Spring Break Special: 8 States in 6 Days

Today I have a guest post from Jason Bean. Jason and his family took a road trip during Spring Break, covering 8 states in 6 days. When I heard about it, I thought he was nuts – so I encouraged him to write about it. Whether he’s nuts or not you can decide, but it does sound like he and the family had a great time!

—

This year for Spring Break we decided to do a little road trip to the Kansas City area to visit some friends. The drive from our home in Indianapolis isn’t that bad. We decided that along the way we would stop in St. Louis to see the St. Louis Gateway Arch and visit the St. Louis Zoo, which has free admission.

The trip then started to expand into a big zoo tour! We thought we’d hit the Kansas City Zoo and towards the middle of the week even head up to Omaha to visit the Henry Doorly Zoo, which I’d heard lots of great reviews from different people.

As I started spending more time looking at Google Maps and planning the best course of our road trip, I begin to get excited about visiting states I’d never driven through or visited before and I began to expand my sites on other places of interest in states further away.

It wasn’t long before I realized that if we were going to drive to Omaha, it might be cool to keep heading north and hit Minnesota and South Dakota. When I looked at South Dakota I then saw that visiting Mt. Rushmore was within reach. I’ve always wanted to see Mt. Rushmore and now it was a possibility. Plus I had the excitement of having my wife and kids along for the ride too.

We decided to venture out on our first real family road trip. We were both excited and nervous about what our adventures might entail.

Kansas City

We enjoyed our time in Kansas City with friends and were able to take a little bit of a driving tour of various locations in the city and the downtown area. My perspective of Kansas City changed on our trip, it’s not flat and downtown has beautiful architecture and design around all dining and entertainment venues that are available. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art even has the opportunity to let you play a giant game of badminton if you feel you’re sized-up to the challenge.

After our short visit in Kansas City, we started driving north through Iowa and headed to South Dakota. It was a long drive, but it was exciting to be visiting places we’d all never seen and seeing a different part of the country from the windows on our van instead of from 35,000 feet out of an airplane window.

As we were driving across South Dakota I kept seeing these ring-necked pheasants that I’d only seen as a child in pictures in my dad’s office. They were everywhere! What a beautiful bird, and just running wild along the I-90 the entire way to Rapid City. I found out later the ring-necked pheasant is the state bird for South Dakota, so it makes sense.

The meat of our trip out west was to spend as much time as we could in the Black Hills area of South Dakota. The area is home to six national parks and plenty of other great things to see and do while you’re there. We came a little before the normal “season” so there were a number of attractions that were closed, but the ones we came to see were all available and ready to show us their splendor.

Mt. Rushmore

Having only seen pictures of this national treasure (and of course seeing it in the movie National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets), it was very impressive to see this great stone monument and sculpture that was created by Gutzon Borglum and the team of workers. Mount Rushmore was blasted out of raw granite to immortalize and remember four of our greatest United States Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The beauty of the mountain is only made that much more memorable by the natural beauty of the Black Hills that surrounds the area.

Sadly we were unable to drive on Needles Highway, which is another great attraction, but we were able to continue our drive a little further west into Wyoming, with the goal of seeing Devils Tower. When we discovered it was even a little further drive than we thought, we decided we wouldn’t be able to make that trip and see the other destinations we had planned for our trip before we had to head home in the middle of the week. Also on the way to Wyoming in the Black Hills is Jewel Cave, another location we would have loved to explore further but didn’t have the time.

Crazy Horse Monument

A new monument carved into one of the hillsides in the Black Hills is a monument to the North American Indians that called this land home. In the early period of construction, Crazy Horse isn’t scheduled to be completed until 2050. Yet, 40 years from that date you can already see the face and form of the Indian leader. Getting into the park itself for an up-close view is a bit pricey ($10/person), seeing this monument take shape from the beginning with plans to come back upon its completion will be very memorable indeed.

Custer State Park

When we decided to head west, I’d hoped to see lots of wildlife. As our original intention was to visit a number of zoos on our trip, substituting beautiful animals roaming free instead of in a zoo was a great exchange. A trip out west wouldn’t be complete without seeing the American bison (a.k.a. the buffalo). The place to see these animals has to be in Custer State Park, just south east of Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills.

Initially we didn’t see buffalo for quite some time, it wasn’t until we got off the Wildlife Loop road in the park that we really got up close to these amazing animals. Be sure to drive on the off-road paths that are available. This lets you meander and criss-cross back and forth along the countryside to see more wildlife. In addition to buffalo we saw numerous white-tail and mule deer as well as some bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope and even some wild turkeys as well.

Badlands National Park

On our last day of the trip, we started to head back east but we weren’t done seeing the beautiful, natural landscape of Midwest. On our way out, we drove through Badlands National Park. This barren and desolate area has beauty that’s completely different from what we see just a few mile further west in the Black Hills. This area looks more like the shots we saw come back from the Mars rover expedition than what you think you’d see on this planet. It’s truly other-worldly. We didn’t see a lot of different wildlife in this area, but the prairie dogs were everywhere and were very entertaining to watch in a variety of locations.

Although we didn’t stop and see it ourselves, the Minuteman Missile National Historic site is also located in this area. You can do a self-guided tour of one part of the missile site, but in normal season you can also visit the control bunker to see this part of the Cold War history of the United States.

Heading Home

We ended up getting back on the road after all of our adventures much later than we had originally intended. We decided that in order to make up the time we would drive all night to get back home to Indianapolis. I think all-in-all our family had a great time on our trip out West. Looking back my kids say they hated the drive, but they did great. My wife and I commented to each other during our trip that these days taking a road trip like this is much easier than when we were kids. We didn’t have hand held game systems or portable DVD players and that kind of stuff. We just had to sleep or look out the windows the entire trip.

There you have it! Eight States Over Spring Break: Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota.

If you haven’t taken a family road trip, I encourage you to do so. I’m now looking at all the areas within 1200 miles of Indianapolis as potential destinations for future road trips. If I could do this trip again, I’d just give ourselves more time. I hate that we were out that far and weren’t able to see everything we wanted. Oh well, maybe in a couple of years we’ll go back and explore even more of the area.

Photo credits: Courtesy of Jason Bean

—

Jason Bean has been publishing online content for since he installed WordPress on his personal website back in January of 2004. Shortly after that he started writing professionally for a variety of online networks and websites. Over the years he’s covered topics ranging from technology, software, current events, TV shows, music, travel and his home city of Indianapolis. Jason tries to squeeze his writing into the time between being a husband and father, his full-time job and his web design clients. You can try and keep up with him on Twitter, Facebook and his personal blog.