Our resort package included a free breakfast buffet, so we did that first thing in the morning. I didn't realize when we booked the hotel, but it also included a lot of outdoor activities. There was a swimming beach on the lake, kayaks and paddleboats, a mini golf course, tennis, playground, so many yard games, and more. I wish we could have stayed here a few days, because we definitely didn't have time to enjoy it all!
After the buffet we went back to the room and packed up all of our things. We decided to check out the outside of the resort instead of going back to the waterpark. Unfortunately I only have one picture on my camera from the day, and it's this one:
But we did have a lot of fun playing mini golf, riding the zip line, playing the in the playground, and enjoying some yard games. It was all too soon before we needed to get back in the van to drive home. We had a seven hour drive ahead of us and hoped to get back before dark. We pulled in the driveway around 8:00 pm. HOME!!!
Trip Stats:
Total Miles Driven: 6238
Total Number of Days/Nights on the Road: 23
Average Miles Driven Per Day: 271
Total Amount Spent on Fuel: $1,036.54
Total Amount Spent on Lodging: $542.62
We spent 1 night at the fancy waterpark resort hotel for a whopping $282.91
We spent 13 nights at campsites for a total of $259.71 (average of $19.98/night)
We spent 3 nights at my brothers house (FREE, thanks Adam & Devin!)
We spent the other 6 nights boondocking (FREE)
Average Lodging Cost Per Night: $23.59
Total Amount Spent on Activities: $371.95
This included things like parking, admissions to parks, tolls and ferries, toys and souvenirs, road trip treats, and our Golden Corral buffet extravaganza
TOTAL COST OF AMAZING 23 DAY ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE: $1,951.11
Next time it would be a good idea to keep track of how many miles we hiked. It was definitely a lot of hiking! It would also have been a good idea to keep track of how many gallons of gas we used so that we could track miles per gallon, but I would estimate it was somewhere in the teens with our van. Looking back, we traveled at a crazy fast pace. I would love to be able to take a slower paced trip where we could spend more time at the parks, more time for relaxing and hanging out without having to pack everything up and move almost every day.
I'm super happy with our lodging expense totals. Traveling in the van was definitely a big money saver in that department! We told the kids that with all the money we saved sleeping in the van, we could afford to splurge on the resort for the last night. I did also keep track of our food expenses (groceries and restaurants), and it was on par with what we normally spend at home, so I didn't include it as an extra trip expense.
The above total doesn't include items that we purchased that we plan on using for multiple road trips. For example, the cost of purchasing the van, and outfitting it, and things like tents and camp mats and sleeping bags that we will use on multiple trips. The van was $10,532.13, and the other expenses totaled $803.29. These things are going to be "amortized" over what I hope will be many, many, many future road trip adventures. We are also planning on putting our camper van up for rent, and using that income to offset the cost of our road trip adventures. Happy trails!
We woke up and packed up our campsite for the last time - we will be home tomorrow, and for tonight, our last night on the road, we planned to stay at a really nice hotel which we booked in advance. Breakfast was more of finishing up what we had left - cereal and milk, bagels with peanut butter and jelly, and yogurt with granola. Our food supply is pretty low, but we are almost home!
Kids playing "bison" again at our campsite
Saw this herd of bison on our way out of the park
We made one last stop at the visitor center on the way out so the kids could turn in their booklets, be sworn in as Junior Rangers, and earn their badges. They have been pinning them onto their backpacks and it is a cool catalog of our adventures.
Getting sworn in as Junior Rangers
Then it was time to hit the road - we had about 6 hours to drive to the hotel. We stopped at Pizza Hut and the kids used their free pizza coupons from the summer library program. I sat at a nearby table and pulled out my laptop to get some work done while dad played Uno with the kids.
The kids knew we were staying at a hotel the last night, but they didn't know it was a WATERPARK HOTEL!!! We spent the evening swimming around the waterpark at Arrowwood Resort in Minnesota.
Everyone survived the night! We woke up and decided to go first to the Visitor Center. It had a pretty cool museum about the park history and the relationship with Theodore Roosevelt. We went to a Ranger talk and Cabin Tour of the cabin Theodore Roosevelt built on his ranch out here.
Joey and Lily outside Teddy Roosevelt's cabin wearing "mustaches"
While everything in the cabin is from the same time period, only two things actually belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. One of them is this traveling chest. We learned that wealthy people had round-topped chests to make sure they were always loaded on top so that they would be unloaded first.
Inside the museum. All the clothes and gear here actually belonged to and was used by Theodore Roosevelt.
Here Katy gives a video tour of the cabin:
We asked about the petrified forest and found out it was about a 3 mile hike, and we would have to drive about 30 minutes to the trailhead. Since we had the whole day ahead of us, and it sounded pretty neat, we decided to go for it. The weather was perfect - in the low 70s, partly cloudy - which was great since the hike was over the plains and buttes with no shade at all. Yesterday was in the 80s so we lucked out on cooler temperatures for today.
The hike started in the open prairie. Classic North Dakota.
It wasn't long before we reached an area with lots of cool land formations, reminded us of Badlands National Park
And there were LOTS of petrified trees like this one
And lots of climbing opportunities
Bits of petrified wood all over the place
Katy conquers the hill
Lily: "Take my picture!"
Exceptionally large petrified tree
Sweeping views. We had hoped to see wildlife, but we didn't see anything much. The middle of the day is not a good time for seeing animals.
Joey finds another cactus bunch
We spent probably about an hour and half on that hike, and got back around noon. We wanted to do the scenic loop drive through the park, but had read that it was better to do either early in the morning or at dusk so you would have a better chance of seeing wildlife. We decided to head into the nearby town of Medora to get some more groceries for dinner and to try to find a Wifi connection so I could check some emails and get a little bit of work done. It’s been surprising to me how difficult it has been on this trip to find cellular service just to make phone calls and send texts, let alone get a cellular data signal or find a place with good Wifi. This town was no different - the cell service was spotty and none of the coffee shops in town had Wifi! We did find a hotel with an open Wifi connection, and a great playground nearby for the kids, so I spent a couple hours working while they played on the playground. I could see the playground from where I was sitting, but I guess nobody else in the family could see me and they were a little upset I was gone working for so long and were unable to find or call me. :(
It was late afternoon at this point and everyone was pretty hungry, so we went to the only “grocery” store in the town. It was very limited, but we got some tortilla chips, cheddarwurst, hot dog buns, ketchup packets, and a can of baked beans. Back at the camp site we successfully built one last fire with dead and downed wood we found nearby, and grilled the cheddarwurst. We opened the can of beans and set it right on the grill since we hadn’t bought along any cooking pots, and that worked rather well. At this point we are trying to use up food we already purchased since we are nearing the end of our trip. We had salsa, shredded cheese, and queso left over, and we ate that with the tortilla chips. The cheddarwurst were delicious. We had one nectarine and two apples left, so we cut those up and shared them. We had some s’mores supplies left and roasted the rest of the marshmallows and everyone had a couple of s’mores to finish up dinner. It was now about 5:30pm, and we thought that would be a perfect time to get back in the van to drive around the park and see what animals we could find.
Bison grazing in the prairie dog village. You can see prairie dogs if you look closely! We saw SO MANY.
One ranger told us that an easy way to gauge if you are a safe distance away from bison is to hold out your arm straight in front of you with your thumb up. If your thumb covers up the bison, you are far enough away. If not, better back up! This bison kept coming closer and closer, so we quick snapped this dramatic photo and then got back in the van!
The scenery was really amazing but I think it was a bit early, because there were not many animals out and about. We stopped and hiked up the Buck Hill trail - only 0.2 miles round trip, so a total piece of cake! It’s the highest accessible point in the park so the views were incredible.
Heading up
There was some kind of road collapse, so the Scenic Loop Road is no longer a true loop, and you get to a point where you have to turn around and drive back the way you came. We saw all kinds of animals on the drive back, so I guess that proves that there is a greater chance of seeing animals if you wait a little bit closer to sunset.
Mule Deer
Another close up bison
More mule deer, in the road and a bunch more on the right
Wild horses
Here's another awesome video by Katy!
The last hike we wanted to do was Wind Canyon, which was supposed to be a great place to watch the sun set and the best overlook of the Little Missouri River in the park. It was a little cloudy, but still very pretty. Another short hike, only 0.4 miles round trip.
Short, but steep!
On the drive back to the campground it was getting quite dark, and we saw a bull elk with a huge set of antlers. It was hard to get a good photo, was much cooler in person! We had seen lots of elk on the trip, but not any with big antlers, so it was a nice way to end the night.
Back at the campsite we all played the game Love Letter. We haven’t had much down time to play games on the trip because we’ve been traveling so much, and this was actually a super fun game. Everyone was able to play except Katy, and she had fun running around and looking at everyone’s cards and “helping”. The kids wanted to stay up and keep playing more games, but I was feeling pretty tired and it was getting pretty chilly - we could see our breath in the air - so I wrapped it up and we all went to bed. We had thought about driving out away from the campground trees and lights to get an unobstructed view of the super dark skies, but it was a little cloudy and we were all pretty tired so we decided not to. Will be something to come back for in the future - they actually have a big annual astronomy event here that starts after we leave tomorrow that sounds pretty good. We can’t do everything in one trip, that’s for sure!
We woke up at the rest stop fairly early, around 7:30am. The forecast said the high for the day was 87 degrees, but it felt pretty chilly at that time in the morning. We ate cereal and milk and the kids climbed around on some rocks near the rest stop while we put the van back into “driving mode” instead of “sleeping mode”. We cleaned out all the garbage and took advantage of the running water to wash all our dirty dishes too.
Rest Stop Breakfast
Rest Stop Climbing
We felt like we had extra time because of the driving we did yesterday, so we took it slow, and it was about 9:30am when we finally left the rest top to visit Sluice Boxes State Park, only about a 10 minute drive away. To be honest, we almost skipped this stop altogether and just headed straight for Theodore Roosevelt National Park, but I’m glad we didn’t. Truly a gem of a park.
Hiking along the cliffs
Precarious cliff trail! I would not have wanted to do this one with toddlers in tow!
Incredible views
Heading down to Belt Creek
Finally made it down to the creek! We hiked down from the top ridge, about a 1.5 mile hike one way. Of course we skipped a lot of rocks.
The kids swam a little but the water was very cold. They spent a lot of time hunting and gathering interesting rocks. In this photo you can see two railroad support trusses. In 1879 two men found rich veins of silver and lead and within a year there were 100 men mining near here. The ore was originally sent out by wagons, but soon railroads were used. The mines continued production for over 50 years.
The railroad was completed in 1891 and the last train went through in 1945. Apparently if you hike further into the park you can see ghost towns, cabins, railroad ruins, and other historical structures.
After spending a good long while playing along Belt Creek, we started to hike back up to the van. The views are spectacular.
More precarious hiking!
We were at Sluice Boxes State Park for a couple of hours at least before heading back on the road - it was another 6 hours or so to our campsite reservation at Theodore Roosevelt. Another longish day in the car, and I don’t have pictures to convey the experience, so you’ll have to use your imagination. We did stop at a gas station and let everyone spend up to $3 getting whatever treat they wanted, so the kids LOVED that part.
We crossed into North Dakota around 7 pm and reached the national park about 7:30pm. I had been looking forward to this park because there was supposedly lots and lots of wildlife to see. We were INSTANTLY rewarded with close up views of bison, wild horses, and prairie dogs IMMEDIATELY upon entering the park!
Close up bison
Handy guide
Another bison right in the campground!
Turns out our reserved campsite was also incredible, right on the river. Shortly after we arrived, a camp host volunteer came around and gave the kids Junior Ranger Activity Booklets. The visitor center was closed when we entered the park, so they were excited to be able to get started on the booklets tonight and it gave them something to do while we were setting up the campsite. She also told us there was a petrified forest hike in the park we could do that was fairly short, and sounded very cool. The kids had fun playing "bison" around the campsite while we set up for the night.
View from our campsite
We had our own private trail to the river
We set up camp, played cards, ate, got ready for bed, and then spent some time with all of our flashlights turned off so we could look at the stars. It was a perfect clear night and we could see so many stars, and also the Milky Way. Joey was a little nervous about sleeping in the tent, because we had seen a bison walking right through some of the campsites as we drove into the campground, and the camp host volunteer told us they do sometimes walk right in the campground. He was afraid he would get trampled, but the host said there has never been any cases of that happening. She did say that sometimes they rub up against the vehicles though, so I guess we’ll see if the van gets any buffalo love tonight!
