Our Mid-West RV Trip + Travel FAQs
In the summer of 2019 we bought a house trailer and every year since we’ve tried to plan at least one “big” trip amongst little weekend adventures here and there. Since we’re in Utah we’ve mostly explored the western part of the United States. We’ve seen the Southwest…Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Bryce Canyon…all the way up to the Pacific Northwest (which I blogged about here)…the Redwoods, Mount Rainer, Olympic National Park down to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.
Mississippi River - Hannibal, MO
Some of you will remember that we had planned to visit Mesa Verde, Arches, and Canyonlands last year, but our reservations got cancelled because of the late winter weather. This year we re-scheduled our trip and everything was good to go. But, one day in early March I was making lunch for the kids and had this sudden impression that we needed to change our plans and visit the Midwest - specifically Missouri and Nauvoo. I brushed the thought off because it’s far from us and, really, there is not a lot to see along the way so it makes for a lot of hours in the car. But, when a certain someone else is in charge…plans change. That same day my husband called me on the way home from work and said he felt like we should change our plans and go visit Missouri and Nauvoo. And, we’ve learned…when things like this happen…we listen.
Out of all the places we’ve been - this was absolutely my favorite trip and my husband would say the same. This is about the only part of the country I’ve never seen and it was absolutely life changing for all of us and I am so glad we made it a priority to go even though it was a lot of miles. As a family of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this trip has a lot of church history, but simultaneously that’s both mine and my husband’s pioneer ancestry and heritage as well… which is also all apart of American history so I think we just all really felt that divine connection to our roots.
OUR ROUTE & WHERE WE STAYED
Beginning in the Salt Lake City area we took 10 days and logged about 3300 miles. It was the most miles we’ve traveled in the shortest length of time. We moved a lot and we moved quickly.
Day 1: Salt Lake City, UT to near Cheyenne, WY* - We stayed at the Vedauwoo Designated Dispersed Campsites. Even though the website says it’s open - it was closed. We rolled in around 10:00 PM though so we just parked right outside the gate and it was fine.
*Watch for high wind warnings on this route if you’re towing a house trailer.
Day 2: Cheyenne, WY to Bellevue, NE - On our way we visited Winter Quarters and stayed at Winsor Cove.
Day 3-4: Bellevue, NE to Kansas City, MO - Here we stayed with some friends right outside of Kansas City. We spent two full days here and that was perfect. We were able to visit Independence, Liberty Jail, Farr West, and Adam-Ondi-Ahman.
Day 5-6: Kansas City, MO to Nauvoo, IL - On our way to Nauvoo we visited Hannibal and Carthridge Jail. We stayed at Camp Nauvoo. (We had planned to camp at Nauvoo State Park, but after seeing the area Camp Nauvoo was much better.) A lot of people told us to spend 2-3 days in Nauvoo, but we just spent one evening and a full day and made the very most of it. My husband and I swapped attending the temple and seeing the sites with the kids. If you want to tour every home and see everything then you’ll definitely want a few days, but we were happy hitting the highlights and one full day was perfect for our family.
Day 7: Nauvoo, IL to Brandon, SD - We could’ve gone a little different route here, but we wanted to stop for dinner with friends in central Iowa. We stayed at the Big Sioux Recreation Area.
Day 8: Brandon, SD to Wall, SD - Along the way we visited the Minuteman Missle National Historic Site, Badlands National Park, and Wall Drug Store. We stayed in the Wall Drug RV/Truck parking lot.
Day 9: Wall, SD to Martin’s Cove, WY - We took our house trailer with us to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and Wind Cave National Park. That night we stayed at the Ranch 66 Missionary Village.
Day 10: Martin’s Cove, WY to Salt Lake City, UT - We visited Martin’s Cove in the morning and then drove home.
If you’re considering a similar trip, in hindsight, there are one or two things we may have done differently. First, if we had had more time, we would’ve taken 3 straight days and driven to Palmyra, NY and then made our way back hitting all the sites on the way back west. I would say we would’ve needed at least 15 days to do this. On the route we took, I wish we would’ve gone over to St. Louis and hit the Gateway Arch National Park before heading up to Nauvoo. Originally, we thought we’d hit this after Nauvoo and drive back through Nebraska, but we changed our minds and decided to go up more north through South Dakota so it didn’t make sense for us to drop back down to St. Louis.
PREPARING FOR THE TRIP & HIGHLIGHTS
Like I mentioned, this trip was life changing and it had a depth that none of our other trips have had and I think that’s because we were so connected to our heritage. We loved gathering stories of our ancestors from family books and off of Family Search. Both my husband and I actually learned quite a few things we didn’t know which was really neat. Most of the stories I saved to tell the kids until we were on the grounds, but my mother-in-law also shared some stories with the kids before we went. We also watched a few church history videos and The Trek West is also helpful on-line resource for learning about the pioneer landmarks.
It was helpful to research and come prepared with family names at Winter Quarters and Martin’s Cove. At Winter Quarters we were able to find 5 of my husband’s family members who had been buried there. The missionaries at the visitor’s center can tell you where certain graves are (or approximately). At Martin’s Cove there are a few large boards with names from the wagon trains and the rescue team. As a teenager, my great-great uncle was apart of the rescue team so it was fun to be able to show the kids his name on the wall and tell his story. He actually ended up marrying one of the girls he rescued! It is a 6 mile hike round trip into the cove so we decided not to do that with the kids - we spent most of our time at the visitor’s center area.
We knew of a few names to look up in Nauvoo, but if you can login to your Family Search account at the visitor’s center they have a program that can pull all your relatives that lived there. Between my husband and I we had over 40 ancestors from the area which was so special. Both mine and my husband’s great-great-great grandfathers lived there and after we learned more about their lives we realized there was a good chance they knew each other. The missionaries at the visitor’s center were able to help us find their house plots which we went and visited and took pictures with the kids. There are some original homes still in the settlement, but both of our families lost their homes to fires in mob raids.
Even if you don’t have family names in any of these places - there is definitely still a lot to see and do and it’s a wonderful experience for kids. In Nauvoo there are so many homes to tour and also the “Family Learning Center” which is loaded with hands-on pioneer activities for the kids to do. We made candles, bricks, and rope!
For the second half of the trip and our visit into Mount Rushmore, Badlands, and Crazy Horse - we didn’t know we were headed this way so I didn’t do anything extra to learn about these areas ahead of time. Some of the parts (like Mount Rushmore) the kids were already very familiar with and others, like Crazy Horse, we learned more about while we were there.
In Badlands we came through the Northeast Entrance, fed the prairie dogs, and visited the Ben Reifel Visitor’s Center. We took the Badlands Loop Road and walked the Fossil Exhibit Trail. We exited out through the Pinnacles Entrance and headed to Wall. The Wind Cave NP’s cave was closed for construction so we just drove through the park which was a really pretty drive. We also love doing the Junior Ranger Program whenever we visit the National Parks.
At the Crazy Horse Welcome Center - definitely watch the main film (which just continuously runs) and also plan to see one of the daily cultural performances. The one we saw was so good and definitely worth planning around.
If you’re headed through these parts in South Dakota I went ahead and compiled a list of some books that may be perfect to read before or after your trip. Just a quick disclaimer-I haven’t read all of the books on this list, but I am hoping to go back and read some of these stories (especially the Lakota ones) now that we’ve been to these places. You can visit the link here or click the button below.
FAQs about RV Trips
What kind of trailer do you have?
We have a 2012 Keystone Hideout 31BHS. It is the model with four bunks and one slide out. I have a video tour of it on my PNW story highlight on Instagram.
We want to travel like this - where do we start?
It makes a lot of sense to rent a RV and try traveling like this before investing in the whole set up. One thing I don’t think people realize is how much work is involved in packing and prepping a trailer and cleaning it after. I always try to allow myself a full day to prepare/pack before a trip (plus multiple other days to prepare for that day - like doing laundry and prepping food) and then at least one full day to recover/unpack after a trip. Traveling like this can take time and experience to get the hang of so that is one con about renting…if you don’t have a good experience - try again a few times before ruling it completely out.
Always always always plan short little trips for your first adventures so you can learn about your vehicle. Also make sure you’re relatively close to a store because you’ll probably forget something. I always keep an ongoing list of things we need to get for the trailer before a trip and during a trip. I don’t think I’ve ever made it through a trip without forgetting something we need.
My husband grew up learning how to pull trailers and has a lot of experience maintaining them. If this is all new to you - make sure to watch some YouTube videos and be prepared for there to be a learning curve. It’ll take time and practice, but it’s definitely something a lot of people learn to do.
How do you plan your itinerary for trips like this?
We either map out the whole trip and make reservations ahead of time or we get a rough idea of what we want to do along the way and wing it. There are pros and cons to both. If you plan and reserve everything ahead of time - it is nice to know where you’re going and know you always have a place to camp. We avoid long trips during tourist season, but if you’re traveling during a busy time - you may want to stick with reservations. The con with reservations and mapping everything out is that it can be really overwhelming to plan and then you’re tied to those plans unless you’re willing to lose money on reservations.
If you wing it, the pro is that you can move at your own pace. Sometimes we find we’re ready to move on sooner than we thought and sometimes we find we want to explore more or take a down day. The con to this is that sometimes it can be stressful finding a place to stay at the last minute. On big trips like this we focus less on where we stay and more on what sites we’re going to see, but if we take the RV out to camp and relax then we’ll make sure to find a place we for sure want to enjoy.
Having traveled both ways we usually prefer to map out our main destination and have a rough idea of what we’re going to do and then just go for it and see what unfolds.
How do you know where to stay?
We use Campendium. This will show you where you can park for free (BLM dispersed camping or places like truck stops/Wal-Mart parking lots), paid RV parks, and dump and water stations. It also will tell you whether the site has full, partial or no hook-ups.
Is it really cheaper to travel like this?
For longer distance RV trips, yes. Shorter trips - not always. Depending on how you travel for longer distances lodging, food, flight, and a car rental can just eat up money quickly. But, for shorter one destination trips the gas vs hotel costs can be similar. When we know we want to visit a certain place we almost always price out both options ahead of time. Last year when we went to San Diego - it was just about the same cost to drive our van and get a hotel on the beach as it would’ve been in gas and a reservation at a RV park so we didn’t bring the RV then. It would’ve cost us almost double to fly. But, a trip like this where we went a long way it would’ve been way more expensive to pay for lodging/food or even to fly and get a car rental. The con is that it does take more time to drive, but, fortunately, we can often make it work with my husband’s work schedule.
Final Thoughts
The nice thing about traveling via RV is we have the opportunity to learn a lot! We can learn about these things in books and videos all day, but there is just something so neat about being able to step foot on the grounds and see these places in person. Let me know if you guys have any other questions!
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