Last year my husband and I embarked on a 5,000 miles round trip road trip from our town just north of Atlanta, Georgia to Stevensville, Montana. At first, we had planned on driving our Jeep Wrangler, but when we calculated out the MPG and comfort level, we opted to take our Honda Accord instead (which averages 36-39 MPG on the highway.) It was my uncle's 50th birthday, and it was my aunt and uncle's wedding anniversary, and we wanted to take a road trip.
I won't lie. I'm a planner. We planned for MONTHS once we knew what we were going to do. I went through and mapped our route (we'd eventually bring a road atlas, printed out directions, and our GPS with us so we knew we wouldn't get lost.) Then we looked at places of interest we'd like to stop. Finally, we booked our lodging along the way and marked spots on our printed directions where ideal locations would be to fuel our vehicle. The entire trip spanned eleven days.
The scheduled spots of interest included Sioux Falls (as in the actual falls,) Wall Drug, Mt Rushmore, Iron Mountain/Needles Highway, The Purple Pie Place, Beartooth Highway, Yellowstone National Park, Philipsburg, Montana, and Skalkaho Pass on the way out. On the way back, we didn't really have anything scheduled other than stopping at a place to eat called "Busted Nut Bar & Grill" (Andrew being a mechanic and all.) Well, after being a bit more realistic, our drive out to Montana consisted of the following stops:
* A lovely rest area somewhere on the Nebraska/Iowa border for lunch
* Mitchell, SD Corn Palace
* Badlands National Park
* Wall Drug
* Mount Rushmore
* Iron Mountain/Needles Highway in Custer State Park
* Beartooth Highway
* Yellowstone National Park
* West Yellowstone
* Yellowstone National Park
* Stevensville, MT
And now it's time to talk about our trip...
