Trip out west

ruadisneyfan2 said:
We flew into Vegas and drove north to visit Bryce Canyon NP and Zion NP. We rented a huge, beautiful cabin halfway between the 2. (I can look up that rental.) Dh gets stressed out to keep packing up and moving on to another town every couple days so this was a good spot to settle for 4 days.

We then drove to Page, AZ where the Colorado River enters AZ, to see Horseshoe Bend and took a rafting trip down the Colorado. So beautiful.
Since we live on the east coast most flights home are morning ones, we spent our last night at a hotel near LAS with airport shuttle so we could drop off the rental car the night before and use the shuttle in the am.

This was a very memorable trip for ds19 beacuse in Utah they let him ride his own ATV at age 14 and we had a blast. Not only would NJ never allow that but there are no public lands that would allow ATV riding here at all in the State of a Zillion Laws. Sigh. Unless you have lots of acreage to ride on your own property, there’s no point in owning one.
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How many hours drive between Bryce and Zion? I hate being in a car all my vacation!
 


crazycatstacy said:
Glad you enjoyed Rapid City and our area. I live and work here!
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Crazycat, we just booked our trip to Rapid City for this summer! Can you tell me which attractions are not to be missed and which are more tourist traps? We have a five year old along on the trip if that helps!
 


You have to see Mt. Rushmore of course. My nephew did not like Bear Country- if you have a zoo at home I would think you could skip that but he LOVED Reptile Gardens, they have tons of interactive stuff. There is an aerial park in Keystone, South Dakota that is a ton of fun. Depending on what you want to do, Sylvan Lake is beautiful and you can rent paddle boats pretty inexpensively. Spearfish Canyon is also beautiful and has some easy hiking trails in it.

What types of things are you wanting to do? Groupon is not big in our area but there is a website clickbigdeals.com that often times has discounts coupons for various local attractions
 
The Alpine Slides in Keystone were fun. The wild west shootouts in the streets of Deadwood were cool. If you want to drive a ways, you can go into WY and see Devils Tower.
 
Dakota731 said:
We are hoping to do this trip in July. Which attractions did you think were worth recommending?
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I really loved everything we did. (Mount Rushmore and the Badlands are classic must dos, the national monument and national park.) A big surprise for me was how much I absolutely loved Custer State Park (especially the wildlife loop). Ask the rangers where the buffalo herd is and head there (incredible - more buffalo than you have ever seen all in one place). And bring carrots for sure. They let you feed these to burros (there are 20 of these that hang out on the wildlife loop) and that is so much fun. My favorite thing I did on the whole trip. I bought more carrots and did the wildlife loop a second day too as we all loved this so much. This park has great cabins, dining, too etc. (a little pricey though - but really high quality).

These next two I wouldn't consider these must dos, but if you have extra time to kill "Bear Country USA" and "the Reptile Garden" in Rapid City were well done and fun.
 
If anything opens late summer early fall, we are considering a trip into Sacramento, some Napa, Muir Woods and Big Sur coastal drive. How difficult would it be to be go to Sequoia national park for a few days from there? Not sure what driving is like and how long we should plan. Thinking we could then fly out of Fresno back to Florida.

Flights are not expensive but hotels are pricey. Will be looking for sales later in summer, maybe could score a deal.
 
Dakota731 said:
We are still booked for July and everything is non refundable. How is your area covid wise? What is closed and when do things look to reopen? Thanks!
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My area is just now starting to get cases. We have less than 100. Things are open currently. Restaurants are half capacity Tourist things are all still projected to open end of the month
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Our other idea is to fly into Seattle for a few nights, then Olympic Park and Mt. Ranier. Sure is nice to dream!
 
I guess the concern isn’t cases from your area it’s the fact that tourists will come from all over the world. Luckily most things are outside.
 
Dakota731 said:
I guess the concern isn’t cases from your area it’s the fact that tourists will come from all over the world. Luckily most things are outside.
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The problem is that a lot of the recreational outdoor areas are near small towns that don’t have the medical capacity to handle an outbreak. And if you need to get rescued, you put their SARS team at risk. Better to stay local.
 
okeydokey said:
Our other idea is to fly into Seattle for a few nights, then Olympic Park and Mt. Ranier. Sure is nice to dream!
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Two years ago we flew into Seattle and did Olympic and Mt. Rainier NP's! Loved them both!! We stayed right in both NP's and it was around $300 a night.

After Mt. Rainier, we stopped at Mt. St. Helens, which was great! We continued on to Crater Lake NP in Oregon. We then drove to the Big Sur (almost $500 night there!) and then on to Disneyland! Awesome trip, but a ton of driving!!
 
okeydokey said:
If anything opens late summer early fall, we are considering a trip into Sacramento, some Napa, Muir Woods and Big Sur coastal drive. How difficult would it be to be go to Sequoia national park for a few days from there? Not sure what driving is like and how long we should plan. Thinking we could then fly out of Fresno back to Florida.

Flights are not expensive but hotels are pricey. Will be looking for sales later in summer, maybe could score a deal.
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Sequoia would be a bit of a haul from the places you mentioned. However, if you go to the Muir Woods outside of San Francisco, Yosemite NP is only a couple of hours away!

One of the trips we did was fly into San Francisco, then drove to Yosemite, then to Sequoia (The drive between those two parks wasn't too back, just a couple hours.) From Sequoia we drove to Disneyland, which was around a 5 hour drive.

I always used MapQuest when planning out trips to get an idea of how far it was from place to place.

We have done 6 western NP vacations. We always fly into one airport and fly home from another. Usually an airport near DL since we ended many of our trips there.
 
Cases in Rapid City/Pennington County are beginning to rise quickly. Restaurants are still at half occupancy until further notice. As more and more people come in to the area for vacation it is expected to get worse. Mt. Rushmore is having 4th of July Fireworks again (on the 3rd actually) after a several year hiatus and Trump is supposed to come so I'm assuming that will bring more people. Current discussion is whether the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally should be cancelled. I think it is going to be a long summer.
 
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