(TGA) - My husband, myself and my 5 year old daughter want to spend a week driving to YNP and back. We live in southwest Missouri. I would like to take two different routes and stop at some places on the way. Please help with routes, towns to stop at, things to do and how long and what we should do in YNP. Thanks for the help.
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Welcome to TA. You might want to post this in the Road Trip forum as well:
Day 0 (night) SW MO. Head out in the evening to maybe to Omaha NE
Day 1 Omaha to Rapid City SD.
Day 2 Visit Mt Rushmore, Custer State Park. Stay in Custer SD
Day 3 Drive to Cody WY with a side trip to Devils Tower. Stay in Cody. If time, visit some of the Cody Museums
Day 4 To YS. Do you have lodging inside the park? If not look either between Cody and the Eastern Entrance or to the west of YS at West YS.
Day 5 Explore YS all day
Day 6 Explore YS
Day 7 YS to Teton Nat Park
Day 8 Tetons
Day 9 Tetons to Cheyenne WY via Lander WY. Stop and see the Big Horn Sheep Center in Dubois.
Day 10 Visit Denver area. Maybe Rocky Mtn Nat Park
Day 11 Head east
Day 12 Head Home
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We tried to do it in less and we couldn't,lol. that is why we are goingfor 13 and even then we feel liek we will be missing things and jsut skimming the areas.
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I wish I could have planned my trip going through Denver when the Cardinals were playing there in Denver. It is a great stadium in Denver. Again even with 14 days it comes to an average 200+ miles a day with a 3000 mile trip. I can't imagine doing it any less amount of days.
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Ditto on all that about it not being enough time unless you can figure that "a week" includes all of both weekends making it nine days. Also, if you can get an early joum on it on the preceding Friday it can make a huge difference. For instance from Springfield area to Topeka, KS is about 4 hours. If the car is all loaded leaving at 5pm would only mean 9pm to stop. The Topeka to Cheyenne, WY would be 631 Mi...GoogleMaps says 10 hours but I suspect it could be less with stops kept to a minimum. Cheyenne to YNP would be about 8 hours. So by Sunday evening you could be in the park.
Then four days of sightseeing and reverse route to go home. Alternate route home I-80 across Nebraska and from Lincoln cut across to I-29 to head south. But would add half a day more driving meaning later arrival home on the Sunday. Biggest factor will be how well your daughter tolerates long periods of confinement in the car. With more time the days could be broken up into activities along the way.
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I'm not sure if this option would work for you or not, but one way to keep the trip in a one week timeframe yet add a little time to Yellowstone would be to leave Friday afternoon or early evening, driving until 10 or 11. Then make it one full day on Saturday. We almost always drive on our trips, and this is how we do it to try to add a bit of time to our destination.
We're in eastern Iowa, and it took us about 17 hours to drive to YNP. We left Friday around 4 (when Dh got home from work), and drove until 10:00. Then got up early the next morning and arrived in Cody around 4 pm. The drive home we drove all the way through without stopping for the night:-). I didn't think the drive was bad at all, but then again, I love road trips.
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Say you live in Rolla, you can make it to the Badlands in about 12 hours (best to drive some Friday night), one night in the Badlands, drive out the next AM, visit Wall Drug, stay in the Rapid City area that night, then on to Cody for a night. Cody to Yellowstone (probably not the Beartooth since you are short on time) 3 nights in Yellowstone. And then the most direct route home down thru Wyoming to I-80 across Nebraska. Scenery is quite different. Non stop to home would be about 18 hours, Cheyenne might be a good stopping point one night.
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