Summer means travel for my family. It also means that between commentary on life, social issues, and our years living in Texas, I will deliver two to three posts a month about our family’s summer travels until the end of the year.
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When I started planning our summer vacation to Yellowstone, one of my South Dakota goals was to camp at Custer State Park. Unfortunately, I put off making those reservations until about four months before we were set to leave on vacation. Since reservations for Custer State Park open nearly a year in advance, we had long missed our window for reservations. It was the first big mistake of my summer vacation planning.
I scrambled to find a place that was both affordable and available. At the time, my sister-in-law was still planning to join us, so I tried to find a place that would fit her as well. We wanted to be close to all of the major sites, and I wanted to be as close to the state park as possible.
Eventually I found a relatively new private campground right on the outskirts of Custer, South Dakota. It had good reviews and the pictures looked nice enough. Plus, it was over half the cost of trying to squeeze into one of the local KOAs. I made reservations and added it to the trip itinerary.
The day we left for the Black Hills, we were all already a little bit ornery. There were advantages to staying in Wall, South Dakota, but as we drove around Badlands National Park, we also discovered a few other places we could have stayed that would have kept us closer to the park itself. It also didn’t help that our campground in Wall had a ridiculous amount of mosquitoes. Every time we went outside our camper and walked around the grounds, we were afraid the little bloodsuckers were going to carry us off. In fact, I gave up my shower on our last night there in hopes we would be able to take a nice hot shower when we got to the Black Hills.
Then our teenagers woke up in a mood the morning we were supposed to get on the road. Then Jeff took a wrong turn when we were supposed to head south. By the time we got to the campground, we were all on edge with each other and ansty after several days of travel.
Then when we got to our campsite, we discovered my mistake. My very big mistake.
The campground had full hook-up, but no working bathrooms. The sites were small and very close to neighbors. The sewage dump went uphill from our camper, which meant if I wanted a hot shower, dumping the water was going to be a chore.
We enjoyed our tours through Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. We were thankful we still made it to Jewel Cave. And Custer State Park took our breaths away.
But it was also a two-day stop full of big feelings and the need for another reset. Jeff and I decided that since we had done everything we wanted to do in the Black Hills (besides a visit to Wind Cave), we were going to cut our trip there a day short. We drove to Devil’s Tower a day early, enjoyed the fireworks there, and then headed west to break our trip to Yellowstone into two shorter days of driving instead of one.
It would be worth it.
The drive across northern Wyoming was gorgeous, everything I had remembered after years of traveling all over the state when I was a teenager in youth group. But as we drove past Sheridan and started our way through the Bighorn Mountains, we passed a warning sign at Burgess Junction.
We had to decide if we were going to take the route that was slightly out of our way to Powell but also with less severe grades, or if we were going to take the straighter but more dangerous route. We ignored the GPS and took the Highway 14 route, heading north again once we got out of the mountains and to the Greybull junction. While the drive was gorgeous, Jeff and I both felt our blood pressure rise as the truck and trailer climbed up the mountains and wove through the canyon. We breathed a sigh of relief when we were able to head north in the relatively flat desert land leading to Powell, Wyoming, where we were staying for the night.
We made it to the Powell Golf Club before dinner, giving us plenty of time to park and head into town. The whole family did laundry, as we taught our teenagers how to use the coin-operated machines for their own laundry.1 Jeff and I laughed as they then sat on their phones and waited for the machines to finish doing their thing before we could finally enjoy dinner at Taco John’s and a quick stop at the grocery store.2
I faced some disappointment the following morning when I accepted the fact that we weren’t going to be able to make a stop at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, just outside of Powell. The small parking lot wouldn’t fit our truck and trailer, the center didn’t open until 10, and we needed to get on our way to Yellowstone. Instead, we stopped in Cody and decided to spend some time exploring the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
I remember visiting the Buffalo Bill Museum as a child. We were traveling to Yellowstone with my maternal grandparents and both my mom and grandmother wanted to stop. I knew it would be an interesting place to introduce my teenagers to the American West I fell in love with as a teenager myself.
I was not prepared for just how impressive the completely renovated Center of the West has become. And maybe I just didn’t remember much about it.
We spent the majority of our time in the Buffalo Bill Museum, exploring the history of a complicated human during a very complicated time in American history. The museum tries to honestly deal with the balance between his failures as a businessman and his success in bringing the American West to the rest of the world. It confronts both the damage his Wild West shows did to the treatment of American indigenous tribes and the imperfect work he did in his later life to make life better for Native Americans. It praises his role as an early women’s rights advocate and his faithlessness as a husband and father. As with all narratives, the museum does everything it can to show how messy history can be, but how important it is to understand all of it.
The Plains Indian Museum contains stunning displays of Native American artifacts, history, and culture. It also ties the past to the present, showing the lives of today’s Native Americans in the West.
And the biggest surprise of all was the Cody Firearms Museum. While I support hunters and the military and I like my fair number of “shooter” movies (because, come on, the scene from The Matrix is unbelievable), I’m not a fan of guns. I’m also a staunch advocate for much stricter, reasonable gun laws.
But the museum wasn’t a celebration of firearms through the ages. It may have over 10,000 artifacts, but it is a carefully curated collection honoring the history of firearms while also recognizing the harm caused by firearms. The war weaponry exhibit includes videos discussing the human and environmental costs of warfare. And it carefully discusses the gun control debate, respecting the concerns of those who want to protect their 2nd Amendment rights while also addressing the very real problems with gun violence in the United States. It is clear the museum is run by people with graduate degrees and not gun enthusiasts.
When we were finally done taking in the museum, our family was ready to continue west and finally arrive in Yellowstone.
I don’t regret calling the travel audible and leaving Custer a day early. I’m glad we got to watch the fireworks outside of Devil’s Tower. I’m glad we cut a stressful drive in half and had a quiet evening to do our laundry and rest before the fullness of Yellowstone. And I’m glad we had the time to spend a couple of hours in Cody, Wyoming. When planning a vacation, sometimes we have to plan for changing plans, and that’s okay.
Because there was so much more excitement ahead of us.
Get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:
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One of my summer tasks was teaching the kids how to do their own laundry and they kept up the practice through our whole vacation.
I know it’s silly, because Taco John’s isn’t that special. In fact, our son called it “mid.” But I have special memories of going there as a teenager living in Riverton, Wyoming. I was thrilled that we could make one stop there.
Cody is a great museum town and filled with so much history - glad you were able to spend some time there! Another great museum is the National Museum of Military Vehicles (https://nmmv.org) in Dubois, WY. It's a private museum packed with a full day's worth of exploring and super kid-friendly. We've taken our grands there and they loved it.