COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. Everything has been impacted. How we live and interact with each other, how we work and communicate, how we move around and travel. Most of 2020 was identifying and understanding the virus and scientists made breakthrough by getting vaccines created and available for everyone.
Starting March 2020, we experience new way of working – Work from Home and Study from Home. In summer of 2021, things started improving (?), we got our Pfizer vaccination shots and started planning for much needed break from WFH routine.
Even after vaccinations, we were little skeptical about air travel and decided to take road trip. We visited Yellowstone National Park in 2012, but felt another visit is due and started planning.
To justify the long drive, we decided to cover attractions like – Badland National Park, Wind Cave National Park, Mount Rushmore, Needles highway (must visit if you are visiting Mount Rushmore), Devils Towers, Yellowstone National Park, Trail Ridge Road, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Trail Ridge Road, Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre, Mount Evans, Pikes Peak and Royal Gorge. We drove 4932 miles in 15 days and visited all our planned attractions.
Many of these attractions have added timed tickets and need advance booking. Make sure to reserve your slot on https://www.recreation.gov/
Well, planning is most important thing when it comes to long drives but given Covid situation, it became much more critical. Traveling during a pandemic requires a more detailed and cautious approach than before. We went through many online channels to learn about how to minimize risk during travel. We were mindful of every possible scenario, we could encounter. By taking a proactive approach, we felt we can keep ourselves safe. We created everyday precautionary list which we religiously followed during our trip and it worked to keep us safe.
Stay & Food – for most of our trip, we stayed in Cabins allowing us to minimize exposure with others and kitchen facility allowed us not to have dining needs in restaurants. We made sure to sanitize our Cabins before entering every day. We used picnic areas in all the national parks for lunch / snack breaks. Being Vegetarian, we carried groceries and used local produce stores to get fruits and vegetables.
Medical kit – Due to Covid-19, our regular medical travel kit was expanded to allow us ample supply of sanitizers and other medicines in case someone falls sick on the tour. We carried our hygiene kits with mask, sanitizer and handwash for daily use.
Visiting Attractions – It was summer and rush time in most of the places. We used online resources to plan out our daily activities, created custom attraction maps and hiking trails which allowed us to keep away from visitor center rush. Almost in all parks, we found people ignorant of CDC guidelines…we kept safe distance for our safety.
Our summer trip itinerary:
Day 01 – 12-hour drive from Bloomington IL to Badlands National Park
Day 02 – Badlands National Park
Day 03 – Badlands till noon then to Wind Cave National Park and Mt Rushmore night lighting
Day 04 – Custer State Park, Needles Highway, Mt Rushmore hike, Drive to Cody WY via Devils Tower
Day 05 – Yellowstone National Park Day 01
Day 06 – Bear Tooth Pass and Yellowstone National Park day 02
Day 07 – Yellowstone National Park Day 03 and Drive to Jackson hole WY
Day 08 – Grand Teton Day 1
Day 09 – Grand Teton Day 2
Day 10 – Drive to Denver CO
Day 11 – Trail Ridge Road and Rocky Mountain National Park
Day 12 – Pikes Peak and Royal Gorge
Day 13 – Red Rocks Amphitheater and Mount Evans
Day 14 – Denver to Drive to Bloomington IL
