Road trip around WY, ID, MT and SD

This past August we did a two-week-long road trip in our RV around the mid north of the US. We stayed at several campgrounds but mainly at Harvest hosts (I’ll link this to our future blog post on harvest hosts). We stayed at some really cool places!

We started the trip by driving up to Wyoming, from Breckenridge, CO. We were going to stay at a Harvest Host in Savery, WY (a town on the border of Colorado and Wyoming), but the hosts never showed up, so we ended up boondocking (parking at the side of the road). It ended up being a really fun place with beautiful and peaceful surroundings. Due to a nearby cattle farm we woke up to cows grazing around the RV.

Thermopolis, the worlds largest hot springs

We then went to Shoshoni, WY. This time we did stay at our Harvest Host and it was really nice. It was an alfalfa farm that previously was a raspberry farm. We got five pounds of frozen raspberries, for free! The next day we went to Thermopolis, a state park that has a many different thermal features. There were public hot springs where we could take a swim. It is called the largest hot spring in the world. It looked like a town we could’ve stayed longer, but we were off!

These are the vast swaths of the alfalfa farm

On the drive to Jackson, WY, we saw buffalo and the Grand Tetons. In Jackson we stayed at a distillery called Jackson Hole Still Works. They let us use a hose to clean our RV, which was covered in bugs (this happens a lot with such big vehicles like RVs). We also took a hike up a hill where we paragliders jump off of. The next morning we headed to Grand Tetons National park. We took a hike around a lake June and saw two moose at Moose ponds (pretty ironic). The Tetons are really steep mountains and to get to the top you need special permits but also be an experienced mountain climber.

After spending the day at the National Park, we drove to Driggs, ID. We stayed at another Harvest Host, a distillery named Grand Tetons Distillery. From here we had a clear view of the Tetons from the west. The border of WY and ID was only 4 miles away.

The next place that we went to was West Yellowstone. We stayed at the KOA for four nights. We did visit the park itself (click here to go to our blog post on that). Here we met up with a family that we met in Vietnam, and met up again in Australia. On the way to Billings, MT we drove through north Yellowstone. We saw so many buffalo, the first herds were impressive but after awhile it was “just another buffalo” as there are so many!

The massive buffalo of Yellowstone, just inches away from the RV

An old model T Ford pickup truck at the farm in Gillette

Our next stop was Gillette, WY. We stayed at a super cool farm (another Harvest Hos). The farm was an animal farm, with chickens, horses, cows, and ducks. In the morning we took take a tour of the farm. They had a really nice little store, where you could buy dairy products, eggs, meat, they even had some honey and baked goods!

We saw Devils Tower on the way to South Dakota. Devils Tower is a huge 867-foot rock tower in Wyoming. The hike around the ‘tower’ is about 2 miles, well paved and worth it to see the tower from different angles. If you look well you might see the climbers on the tower!

Devils Tower. We had a fun hike around it.

Ou final state of our road trip was South Dakota. Our first night we stayed at a brewery, Sick-N-Twisted (in Hill City, SD). Then we went to the KOA near Mount Rushmore for 5 nights. In this are, called the black hills, we did the following:

Mount Rushmore. It was pretty incredible, four giant faces of past presidents of the USA, carved out of a mountain. There are many educational activities around the park and you can see the calendar at the welcome center. There are also a number of small walks you can do around the area, all fairly easy.

Crazy Horse Memorial is even bigger than Mount Rushmore. In fact, you could fit all four heads in Crazy Horse’s face. Crazy Horse memorial entry fee is a bit expensive, but the museum and laser light show were both impressive. The mountain in work in progress and you are limited in how close you can get to the actual mountain carving.
Visit the Presidential Wax Museum and the Holy Terror Mini Golf. These were both very fun and since we were staying at the KOA it was free. The Presidential Wax museum was educational and had all the US presidents and included an audio tour which was very informative. The Mini Golf was all mining themed, and pretty well done.
We rented an UTV at the KOA and it was awesome. Since the area has a ton of UTV trails, there are many different places you can rent them at. The trails are for anywhere from beginners to experts. We did some fun driving, so many deer and had a blast!

The next place we stayed at was a little campground in Glendo Reservoir, WY, it is a big lake with many different campgrounds, some of them are free and empty. The reservoir was very dry as it is the end of the summer, so there were a lot of sand and frogs. Madeline and I had a blast catching frogs.

The last place that we stayed at was Lyons, CO. Here we stayed at our last harvest host, Spirit Hound Distillers. There is a river that runs through Lyons, and many kayakers and tubers like to go down it. We, not having a tube or a kayak, just played in the river.

This is the kayakers on the river in Lyons

All in all we had a really good time on the this road trip. We visited some incredible places. From Yellowstone, to small farms in Wyoming, I hope the post will inspire you to make your own road trip!

Also, if you have an RV, I highly recommend joining Harvest Hosts. We had an incredible experience during this trip and cant wait to explore other Harvest Hosts!!!