Best Way to Road Trip Through Montana, Wyoming and Dakotas

Oh howdy it's Kyle with another road trip video this time on Montana Wyoming and the Dakota is in this is a great road trip route if you want to see out of national park some really cool scene you're eating a lot of good variety with the scenery as well with the higher elevation national parks of Montana and Wyoming and the lower elevation parks in the Badlands of the Western Dakota so just a really cool route all around so if you're interested in doing a road trip route that's largely focused on outdoors type stuff and this is a great one to do and in this video I'm gonna go over the route itself some of the highlights some of the best things to see and just the you know how you can get the most out of your road trip to this part of the country most people live east of here so if you're doing this road trip route you're likely to be coming from the east and heading west and you can go in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction it doesn't really matter but in the end your route well probably and it looking kind of like a see as you use interstates 90 and 94 as you're out and back and of course if you're coming from California or Texas or the southeast or something your route will look a lot different but again in this video I'm going to cover as if you're starting east of here and heading west if you're heading west along i-90 through South Dakota the first National Park you'll be near is Badlands and badlands is a beautiful National Park and certainly worth stopping at on your road trip and it's also a nice reward after your long drive along i-90 through Minnesota and eastern South Dakota boats are both really boring to drive through but western South Dakota is very pretty and you know again Badlands is somewhere you're gonna want to stop and it's a great National Park for a short visit you can get a lot out of it in just one day you can drive the main road through the park there's a lot of cool spots to stop at quite a cool viewpoints but there's also a lot of real short hikes so when I was there and did a large number of really short distance hikes and just I got a lot out of the park that way so you can see some pretty cool Badlands scenery without going way back into the backcountry but you can go into the backcountry at badlands but it really isn't worth it's kind of hard to get back there but make sure you do see the main part of the park when you go on this road trip so don't skip badlands just about every National Park has a gateway town at the entrance and badlands is no different the Gateway town is wall home of the world-famous wall drug and you'll see a million billboards for this as you do this road trip route and just a giant indoor all of just cheesy tacky touristy Kitsch I mean it's it's really cheesy but you have to visit there you can't possibly do this road trip route and not stop at the wall drug and if you're not going to be camping at Badlands you're probably gonna end up staying in the town of wall anyway there's not much there's a few restaurants few motels couple of gas stations kind of thing but while you're there do your duty as an American and visit Walter ugh heading west out of the Badlands you'll start to ascend into the Black Hills and the Black Hills are gorgeous I really enjoy visiting there and most people know the Black Hills for two things Mount Rushmore and Devil's Tower and although I do think those are both worth stopping at on your road trip there's so much more to see in the Black Hills so don't limit your time and that reason to just those two spots and you know you're not going to spend all that much time with either one of them there's limited amount of things to do in either spot so make sure you get a chance to explore the Black Hills a little bit more because there's a lot more to it than just Mount Rushmore in Devil's Tower Mount Rushmore is the ultimate walk up to it take a picture and walk back attraction there really isn't a whole lot to do there there's a visitor center small museums some interactive displays but you know you can't hike to the top of the mountain there really isn't a whole lot you can do around there so and even though you're listening to go there take a picture and have someone take a picture of you in front of it I still think it's definitely worth stopping it I mean you can't possibly do this road trip or not see Mount Rushmore you've seen it a million times in pictures what looks way cooler in person but one thing to note don't make this the focal point of your trip it's not gonna be the highlight of your trip at all because it really isn't a whole lot to see there so don't plan on Mount Rushmore being the highlight so if we disappointed little underwhelmed with it don't worry there's still plenty of other really cool things to see on this road trip route Devil's Tower is another really well known attraction in the Black Hills region and I do think it's worth stopping at and saxing the northeastern corner of Wyoming but you're pretty close to the South Dakota border so if you're making your Black Hills home base and Rapid City or one of the other you know Black Hills towns you can easily get to Devil's Tower on a short trip but just like Mount Rushmore there really isn't as much to do there as you might think you know there's a visitor center there's a couple of really short hiking trails that go around the base of the tower various distances you can get different kinds of views and it's we're seeing is real from a geologic perspective it's just a really interesting site but just like Mount Rushmore don't plan on this being the highlight of your trip and don't make Devil's Tower the focal point of your road trip because there's just so much more to see along this route and in the Black Hills region specifically Black Hills National Forest is not a national park but it might as well be because the scenery is just as nice and if you want to do some nice hiking in the backcountry then the Black Elk wilderness is a great place to do it a lot of cool trails there at some of the higher elevations and there's also a trail up to Mount Baldy which is you know the mountain right next to Mount Rushmore and you can hike to the top of that you won't be able to see the faces of Mount Rushmore you'll be behind the mountain itself but it is a pretty cool trail to go up there and see the you know the Mount Rushmore area from a higher elevation but again even though you want me to see the faces there are also a couple of cave national parks and the reason as well wind cave and jewel cave which is actually nast Amani but anyway I can't recommend stopping both on your road trip but I do recommend stopping at one or the other and it's hard to say which one is better to stop at because they're both beautiful caves and they both have guided tours and you know they both have that easier walking tours to the part of the cave that has lights and handrails and stairs and you know pretty accessible for most people and they both have the wild cave tours where you put on some knee pads and helmets with lights and you go crawling around the back parts of the cave you go through some tight squeezes you know you really test your claustrophobia on some of that stuff but that's all but he's not gonna be for everybody but if you're a little more adventurous I'm not going to try that out and I'm a caver myself so it's really easy to say yeah you go through the wild cave tour at both but you know okay that's talking to you for everybody but I do recommend visiting one or the other Wind Cave has some hiking trails on the surface so if you don't want to go inside the cave itself there are some no trails you can do above the cave and the scenery isn't spectacular there but it's pretty cool to know that you're hiking on top of one of the world's largest caves and if you're a National Park collector you might want to go to wind cave because again it's a national park whereas jewel cave is a national mourning but anyway when you're in the Black Hills region do consider checking out one of the cave national parks if you're taking the backroads across Wyoming thérèse and national parks you'll go through the town of jacks before you get to grand teton Jackson's the gateway talent to the park and it's a neat little town it's got some nice history to it they really play up their Old West history even though nowadays kind of an upscale tourist resort but there's a lot of national park visitors during the summer and fall and a lot of skiers during the winter and spring so the town can take on a completely different character depending on the time of year you're there but if you're doing this throat if you're probably going to be doing it during the summer and fall to visit the national parks know if you're not going to be camping is hyda Park you'll probably be staying at a motel in Jackson there's some nice shops there some restaurants and bars and stuff if you are going to be camping inside the park you're going to be driving through Jackson anyway so you might want to stop there to stock up on food or maybe hit some of the shops but whether or not you're gonna stop in Jackson you're gonna be driving right through it heading north from Jackson you'll enter Grand Teton National Park and this is a beautiful place and somewhere you're definitely gonna want to stop on your road trip through the region and if you're going to be staying in Jackson and then visiting Yellowstone you're gonna be driving right through the park as the main road goes right through it and because of that all the folks don't really stop there they think oh we can just see the whole park from the car on our way to Yellowstone which is what we really want to see you but you know don't do that there's a lot of cool stuff to see in Grand Teton and you won't have to get way out of the car and go way back into the backcountry if you want to see some pretty cool stuff there's a few spots where there's a couple of trail heads we're out the side of the road you can do a kind of a short hike one two miles or so and to kind of stretch your legs a little bit there's a couple of really nice picnic spots with you right next to a lake there's some really beautiful stuff to see just kind of chill out a little bit but you'll want to you know maybe do a little bit of hiking or walking and Grand Teton because it won't be as crowded Yellowstone is gonna be really crowded the matter when you go there so if you want to have a chance to kind of get away from the crowds a little bit you know not the elbow people want to you know wherever you go you know you can do that a little more on Grand Teton than you can in Yellowstone but either way stop and grant he's a beautiful place and some of you're not going to want to skip north of Grand Teton is the granddaddy of them all Yellowstone and if you're doing this road trip there's a pretty good chance at Yellowstone is the number one thing you want to see on this route and for good reason this place is absolutely gorgeous it's just a wonderful place to visit the geothermal features you'll see you know like nothing else you'll see on the surface of planet Earth it's just a geologic Wonderland it's beautiful but it is very busy there'll be a ton of people there and you're gonna be elbowing people left and right so don't expect any solitude whatsoever while you're in Yellowstone we were there and made it was crazy busy and you know the parking lot for the Old Faithful geyser areas like the size of a football stadium parking lot it was like three floors full and May so places got to be a complete Zoo during the summertime but don't let that deter you because you know there's a reason why it's so popular you can't see this stuff you'll see there anywhere else so the scenery is gorgeous the geothermal features are awesome there's a so much stuff to see and do there but it's a really big park it's way bigger than Grand Teton so if you're staying on the west side of the park or the north side of the park where bees are staying it takes a lot longer to drive to the other end than you might think and you know that it's a two-lane highway people are driving real slow there might be bumper-to-bumper traffic even and you know there'll be plenty of times the traffic is just dead stopped and of course national parks are about the only place in the world where you kind of want there to be traffic dead stop because that means or something really cool to see you up side of the road so that happened to us and we were there there was a you know mama bear with me a couple of Cubs off the side of the road and leave over to stop there we were there probably for half an hour you couldn't move so you know you get it will be blown to put up with that kind of stuff but you know I hate big crowds I hate being around you know being out in nature but having all the people there but I didn't mind at all at Yellowstone because the place is just so cool I I loved it it was the highlight for me of our road trip for this region so I think it probably will be for you too but there's no way you can get away with spending just one day in Yellowstone there's no way there's just way too much to see and do there if you're doing this road trip you might be on the road for maybe a couple of weeks so if you're in a two-week road trip you have no excuse not spend at least two or three days in Yellowstone it's a beautiful spot so make sure you take the time to spend in Yellowstone because you'll definitely love it of course the most famous attraction at Yellowstone is the Old Faithful geyser and this is where you're gonna see by far the largest crowds there this be a million people hanging out around there and Old Faithful is by no means the most spectacular guys are in the park but it's you know it's all faithful it's you know they pretty know when it's going to erupt so it's the only guys your basically guarantee guaranteed to see erupt him you know we saw it go off it was pretty cool sometimes can be better than others I've heard times or that's kind of a dud but it was alright we did the little walk around it and it was you know a little one to two mile really easy walk but then all of a sudden another geyser erupts just right as we're walking by it and it was like it was it was so cool and this guys are only erupts like every two to five days so very erratic schedule and again just happen to start when we were walking by and I got some footage of it with my phone it's not the best footage ever because I was you know watching it with my eyes and holding the phone next to my head so it isn't always centered but it was the highlight of our trip to see this guys are corrupt right in front of us it was just it was spectacular and so you probably won't get lucky like we did but it was really cool that part of the park was just really cool place to see a lot of steam vents and you'll mud boiling in the ground there's a lot of cool interesting just surreal geologic features and there's another part of the park called the Norris Geyser Basin and I thought this was the best part of the park and interestingly enough that wasn't many people there it was only part of the park we went to were it wasn't crazy crowded so again you might it's gotten lucky I don't know but if you're gonna go make sure you check out the Norris Geyser Basin there's a lot of cool features there it's a it's an easy walk but it's you know I don't know again I know why it wasn't anywhere near as busy but you do check it out there's all kinds of cool geologic deal with thermal features there you'll you'll be amazed wherever you go all kinds of spots you can just pull off a side of the road just do a real short walk see all kinds and just more surreal features so yeah you'll have a great time in Yellowstone seeing things you won't see anywhere else on earth after visiting Yellowstone you can head north and on into Montana and if you're interested in visiting Glacier National Park it's on the other end of Montana right on the Canadian border so it's check see a lot farther from Yellowstone than you might think it's about 400 miles away so it is pretty far but is it worth going out of the way to visit Glacier well yeah it's a beautiful national parks why I do recommend it but if you don't want to go that far and you want to see some really nice Montana Rocky Mountain scenery you don't have to go all the way into Glacier there's a lot of national forest areas like you know flatheads and Lewis and Clark National Forest and a ton of state parks and stuff and I haven't done really any hiking or backpacking or camping in those national forest areas but you know I pet they're beautiful it's Montana so you can get some pretty cool scenery without having to go all the way up to Glacier but if you do you'll be rewarded with some pretty cool scenery cuz Glacier National Park is a gorgeous place there are two main entrances to later National Park there is a west entrance and an east entrance and if you're going to be visiting any other time of the year it's in the summer I believe only the west entrance will be open when we visited in early May we couldn't enter from the east we Lea to come in from the west and the road that connects the two was called the going-to-the-sun road and I believe that's only open from about Memorial Day to Labor Day so it's a pretty short window of time where you can see the entire park but the park is so huge you can still see quite a bit if you only can see the west part of the park there's you know gorgeous lake there there's some hiking trails along rivers I mean just really cool stuff to see you know on the water a lot of glaciers so it's just a beautiful national park so if you're gonna be visiting in the spring or fall again you won't wait to see the entire park but don't let that keep you from visiting because there's still plenty stuff to see even though the the central part of the park will be closed so yeah Glacier National Park don't skip it if you're doing this road trip route and a clockwise direction then after visiting lacer National Park or maybe some of the National Forest in western Montana you can head east along i-94 and on into North Dakota not long after hitting the North Dakota border you're gonna reach a town of Medora which is the gateway talented Theodore Roosevelt National Park and that's somewhere else you're gonna definitely want to stop on your road trip I really love Theodore Roosevelt National Park it's just a wonderful place to visit the scenery is quite a bit different than what you're gonna see in the Rocky Mountains or in the South Dakota badlands you're up in the North Dakota badlands here and all the folks that do this roadtrip route return along Interstate 90 and just skip going through North Dakota because they assumed it was North Dakota it was gonna be there but it's actually very very beautiful so most of North Dakota is pretty flat and featureless but the Western third of the state is quite beautiful and this park is gorgeous you know you got a lot of great hiking trail some short ones some long ones and we've done several hiking trails at this park and we've never seen anybody else on any of the trails and there'll be a few people at the park is just not of anywhere near as highly visited as any of the other parks along this route it's just truly gorgeous him you'll see a ton of bison at this park as well and that's why I didn't mention a place called Custer State Park and the Black Hills in South Dakota because the main draw there is to see a bunch of bison you'll drive through the park and nobody's surrounding your car which is pretty cool but there really isn't much else to see or do there at Theodore Roosevelt National Park you'll see just as many if not more bison but there's just so much else to see and do there I don't think it's worth seeing Custer if you're gonna see a Theodore Roosevelt so you know that's that's just my personal opinion but you'll see a lot of while out there we saw it again ton of bison ton of prairie dogs a bunch of wild horses which is pretty cool and you know a lot of bald eagles too so I just a lot of cool wildlife we had a really good time at Theodore Roosevelt so don't think because it's North Dakota it's gonna be lame it actually is quite beautiful so don't skip Theodore Roosevelt National Park there's a South unit and a North unit to the park and the South unit won't have many people there and the North unit will have even less there won't be anybody there at all and if you want to get some nice solitude on this trip and that's a great place to do it you won't see many folks there at all just a beautiful place you know the town outside the park is called Madore and it's like the cutest little town you're ever gonna see just a few little streets you know there's a couple of motels couple of restaurants and bars and just a few shops on the Main Street to the town there might be a thousand people to live there but yeah Medora cute little town Theodore Roosevelt National Park great National Park so that will pretty much complete your clockwise c-shaped route through this region once you get east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park it gets pretty flat and featureless pretty boring so bring plenty of mountain dew with you because you're gonna be going through a lot of it but this is a fantastic road trip route just gorgeous scenery all along the way the Rocky Mountains the North and South Dakota Badlands the Black Hills a ton of wildlife there's a lot of really cool things to see the only real negative with this route is that there's a pretty small window of time with which you can do it you pretty much have to do this route between May and Gober as during the winter and spring there's going to be you know not many facilities open most the amenities are not going to be available so and even in May and October themselves there's going to be a lot of stuff that's closed and you might not be able to get to a lot of the parks there but so other than that you it is a wonderful route if the only time of the year you have to do road trip route is during the fall winter or spring and you want to do an outdoors oriented trip I do recommend doing the four-corners route in the southwestern US and I do have a video about that as well so you can check that out if your interest and seeing that but if you are going to go again between May and October and this is a fantastic route to do but do know that even in the summertime it can be July make sure you bring cold weather clothes bring stuff for snow but it can be 65 degrees one minute and then snowing and freezing the next so just be prepared for any type of inclement weather any time of the year I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give me a thumbs up to let me know it was okay and if you're interested in this kind of stuff I'm posting a lot of videos on my channel about road trips and us traveling to some other nerdy geography stuff so check it out of that kind of stuff interests you but yeah thanks for watching y'all give eqing signing out and about to go drink some free ice water from wall drug you

Channel: Geography King

Views: 289,898

Keywords: best way to road trip, Montana, Wyoming, Dakotas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier, Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, mr. beat, nick johnson, world according to briggs, traveling robert, wolters world, geography, geography king

Id: diTBXTaY4r0

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2017