Traveling across the US

This post is me reminiscing of our travel across the US in Summer of 2018. It feels good to remember about the summer in these cold winter days.

In order to move to Seattle for a sabbatical at Microsoft, we drove across the US and made this in to a family trip. This was not easy undertaking. Our neighbor called us "brave" when we announced our plan ---her tone suggested that she meant it to mean "crazy". But we did it, and the kids loved it and they wanted to do it again.

We traveled from Buffalo to Seattle, not quite the entire coast to coast travel. We traveled through I90 and it was easy and comfortable drive. It comes to more than 2800 miles, and means 40 hours of driving. We had planned to drive 10 hours a day, take a break on the third day to see three national parks on I90, and finish the trip in 5 days. We had three kids, 11yo boy, 7yo girl, and 3 yo girl. We drove with a Toyota Camry 2010. My old faithful already had 128K miles before the drive.

We had packed the trunk with 5 very heavy luggages, and smaller bags where we can fit in between them. Space was used very efficiently, because I had planned this with empty luggages first. The car got very heavy, but it didn't complain.

First day

We rented 3 redbox movies for the kids the first day. And we had some Netflix movies downloaded on the iPad. We didn't know how well the kids would take a 10 hour drive. They did surprisingly well and didn't complain. When we discussed about our options for the travel, they wanted to do the car trip, so I guess part of it is they wanted to stand by their choice.

We passed through NY, Pennsilvania (very briefly), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and entered Wisconsin. We started at around 10am. We ran into traffic at passing Chicago downtown, but the kids turned that into fun by waving at other cars stuck in the traffic.

After the 10 hour drive and one hour lunch break, we arrived at Milwaukee WI at 8pm instead of 9pm, because of the 1 hour time shift between east coast EST and Chicago time. We met with our friends, they had kids the same age as ours. We had a picnic dinner at a nice playground park, went to a cafe at night, and had a great time. Since we finished the day with fun, it felt like the entire day was fun.

Second day

We planned to drive 10 hours and get as close to Badlands national park. We didn't rush it, the kids got their sleep well at the hotel before we started driving again. It was an easy drive. We watched the lush green full of trees landscape of the first day to change into the prairie. This second day was very dry, very flat driving. Road side towns were scarce. The urban-rural divide is real.

We didn't buy hotels in advance. My wife used Hotwire on the phone to arrange our hotel on the drive. She took her time reading about hotels, crosschecking reviews with tripadvisor etc. She bought us good hotels. We preferred hotels with swimming pools, because kids enjoy it, and those that serve breakfast because that gave us a good way start to the day.

Well, good hotels except this second day. We decided to stop at Murdo, South Dakota. This is just one hour before the Badlands park. Murdo was a very very small town. The reviews for the hotels and restaurants misled my wife: maybe the town people added those reviews, because it looks like the only business in town was the 4-5 small hotels they had there. A better choice for stopping would be the "Wall Drug" town which is very close. Wall, South Dakota, is a tourist attraction town and has more hotel selections.

Third day

On the third day, we had a lot of fun visiting the Badlands park. The rock formations there is similar to those in the Cappadocia region in Turkey. Badlands had some Fairy Chimney's formation as in Cappadocia, but not as developed and pronounced.

After Bad Lands, we drove to the Mount Rushmore  national memorial at South Dakota. It was awesome, the kids liked the park a lot. We took a lot of pictures.

The third day provided for great scenic driving. We got into mountains territory starting with Mount Rushmore. We saw mountain goats along the road at Mount Rushmore. I had two audiobooks downloaded for this trip, alongside with many podcasts. But I could only finish one audiobook and get to the half of the second one. I was just driving and watching the landscape for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th days, without any need for audio entertainment.

Fourth day

We wanted to have a quick visit at the Yellowstone park. Instead of the East entrance, I chose the North East entrance, because I read that that was the most scenic entrance. It turned out that the North East entrance was very very steep and scary driving. No wonder that entrance was only open in summer. My wife is scared of heights. So we cut our climbing this huge scary mountain at the halfway. Instead we spent time at the Rich Lodge at the creek and hiked there.

We drove some more and stopped at Butte for the hotel, mostly because the kids found the name interesting. At the end of fourth day, my 3yo daughter got tired of driving and staying at different hotels, and insisted we stay at this hotel from now on.

Fifth day

This was a very comfortable drive to Seattle. It was very scenic as we drove through the mountains. At a rest stop, we played with ground squirrels. They were so cute.

Conclusions and future work 

After the trip, the US map doesn't look so foreign to us. We have been to those states, those are not no-where-lands for us. I knew I liked driving, but it turns out driving longer distances is even more fun (when taken in moderation). The kids liked seeing new places, eating at restaurants, and staying at hotels. It was good time spent together. We should do another long trip like this soon, they grow up so fast, and we don't have many years left enjoying time together.

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