How do I take a vacation out West to see the National Parks?

Hopefully after reading our blog posts, you are asking yourself the question above. If so, I have a couple of suggestions assuming you don’t have 2 months and/or your own camper to devote to the trip.

The first suggestion is this….rent a motorhome. One of the things that Missy and I were continually surprised by was the number of rental motorhomes we saw at campgrounds near, and in, the National Parks. If you have never thought about renting an RV here are a couple of facts to consider:

1. All of the National Parks out west have parking and accommodations for RV’s. We saw hundreds of Motorhomes driving around inside Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Arches, Mt. Rushmore and all the other parks we went to. Several times we took our camper into one of the parks. When planning our trip, I had no idea if the National Parks would have someplace for me to park my truck with the camper attached to the back. It was not a problem as all of the National Parks are used to dealing with people with Motorhomes and campers.
2. The larger RV rental places allow you to pick-up your Motorhome and drop if off in a different city. So if you wanted to see Yellowstone and then go down to the Grand Canyon you could pick-up you RV in Boise and return it in Phoenix.
3. Remember when considering the cost of renting an RV, you are not only renting a vehicle, but also a Hotel room and a kitchen. It is very easy to throw together a quick breakfast and lunch in the Motorhome. This saves a lot of money on food since you don’t have to eat out every meal. Plus since the dining options inside the National Parks are very expensive, being able to hop in the RV, drive to a scenic spot, and make your own hot lunch is very handy.
4. Camping in the National Parks is cheap. $25.00 per night seems to be the current going rate. Even if you want the amenities of a private campground (swimming pool, playground, camp store, restaurant) it is still usually less than $40.00 per night.
   

My next suggestion is to plan what you want to do in the parks beforehand. If you want to go fishing in Yellowstone, you can buy a license and rent fishing equipment ahead of time. If you want to go rafting in Yosemite, you can arrange that before arriving. Bike rentals, overnight hiking permits, tour groups, and more are easier to arrange before you leave than while at the parks.

And lastly, unless you are going to use your own RV, fly out west…don’t drive. The drive through the Plains States is long and horrible. There is just nothing to see in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. Save yourself the pain and fly to the biggest city near the Park you want to visit and pick-up your RV there.

The names of the Large RV rental companies that I am familiar with are the following (from largest to smaller) http://www.cruiseamerica.com/ http://www.roadbearrv.com/ http://www.apollorv.com/ www.campingworld.com/rvrentals/ http://www.elmonterv.com/ There are other of course, but these are the ones we saw most often while traveling.

You are welcome to post a question if there is anything you want more information on.

Day # 62 - Home

We left Casey, IL this morning after spending more time than usual doing our pack-up routine. Since we will be home this afternoon, I took the time to dump all the tanks and put everything away in a permanent location. Missy took the time to do all the little stuff inside like clearing all the bath stuff out of the tub and gathering all the coats and towels that get hung on various hooks. It was a little weird thinking that we won’t be sleeping in the camper tonight. After 61 days, it will be an adjustment to go back to our normal bed.

The drive home was easy. It only took about 4.5 hours. We had to go around Indy and Cincy, but after San Francisco and Vegas, these cities didn’t even warrant taking my headphones off.

We arrived home around 4:00 EST. The first thing I thought when we walked into the house is…Man, this place is BIG. After being in a 23’ x 8’ box for the last 2 months, the house feels HUGE. Funny how your perception changes based on your surroundings. Missy and I had been talking before we left about the time when we would move to a bigger house because our place is too small for a family of 5. That seems a little silly right now after the summer we have had.

Sarah and Abby are certainly glad to be back. They went and hugged every stuffed animal in their room as soon as we got home. Then they came down stairs and asked to each get on one of our two computers. We bought a laptop to take on the trip with us. But since the laptop was our lifeline to our bank accounts and paying bills (not to mention this blog) we decided early on that we would not allow the kids to use it during our trip. So after being denied nickjr.com and Barbie.com for 2 months, they were both very happy to play on the computers for a couple of hours. AJ upon getting home, promptly got every toy truck, train and car out of the bins in the family room and lined them all up on the dining room table so he could play with them all at once. He kept bringing Missy and me a toy and saying “dis AJ’s” and smiling and running off to play with the newly re-discovered toy.

This kind of brings me to the end of our daily updates. We spent 2 months traveling in our trailer this summer and camped in 18 states. And I think the question most people would ask is…Would you do it again? And the answer is…absolutely. We had a wonderful time. I might do things slightly different next time. We learned a lot about how to plan and manage a long trip. But yes…we would absolutely do it again.

Thanks for reading.

Day # 61 - Casey, IL

We camped last night just east of Kansas City (on the Missouri side of the city) and yesterday had been a long day. I didn’t want to push as hard today as I did yesterday. Still, as the hours rolled away, I found myself looking at the GPS more and more often. This morning, I had entered in our home address as the “destination” into the GPS. Hallie the GPS (go back a couple of days if you want to know why the GPS is named “Hallie”) displayed the estimated time we would arrive home. At 5:30 tonight Hallie said we only had 4 more hours until we were home. It was tempting. But I was tired, and after 2 months of traveling, what is setting up the camper one more time going to hurt. Besides, the girls were getting antsy and I knew the KOA in Casey, IL had a nice campground from the pictures I had looked at last night. (I checked on a couple of campgrounds on the route home last night).

So when the exit for Casey, IL came up, Missy and I decided to go ahead and stay the night. Besides, I knew we had enough VIP credits left over from all of our KOA stays this summer that it wouldn’t cost much. I was right. Total cost to camp tonight with taxes and fees = $11.86.
As we have come to expect during the work week, the campground was almost empty. When planning this trip, all of the information we read in books and on the web told us we had to make reservations every night we wanted to stay in a campground because they all get full during the summer. This has simply not been true. In fact, even on the weekends, most of the campgrounds we have stayed at have had sites available. The exceptions were the Oregon State campgrounds and the San Francisco KOA campground over 4th of July weekend. Other than that, we could have easily not made a single campground reservation this summer.

We requested a site near the playground and got one right across the gravel drive. The kids played while Missy did our nightly set-up. While both of us are sick of having to set the camper up, we have gotten pretty efficient at it. I can have all the outside stuff done in under 30 minutes and Missy can have the inside done in about 20 minutes.

After we set-up, we decided to go back into Casey for dinner. We purposely didn’t re-stock on groceries knowing that we would be home tomorrow, but we ran one day short on dinner foods. So, we decided to go to the local Dairy Queen for dinner. Hamburgers and Onion rings for Missy and me and Hotdogs and chicken fingers for the kids. And of course, ice cream for dessert. Our conversation focused mostly on what everyone will do first when we get home. Sarah wants to hug all of her stuffed animals that she hasn’t seen in 2-months. Abby wants to play on the computer. AJ does not really understand that being home means no more camper for a while. Missy wants to take a long shower in a “real” sized tub. I want to relax on the couch without someone asking me to move or crawling on top of me. But everyone is excited about getting home

After dinner, we got the kids to bed and were in bed ourselves shortly after. It does feel weird to be going home tomorrow.

Day # 60 - Oak Grove, MO

The campground we stayed at last night has a daily all you can eat pancake breakfast. It was faster than what we could make (and I didn’t have to make a mess in the camper), and cheaper and much tastier than McDonalds. Actually, it was very good. The owner’s wife was the cook. She also made a pretty good batch of biscuits and gravy. With our tummies full, we loaded up and headed out. We have a very long day ahead of us driving through nothing but cow pastures and corn fields. Too bad you can’t fly over Kansas with your camper in tow! We were doing our best to keep moving so we could actually get out of Kansas today. How depressing would it be to wake up in Kansas, drive all day and have to go to sleep in Kansas! We made it across the Missouri border and stayed in Oak Grove, just outside of Kansas City. We stayed in – you guessed it a KOA Kampground. This one actually sold us some propane and gave us a sight close to the wi-fi tower so we could actually use the service – go figure! The kids played at the playground 3 sights away while Tony and I got set up. We threw burgers and dogs on the grill and had a quick dinner before getting ready for bed. We want to try to get a reasonable start tomorrow to see how far we can get. We will probably have to stop one more night, but we’ll see how it goes.

Day # 59 - Goodland, KS

Unfortunately, it’s time to go home. I can’t believe how fast this trip has flown by! It seems like the planning and preparation took forever and now it’s over. What great memories we’ve made together. It’s weird to think that we’ll be home in just a few days.

Because we extended our trip, we needed to get Sarah’s medicine refilled. The problem is that because ADD medications are controlled substances you have to jump through a few hoops to get them filled. In our case, we had to have Alice pick up the actual scripts and Fed-Ex them to us in Colorado. Since we knew we were going to be waiting around until 10:30 for Fed-Ex to arrive, we were in no real hurry to get packed up and on our way. We made a quick bite for breakfast and got things squared away.

We were pretty glad to be leaving this particular campground. Woodall’s (the campground Bible so to speak) rated this campground a 5 diamond, its highest rating. I don’t know who was doing the reviewing or what their pay-off was, but this facility certainly was NOT a 5 diamond! The wi-fi was all but unusable, the cable was unwatchable and the landscaping left much to be desired. Throw in the highway noise and the train that rolled through at all hours of the day and night and you start to get the picture. Since we were only staying a few nights and once again using the camper as a hotel room, we decided just to make the best of it. The straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak though happened when Tony tried to get our propane tanks refilled this morning. Selling propane is a pretty standard service in most campgrounds. Most places even advertise it as one of their amenities. So when Tony went to the office around 8:30 a.m. to inquire about getting propane, he was surprised at the reaction he received. The woman in the office told him that there was no one else there that could help him. She said there wouldn’t be anyone else on until 11:30. Tony left dismayed and puzzled. He ran into another KOA worker cleaning the pool. Tony asked if he knew if someone could help him with propane. The man replied that he was finished cleaning the pool and he could probably do it. He told Tony to head over to the tank and that he would be right there. A few minutes later, the man arrived and informed Tony that the woman in the office told him that they were far too busy for him to sell propane and that Tony would have to wait until 11:30. Never mind that the man was standing right there. Never mind that a customer was asking you to provide one of the basic services you advertise. Never mind that you just told a customer that you were too busy doing busy work to actually help them. Talk about poor customer service! We will take great pleasure filling out the camper satisfaction survey and sending it off to corporate along with a letter to KOA corporate, Woodall’s directory, The Good Sam Club and anyone else we can think of that might be interested in the poor experience we had at the Colorado Springs KOA.

Once we had prescriptions in hand we headed for the nearest Walgreens and then we were on our way. It had gotten pretty late in the day and by the time 4:30 rolled around we were only to Goodland, Kansas. Because Kansas is an incredibly long and empty (read boring) state we knew if we didn’t stop in Goodland, we’d have to drive several more hours to make it to Salina and we didn’t really feel up to that. We stopped at a small but very nice KOA in town. Because we arrived at the campground earlier than normal, we had plenty of time to enjoy some of the campground’s amenities. The kids played on the playground while Tony and I set up. Abby had been begging us to play putt-putt and there was a small course in the campground. We played perhaps the longest round of 9 holes of putt-putt ever, but the kids had a good time. The owner even turned on the windmills to make it “more challenging.” I took the opportunity to get a little laundry done so that we won’t have so much to do when we get home. Tony fired up the oven and we had our famous camping pizza for dinner. We had a relaxing day even though we didn’t make much progress home.

Day # 58 - Flying W Ranch

We woke up this morning and were unsure of how we exactly wanted to spend our last day. We made reservations when we got into town to attend a chuck wagon dinner this evening, but still couldn’t decide what to do in the mean time. We had originally wanted to take the cog railway to the top of Pikes Peak. Given Tony and AJ’s breathing issues recently we didn’t think it was wise to drag them 14,110 feet in the air. We had also wanted to visit the Garden of the Gods, but once again we were feeling a little jaded about red rock formations having just come from Sedona, AZ and Moab, Utah. We had read up on the Garden’s visitor’s center and decided that we would start there.

The visitor’s center is really nice. They have an all new 15 minute long movie about the formation of the rocks in the park and also about the benefactor that left the land to the city of Colorado Springs. I didn’t realize that the Garden of the Gods is a city park when we planned this trip. In addition, admission to the park and visitor’s center is free. Apparently, it was a condition of the Perkin’s family when they donated the land to the city that it should remain a free park. We all know I think free is good! The visitor’s center was full of fascinating displays and housed a gift shop and snack bar. The kids loved the display of animal pelts. A volunteer had several pelts and skulls from various animals indigenous to the park. We located the penny press and smashed our pennies. I only have 1 spot left in my penny passport so it’s a good thing we are going home soon. We picked up a map of the park. The park itself is a lot smaller than we thought at a little over 480 acres. Compared to the National Parks we have been in, this park felt very small. Because of its size, the park is very accessible to hikers.

There are several trails to choose from to view the rock formations. To get away from the mid-day crowd we opted for a moderate hike instead of one of the paved trails. The kids had a great time stomping around in the rocks once again. Another great feature about the size of the park is that you can explore a little bit off the beaten path without the worry of getting lost and having to have park rangers come out and rescue you. We were able to putter around and enjoy the views. The view of Pike’s Peak was pretty awesome. We also got an excellent view of the Sleeping Giant formation.

After our hike, we went back to the camper to get ready for the chuck wagon dinner. Early in planning our trip we had decided that we wanted to go to a chuck wagon dinner. When I was a kid, my family went to one during a visit to Colorado. I vividly remember it to this day. I wasn’t real fond of the food, but I was enthralled by the music of the Lazy B Wranglers. I guess it was part nostalgia that prompted me to want to take the family while we were there. In researching the many options available I came across the website for the Flying W Ranch. The ranch is an actual working cattle ranch that has run a dinner and a western show for over 50 years. In addition to dinner and a show, the ranch has a western town that guests can tour prior to dinner. There are several buildings that house knick knack shops as well as artifacts on display. The kids’ favorites were touring the jail cells built in the late 1800’s and watching the blacksmith shoeing a horse. We also liked the one room school house. I enjoyed reading the rules of the school marm and learning that a woman could no longer teach once she was married as it was considered poor taste to consort with men- hmmm there’s a thought.

Before long, the dinner bell rang calling us to dinner. We had choice seats at a picnic table near the stage. Dinner was served buffet style and we were called early to get our grub. The food was actually pretty good – BBQ beef or chicken, beans, homemade applesauce and biscuits, baked potatoes and spice cake. There was coffee, iced tea and lemonade to drink. Abby and AJ didn’t eat much, but we were really proud of picky Sarah for trying and eating a lot of her dinner. One of the upsides to choosing the Flying W was their pricing. Many of the dinners we looked at charged full price for kids, or charged a set amount for all kids regardless of their age. At the Flying W, Sarah was half price and Abby and AJ were only $5 each. A good deal considering they pretty much just ate cake and applesauce! After dinner, the hour long show began. The wrangler band was very good, especially the fiddle player. The jokes were lame as expected and everyone had fun singing along to cowboy favorites. I was waiting for my favorite song Riders (give me a mountain tempo in A minor….) and wasn’t disappointed! After the show we made our way back to our car. Abby and AJ were starving so we tossed them some goldfish crackers. It was a great evening and a fun way to end our trip.

Day # 57 - Manitou Springs, CO

We had trouble deciding where to go today. There are numerous attractions and landmarks here in the Colorado Springs area. We decided we would start with the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. The cliff dwellings are authentic Anasazi Indian cliff dwellings built over 700 years ago. They are similar to the dwellings we saw at Montezuma’s Castle in Arizona, but they are much cooler because you can actually walk around and go inside them. It was extremely fascinating to walk through the structures and envision how these peoples must have lived. The kids enjoyed climbing up the ladders and squeezing themselves through the small openings. We have long ago established that I am a complete geek about these kinds of places so I was totally in my element, and my husband and the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves too.

As we were exploring the sight, we discovered that during the summer months there are Indian dance exhibitions. As luck would have it the first one of the day was starting in 15 minutes. We made our way down to the small amphitheater area to watch. There was a single drummer and two dancers. The drummer explained some of the traditions surrounding the dances and the costumes. The dancers were very good. Everyone sat mesmerized. Our favorite dance was the hoop dance. The traditional hoop dance taught balance and agility. It was impressive to see the movements he could make with 5 hoops. I think I got winded just watching him. For the final dance, all of the kids got to join in on a friendship dance. Sarah and Abby had a lot of fun. We wouldn’t turn AJ loose on the unsuspecting dancers and he wasn’t very happy with us. Fortunately, he doesn’t hold a grudge very long.

After the dancing, we finished looking at the cliff dwellings and then headed over to the Anasazi museum. The museum is housed in a 3-story pueblo. The original 6 rooms were built in 1898. They have expanded and modernized the building several times, but it is an impressive replica. We enjoyed looking around and locating the smashed penny machine so we could fill our passports. We headed back to the car for change. While I took the kids back to smash our pennies, Tony had a look around the tables of t-shirts they had set up on the upper level. He found a great deal on some kids-sized glow in the dark t-shirts. Abby couldn’t wait to wear her new “glow-up” shirt.

We were staring to get hungry and went in search of lunch. We decided to head up the road a few miles into historic Manitou Springs. Manitou Springs sits at the base of Pike’s Peak (the tallest mountain peak in the continental US). It is a very quaint little town. We found a public lot and paid our 5 bucks and went in search of a good place to have lunch. Tony really wanted BBQ, but the place was packed so we headed down the block to the Historic Stage Coach Inn. We had a very enjoyable lunch. We had great service, good food and touristy prices. After lunch, we headed back out into town to check out the sights and walk the streets. Once again the weather was beautiful and we could actually enjoy taking a stroll without feeling like we were going to melt. The main attractions in Manitou are the mineral springs. There are 11 named mineral springs in the city. This area was once considered sacred by the neighboring Native American Tribes. The springs were thought to have healing properties. Today, the springs flow and freely for public consumption. Each one has its own design. The kids were really excited about drinking the water until they tasted it. The high mineral content gives the water a metallic taste in my opinion, but many of the people we saw liked it. What was also interesting is the each springs water had a unique flavor. Tony tried 4 different springs and declared that the Shoshone Spring tasted the best. As we strolled along, we spotted a penny arcade with a huge section of mechanical kiddie rides. Of course the rides were all a quarter (inflation?) but the kids had a blast trying them all out. A half hour and 5 dollars later we finally managed to tear them away. At the far end of town, we spotted a small city park with a playground. It had some unique play equipment that I’d never seen before. AJ’s favorite was a merry-go round like wheel that you could lay down on and be spun. He squealed with delight and rode that thing over and over again. The girls were partial to the giant swings that looked like a cross between Frisbees and UFOs. We coaxed the kids away from the playground and strolled back down the other side of the street towards our car.

We headed back to the campground for dinner and a relaxing evening, or so we thought. We had a terrible wind storm that woke the kids up and made our two drama queens cry. In all honesty, it was a little unsettling. The wind gusts were pretty big and our little canvas sided camper was rocking and rolling pretty good. I know that Tony was thinking of all the wood, metal and screws he replaced (and the parts he didn’t) as the camper was being shook by the storm. In the end the camper held fast and the storm passed without major incident.