'd be fun to do a pros and cons comparison of all the different places we stayed between Florida and South Dakota.
When you think of BBQ, Kansas City is definitely one of the top cities that comes to mind. When we were planning our big US road trip, we wanted to integrate BBQ into the trip as much as possible. Originally we had the trip carving along the south through Texas but when we flipped it to go counter clockwise instead, we instead got to treat ourselves to Kansas City!
