Nine of the Junior Ranger swearing in ceremonies of the total 17 on the trip.
What follows is a travelogue of the trip out west I took with my twelve year old son and thirteen year old daughter. We drove over 4,000 miles, towing a travel trailer, for 16 days, crossing eight states, and visiting 18 National Park Service Sites. I hope you’ll join me on this look back at our ride out west.
We began on May 30, overnighting just west of St. Louis and visiting in Kansas City the following day with my friend and fellow blogger Jawanda Mast and her daughter Rachel. Rachel had just graduated high school and she and Juliet became fast friends. Jawanda’s hospitality was the perfect send off as we began our trek across Nebraska.
Our first NPS site was Homestead National Monument. This site commemorates the first of what would become millions of acres granted to those who paid an $18 filing fee, established a residence, farmed the land, and lived there for five years. Homesteaders received 160 acres and at nearly every other site we would visit on our trip, there would be a reference to a homestead.
En route to our first campsite at Chimney Rock, we visited the Nebraska state capitol in Lincoln. We try to visit state capitals when they are along the way, but I made a point to visit Lincoln to see the statue carved by the same sculptor for the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. Seeing the only unicameral legislature in the nation also appealed to this political geek.
After visiting Chimney Rock National Historic Site, where visitors were cautioned to stay on the paths due to an abundance of rattle snakes, we visited Scotts Bluff National Monument. These rock promontories towering over the otherwise incredibly flat prairie land of Nebraska served as landmarks for settlers along the Oregon and Mormon Trails as well as for the Pony Express.
Just an hour north, we traveled across almost uninhabited ranch and farm land to visit the Agate Fossil Beds NHS. A rancher found a bed of prehistoric mammal fossils which the site preserves, but only after the rancher’s son purposefully sought a homestead to protect his father’s discovery from interloping researchers and bone collectors. The rancher had a special relationship with the local Native Americans, befriending the Lakota warrior Red Cloud.
Leaving Nebraska, our first stop in Wyoming was at Fort Laramie NHS. The Fort had served multiple purposes over its decades of use: a fur trading spot, the westernmost fort to protect settlers, the site of many treaties, the most significant of which was celebrating its 150th Anniversary and was where the Native American tribes agreed to the reservation system.
The drive to our campground outside of Cody, Wyoming and just east of Yellowstone, was visually stunning (particularly in comparison to Nebraska). We saw many pronghorn, including two pronghorn fawns. The drive through the Wind River Canyon was an unexpected marvel.
We camped literally on the banks of the Shoshone River. Our entrance into Yellowstone National Park on Day 6 would be tough to beat: while taking a picture at the park sign, a female mule deer came out from the treeline and before we reached the first visitor center, we had seen two grizzly bears and a bison.
For those who have been, they know the remainder of this post could be devoted to all the diverse sites in the park: the geysers and hot springs, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Hayden and Lamar Valleys brimming with herds of bison, elk, and the occasional pack of wolves, and Mammoth Hot Springs. We saw all of these over the course of two days and there was still so much more to see.
Just south, we learned how John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had surreptitiously bought over 30,000 acres under the premise of developing them, only to gift them to the Park Service to further extend the Grand Teton National Park. In appreciation, the NPS designated the road connecting Grand Teton with Yellowstone a memorial parkway in Rockefeller’s honor. We visited Mormon Row, another homestead, where the iconic barns seem as though they were built to complement the jutting peaks of the Grand Teton range.
Somewhat regretfully leaving our campsite in the Shoshone National Forest, we began our return trip east on Day 9. Our first stop was Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. While we didn’t see any actual bighorn sheep, we did see a good number of the wild horses in the park. And, most excitingly, as we rounded a bend, we came upon a juvenile bear cub. For the only time on the trip, I removed the safety clip on our bear spray as we rushed to take photos, just in case mama bear was around.
We broke camp the next morning and drove to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. Originally designated “Custer’s Last Stand” and probably still best known by that moniker, by an act of President GHW Bush the site was renamed to more fairly reflect that both U.S. Cavalry and Native American Tribes fought at the site. It was the last and most surprising victory of the tribes in the War for the West.
Our last stop of the day was Devils Tower National Monument in eastern Wyoming. It holds the distinction of being the first National Monument, but is probably best known for being featured in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” which the KOA campground where we stayed shows nightly.
By Day 11, we had left Wyoming and entered the Black Hills of South Dakota. We started with Jewel Cave NM, the first national monument to preserve a cave and the third longest cave system in the world. It gets its name from the sparkling rock features and it has incredibly huge rooms while also going 800 feet below the surface at its lowest discovered point.
We ended the day at Mount Rushmore NM. I must confess to some ambivalence about this site. The Black Hills were part of the land that Fort Laramie Treaty promised to the Sioux, until gold was found (which is why Custer was fighting off the Native Americans at Little Bighorn). Further, to the park’s credit, its film acknowledges that some wonder if a man-made sculpture could improve upon the beauty of the Black Hills in its natural state. Nevertheless, the artistry and technical skill to render such lifelike versions of the presidents on such a huge scale is impressive.
The following day, we were onto Wind Cave NP, the first National Park to preserve a cave, which is the sixth longest in the world. Unlike Jewel Cave, with its cavernous rooms, Wind Cave is a “maze cave” with narrow passages. It also contains 95% of the world’s known “boxwork” formations, with Jewel Cave having only a little and a cave in the Ukraine having the remainder. Topside, it also has an impressive herd of bison that roam amongst the prairie dog towns, which we saw a coyote on the ridge hunting … the prairie dogs, not the bison.
Day 13, we arrived at what would become for James his favorite park: Badlands NP (depending on the day–it runs neck-and-neck with Yellowstone by his rankings). In addition to the stunning vistas, rock formations, bison herd, prairie dogs, pronghorn, and BIGHORN SHEEP, what sealed it for James was that the rule is “free hike,” meaning you can hike anywhere.
We chose to hike the “Notch Trail.” This is the most popular hike, but that is partly because of its peril. After climbing a log ladder up a sheer face of the hills, you hug the wall along a cliff’s edge with a huge drop to the valley floor. But then it opens up to a second-level valley to the notch between two hills. Both kids completed it confidently and enjoyed the challenge.
We spent two days at the Badlands, partly so as to visit the last remaining NPS site in South Dakota: Minuteman Missile NHS. Now, granted, after enjoying the beauty and glory of creation and all the wildlife, it was a jarring shift to educate the kids about Mutually Assured Destruction and the U.S.’s nuclear triad strategy. Nevertheless, having been raised in the Cold War, it was surprising to be able to visit a silo where a nuclear ICBM was housed for years.
Heading into the homestretch, we visited two protected rivers, another state capitol, and a presidential historic site.
The first was the Niobrara National Scenic River, which included a Wildlife Preserve and a state park. This being Day 13 of the trip, we decided to reenter civilization and take in a movie, which the kids thoroughly enjoyed (but I think any electronically displayed moving images would have received rave reviews from them).
The Missouri National Recreation River preserves two sections of the Missouri River, the route the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery used as its highway to explore the West. We hiked to the top of Spirit Mound, just as the Corps did.
Upon entering Iowa, our route took us through Des Moines, so we visited the state capitol there.
Finally, our last NPS site was the Herbert Hoover NHS. Hoover is largely remembered and condemned for presiding over the Great Depression. However, this slights a man born into a two room cottage–the then-equivalent of a log cabin–who was orphaned by age 9, but attended Stanford, became wealthy before age 40, and then began a five-decade vocation of public service beginning with managing the logistics to deliver aid to Europe during World War I that saved millions of lives.
As the odometer shows, we covered thousands of miles. As the pictures of the flat horizons show, much of those miles were mind-numbingly boring. But, fortunately, the destinations along the way made it worth it to the kids and to me and, if anything, we wish that it didn’t have to end.
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