Picking a Route
2018-08-28
PA
I knew when I was going to travel, and for how long. By coincidence, September 2018 starts on a Saturday and ends on a Sunday so conveniently I can just take the exact month. But which parks to visit? I've been to most of the parks in the Eastern side of the US. September would be too hot and too much in the thick of hurricane season to head to Florida, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, or Samoa, and too cold for Alaska. That left the roughly half of the parks (30 or so) in the Western US that I haven't visited.
Colorado and Utah have a lot of great parks set relatively close together. I figure that a trip or three directly there by plane will work really well, so for this trip I plan to do some of the more spread-out parks. I will have the car and I don't have to deal with airports, and it's easier to go some distance. With a choice between north and south I chose north. I also decided to do this as a "tasting" tour; many of the parks I could stay in for days but for this trip I'm just going to visit for a day or two and then move on with hopes to return and do a bit more depth. It will mean a lot of driving, but it also means a lot of variety.
The first stop is going to be Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. Google says that's about 25 hours from home, so 2.5 days of driving for someone without kids. My initial plan was to spend the first night in South Bend but the Notre Dame - Michigan game altered my plans. Luckily you can still get a place to stay an hour away from the stadium.
I will go right past Cuyahoga National Park on the way, but I've hiked there twice so I'm giving it a pass this time. I will also pass fairly close to Voyageurs in Minnesota, but that park is best done with a boat so it is off the list for this trip.
From Roosevelt it's south to Badlands and Wind Cave in South Dakota. This is an area where I could easily spend a week; there are a lot of things to see in this area beyond the parks including Mount Rushmore, the Minuteman Missile Museum, Custer State Park, Jewel Cave, and Devil's Tower. However, for this trip I'm limiting it to a couple days, with the option (hope) to return. I'll see some of the sites but there will be plenty to come back for.
Next I will head west across Wyoming to the Grand Tetons and then north to Yellowstone for a couple days before trekking to Glacier in Montana. After a few hikes there I'll start west again and meet Amanda in Seattle and hike Olympic National Park. Several of the most popular hikes in Olympic are closed; some for road repair, while the others are for goat relocation. Yup, they're moving the goats. We'll be a bit further off the beaten path there.
After this the trip gets a bit hazy. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively because the Northwest is on fire so I will keep checking the status as I travel. It is actually getting better these days so possibly the North Cascades or Mount Ranier, then hopefully Crater Lake, Redwoods, and Lassen Volcanic will be next. The last one is currently just east of the biggest fire in California history so that seems unlikely. I have backup plans though; I'll can start heading back east at that point. Perhaps Great Basin in Nevada, or something in Colorado or Utah. A few days of driving East and I'm back home again.
Of course it's all subject to change if things go sideways for any reason. There's even an interactive roadtrip map online if you want to play with your own trip. I discovered these in the last days before leaving...
I should also mention this awesome site with the maps for every national park collected up in once place. Sure, it's not as visceral as the pile of paper maps in my drawer, but until you can get to a park office and get a real map this works pretty well.
I also use a couple phone apps: Maplets and Alltrails . They have different ways to help keep you from getting lost. The former has many park maps available, and will show you your location on the map. The latter is great for finding hikes, providing driving directions to the trailheads, and having topo maps downloaded.