Road Trips and an Invitation

[lyda222]

 First, I need to kickstart my career by 2018.  I just got an invite to be one of the GoHs for Minicon next year. It would be nice if I had something to promote by then

Comments

[naomikritzer]

My family did a road trip out west when I was a teenager. The bits I remember

[naomikritzer]

Oh, also, Mount Rushmore.

We decided to stop at Mount Rushmore because we were going to be really close to it. One of my parents was all "why go, it's just giant heads" and the other parent was "but we're going to be RIGHT THERE, we have to stop!" I can't remember which was on which side. My siblings and I sided with the "we might as well see it!" parent so we went.

We drove into the parking lot, which was full of very large campers. As we parked, some lady lost control over her tiny poodles and went shrieking through the parking lot after them. We got out, looked up, said "huh. Big heads!" and then got back in the car and headed back out.

That was really all we felt we needed from Mount Rushmore. On the scale of National Parks, it's up a bit from Plymouth Rock but definitely down at that end.

(Plymouth Rock and Four Corners are at one end. Up a bit from there is Mount Rushmore. I'm pretty sure the Grand Canyon is at the other end, but I've never actually seen the Grand Canyon, so...)

[lyda222]

I've been to Wall Drugs and Mt. Rushmore when we went that way with Karl from Czech. I actually enjoyed stopping at all the kitschy places and I think Mason will, too.

I read about Going to the Sun Road. I don't know if we'll get that far, since, if we're going to meet-up with Shawn in Boise, we'll have a lot of Idaho to get through. But, right now the itinerary is wide-open which is SO MUCH FUN. :-)

[oracne]

That sounds AWESOME.

[lyda222]

Doesn't it??? I have to admit to loving reading through travel guides in general, so for me this is ALREADY fun.

[offcntr]

I've driven from La Crosse to Oregon three times now, with a fourth planned this summer. Sadly, under time constraints every time, once driving a 16-foot Uhaul . That said, I can second the Badlands/Black Hills. Very cool topography. If you're driving I90, I'd divert to Devil's Tower as well. And actually, I kinda enjoyed Mt. Rushmore. Never made it to Yellowstone Park, though I did walk along the river one evening, collected some clay and a few flints. Had to bypass Glacier as they'd had two feet of snow the 1st of September.

Also? Montana is huge. Took forever to drive across...

[lyda222]

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that Montana isn't going to be easy to see ALL of. But, we have a lot of guidebooks so maybe we'll still find something fun to see in what we will be traveling through--as I was telling Naomi, we're going to have to veer south so we'll probably miss Glacier National Park and we're going to have to find interesting things to see in Idaho, too. (More guidebooks, yay!)

Still, Mason is a great traveler. We were talking about this on the way to school this morning, and I think we could have a good time just driving through all the boring parts. :-)

[offcntr]

Well, there's Craters of the Moon in Idaho, if you're into black, gloppy-looking lava fields. Not my favorite park. Also? Parts of western Montana are made of giant, pink granite boulders, shading up to mountain size. Very cool.

[smadronia]

Wheat Montana. IF you have a weakness for pastries or bread, this is the best place to stop. I've only ever been to the Three Forks one, but oh man, it is so good. I drug pastries from there to Portland, Oregon for the family, they're that good.

[bibliofile]

Road trips can be so great. Such a good idea!

In Wyoming, there's also the Tetons, including a national park. Mountains are cool! I also remember shopping for Western clothes (I bought a shirt with snaps! back in the pre-Internet days).