Roadtripping Across the US pt. 2

The Adventure Begins...

June 24th, 2021, DEPARTURE DAY! Up until this very moment, it hadn't quite hit me the extent of the journey I was about to take. I tried not to think too much about it until it was 6 am and I was packing up my car about to drive away. That "Oh shit am I really about to do this" moment. My stomach, filled with butterflies, a mix of anxiety, curiosity, and excitement. I drove to go pick up Syd and Michael and honestly don't even remember driving there because my mind was racing at 100 miles per minute. Luckily, once they joined me and we started our 8-hour drive to Niagara Falls, all the worry went away and I was just filled with excitement.

DAY 1: Niagara Falls & Follansbee West Virginia

After a surprisingly short 8-hour drive and one quick rest-stop break to make our sandwiches, we successfully made it to our first destination, Niagara Falls! We did not stay too long at the Falls because we did still have another 4-hour drive ahead of us to make it to my Cousin's house in West Virginia for the night, but we did really enjoy it. It was nice to get to walk around and stretch our legs out after the ride and actually get to see the falls in person. While I wish there was more to the story, our stop was pretty uneventful, we walked around, admired the falls, and took some quick pictures before heading back to the car to continue our journey. Another 4 hours later and we arrived in West Virginia. Made ourselves some pasta with meatballs and watched a movie before heading to bed for another long day of driving. The first few days of the road trip were our longest driving days, we wanted to get the long driving days out of the way while we were still fresh and energized and not yet worn down from the traveling. Also, we were most excited to explore a lot of destinations that were more West, so we left more time to adventure in the later parts of the trip.

The Roadies Exploring Niagara Falls

DAY 2: Cleveland & Chicago

After resting from the day before, we got up nice and early to start the day with a 2-hour drive to Cleveland. Michael had some old friends just outside of Cleveland that he met up with for lunch while Syd and I ventured right into the heart of the city to see what it was all about. On our way into the city, we stopped at this world-famous candy warehouse and walked around for about an hour before stopping to grab some lunch. We drove back out of the city to pick up Michael and began the drive to Chicago! There wasn't too much to see on the drive to Chicago from Ohio, except we did pass quite a few Amish carriages. We also passed a full-on Amish Backyard party. No joke, about 30 Amish horse-drawn carriages parked outside. Kids playing volleyball, and families gathered around cooking. Every girl and guy in the exact same clothing. Young girls were in a pink dress with a bonnet and young boys had long khakis with a blue button-down and a black hat. And the same dress code applied to the parents. It was the most interesting and odd thing that we experienced that day.

We made it through our first time zone change! Gained an hour right before making it into Chicago for the night. Checked into our hotel which was a short walk away from Millenium Park where we got to see the bean! Took some pictures and made our way to a pizza place for some Chicago deep-dish pizza! Just kidding, we did go to a pizza place but none of us ended up ordering deep-dish, I know, how boring ordering only regular pizza. Regardless it was really good pizza. We also walked about 30 minutes in the rain to try an ice cream shop that had really fancy milkshakes and cookie sandwiches. Then we made it back to our hotel for the night to rest up after our day of exploring.

DAY 3: Night one in South Dakota

Another long travel day ahead, 8 hours to our campsite in Garretson, South Dakota. Nothing much happened during our drive. It was a fairly rainy day, which meant we got no Venmos that day because our message on the back of the car got rained off :( But luckily we had one quick pitstop along the way: the Jolly Green Giant Statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota. We also got to see a little bit of Wisconsin and grabbed some cheese at the gas station (I know that may sound weird and sketchy, but Wisconsin is known for their cheese, so this gas station had quite the selection to choose from surprisingly). We then finally made it to our campsite in Garrettson, Split Rock Park Camp Ground, our first official night of camping.

Honestly, we were very pleasantly surprised by our campground and the little town it was in. It was the cutest town, almost like it was straight out of a small town hallmark movie, all it was missing was snow and Christmas decorations. Right next to our campground was Devil's Gulch Park. Which is apparently famous for the manhunt for outlaw Jesse James where he actually jumped the gulch on his horse to get away. Today there is a little metal bridge that connects the two ledges so we were able to walk over, but that was quite an impressive jump. We didn't know about any of this existing there before we arrived so it was really cool to explore it all and have it right next to our campground. After exploring a bit we set up our tents and then our hammocks to relax and watch the sunset. We really enjoyed our first night in South Dakota, which was surprising because we came into SD with no expectations of what it was going to be like. Easily my favorite campground from the trip.

DAY 4: Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore

We woke up so excited to be making our way to the first big National Park of the trip! I was so excited to see Badlands National Park, it had been on my bucket list for so long that I knew we had to go. We made sure to wake up nice and early to drive 5 hours to the park. Right as we enter the park our eyes are filled with some of the most amazing views. Badlands is like nothing I have ever seen before, the landscape stretches out for miles and had the most beautiful rock formations. Different shades of reds, yellows, and oranges stacked in layers within the rocks make some of the coolest pictures I have ever taken. We lucked out and just avoided an incoming storm (which I will show in a picture below), we watched it travel across the horizon and it didn't actually hit until we were finally leaving the park. It was a surreal experience to look out across badlands, only to turn around and see a full thunderstorm with lightning and everything just hanging out behind you almost like it was taking in the view as well.

On our way out we made friends with a few mountain goats and what seemed like hundreds of prairie dogs, then made our way to Mt. Rushmore. We waited in line for about 20 minutes to get into the parking lot and excitedly walked down the lines of flags and decorations to Mount Rushmore. Honestly, it was very cool to see, much smaller than I expected, but definitely interesting. But we stayed for maybe a max of 7-10 minutes, got a few pictures, and continued on our way. My favorite part of Mount Rushmore was the little tourist town where it was located. We had some really good pizza and got to relax a bit before finding our way to our KOA campsite for the night.

DAY 5: Boulder & Golden Colorado

Finally making our way into Colorado! we had a decent amount of driving to do that morning leaving South Dakota. We had to drive down through Nebraska, where we had a quick pit stop at Carhenge, a life-sized sculpture of old junk cars piled up to re-create the look of Stonehenge. Honestly, after driving through Nebraska and seeing nothing for miles, I thought Carhenge was a cool little pitstop. We took a few photos and continued on, stopped on the side of the road to take a picture with the state sign for Wyoming as we crossed the border, and then we finally made it to Colorado! Slowly we could see the mountains start to appear on the horizon and, while we loved the journey so far, we were very excited to be leaving the corn states and heading into the mountains of Colorado. Our first stop was Golden Colorado, right outside of Denver, the cutest little town I have ever been to. For those who do not know, I collect license plates, and my parents had recommended we stop in Golden because there was an antique shop that had hundreds of plates, and they were correct. Let's just say I spent a little too much money at that antique shop and I will be returning...

After exploring Golden we headed to Boulder Colorado, where we would be staying the night with one of Syd's family friends. After getting some really good tacos and burritos, we made the impulse decision to go on a hike at Boulder Mountain Park. This would have been smart to consider before we stuffed our faces with Mexican food, but regardless it was an amazing hike. I think we ended up hiking about 5 miles and got to the peak of our trail right before sunset so we could watch it set over Boulder. It was so cool to look down over the city from the top of the mountain. We trekked back down to head to the house for the night where we were very excited to shower and finally get to do some laundry after a few nights of camping, the perfect way to end the night.

DAY 6: Rocky Moutain National Park

The original plan we had for day 6 was to spend the day in Rocky Mountain National Park exploring. Unfortunately, we hadn't realized that because of Covid regulations, to enter the park you had to have booked a ticket for the day you planned to visit in advance so they could regulate the number of people in the park. So, we frantically went to the website to attempt to buy last-minute tickets, but as I had suspected, it was already sold out for the day. We still made the drive to the park just to see what we could find regardless because we had no other plans and were up for a random adventure. When we got there we found out there were small areas of the park that we were able to get into without the pass. We ended up dropping off Michael at one of the more advanced hiking trails that were accessible from outside the park so he could explore, while Syd and I went into town to do some shopping. Estes Park is the name of the town right next to Rocky Mountain National Park that had all the shops and touristy areas associated with the park. It was a super cute town and it was nice to have a day to just relax and get some good food and shop without having a tight time schedule to keep up with. After relaxing for the day, we went to go grab Michael at the bottom of the hiking trail and head back to Denver Colorado where we were staying the night with my friend Brady. We got to Brady's house and his parents were so excited to host us for the night, they cooked us a nice homemade dinner and we all hung out around the firepit until we decided to head in for bed. This entire day was a much-needed break from the craziness of our travels so far and the best way to recharge before heading into the craziest part of the trip: Utah.

Thanks for following along on my journey! I decided to break this into 4 parts, this being the second, Utah will be part 3 just because of how much we did in Utah it made the most sense for it to be its own entry, and the final part will be the last days of the trip and my ending thoughts :) Stay tuned for Part 3 coming soon!