TP Trails

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

From our Long Beach Island vacation, we really wanted to get out west as quickly as possible with a few fun stops and side trips along the way. Our first such stop was Pittsburgh (about 6.5-hour drive) for two reasons: one, Patrick wanted to show me the University of Pittsburgh’s (Pitt) campus (where he went to college) and two, Patrick’s aunt and uncle live in Pittsburgh, so we would get to visit with them for the night (with bed and shower included). At Pitt, we did the a self-guided audio tour of the nationality classrooms in the Cathedral of Learning, specifically. Definitely the campus highlight! Each room was designed to reflect the culture of each specific county. Artists/craftsmen from each country were consulted and building materials were imported for the construction of each room. The tour of Pitt’s campus was followed by dinner at his aunt and uncle’s house (although his aunt was out of town at the time). His uncle cooked us a delicious dinner and breakfast the next morning!

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Indiana Dunes National Park (Indiana)

The next morning, we headed off to Indiana Dunes National Park. This is a new national park as of 2019. It turns out that Indiana’s political figures pushed for the change from a national lakeshore to national park in order to promote tourism, but this was opposed by the national park service since “lakeshore” was deemed more appropriate. The state ended up winning this argument, and thus, we visited the national park. We stayed at the campgrounds, site #24. The campgrounds were wooded, with large campsites and privacy/distance from other sites. Our site was a reasonable distance from the bathrooms (there are only one per loop, so take note if this is important to you), but right across the from the trash dumpster (good and bad). The campground showers were not the nicest I’ve seen, but at least they have them! Upon our arrival to Indiana Dunes, we set up camp and then headed to the beaches along Lake Michigan. I’ve seen Lake Michigan from Chicago but was still surprised just how large the lake is – it’s as if you are sitting on the ocean beach. The first beach we tried (Central Ave Beach) was crowded and the beach was not very wide – in most areas there wasn’t even a place to sit because the slope of the dunes starts right at the water’s edge. We decided to try a different beach (Kemil Beach), which had a much wider beach, so we were able to lay our towels out and relax by the water. Note that parking at both of these beaches is very limited, even arriving in the late afternoon (after 5 pm). Dinner was chicken (with one of Patrick’s uncle’s rub on it from LBI) and mac & cheese. Simple, but good.

Madison, Wisconsin

Next up on our trek west was Madison, Wisconsin. Indiana Dunes to Madison was only a 3.5-hour drive (our shortest on this part of our journey by far!). So we took our time getting up, making breakfast, and heading to Madison. We got to Madison in the early afternoon to explore the small, cute town. We started with a snack stop at Paul’s Pel’meni, which serves beef and potato dumplings. They are topped with chili sauce, curry powder, and cilantro and served with a side of sour cream. Very delicious and we highly recommend! We then walked around the University of Wisconsin’s campus, or part of it at least since the entire campus is very large. The campus is situated next to Lake Mendota, so the views are beautiful, as is the campus itself. We then headed back towards the state capitol building (beautiful architecture). We stopped in the Old Fashioned with is across from the state capitol building for some dinner. Since we were in Wisconsin, we felt we should try the beer, cheese, and sausage. So we got a few tasters of each! With our belly’s full, we headed to our campsite for the night – a reservation on hipcamp at Red Lily Orchard, which was just outside of Madison. We were going to set up tent on Renee’s farm for the night. When we arrived, Renee greeted us and let us know that a bad storm was moving in and would hit the area in the middle of the night. Fortunately, she happened to have an Airbnb cancellation for the night, so there was an open bedroom if we were interested in upgrading. Since we weren’t sure how our tent would hold up in the thunderstorms (with hail potential), we took her up on her offer and stayed in the bedroom, which also had its own bathroom – quite an unexpected treat! And when it started storming in the middle of the night, we knew we had made the right decision. In the morning, we walked around the corn field and said hello to the animals (horse, four sheep, chickens, and a dog), and continued on our way.

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Sioux Falls, South Dakota

After Red Lily Orchard, we had no reservations/plans lined up, so we decided to try to make it to Sioux Falls, SD for the night (a 6.5-hour drive). We searched on hipcamp and found another farm in this area – the Good Earth Farm. Nancy and Jeff happily welcomed us even though we booked so last minute! Nancy gave us a tour of the farm upon our arrival and showed us the best camping spots. We decided on a spot near the pet animals (two miniature donkeys, one miniature pony, one miniature cow, numerous chickens (over 20), 5-10 outdoor cats, two dogs, and two pigs (Harold and Charlie). The pigs were my favorite. Both were probably about 800 pounds and were very camera friendly! We made ground beef tacos for dinner and had a nice fire once it got dark. Nancy and Jeff also had a port-a-potty on the property for our use. We were again reminded that we were in the mid-west when Jeff came out to let us know that the storms would likely miss us tonight, but if not, he would come get us so we could all get in the cellar. Fortunately, there was only some light rain during the night, so we did not need to seek safe shelter.

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Badlands National Park and Black Hills National Forest (South Dakota)

Our next stop on our trip was Badlands National Park and Black Hills National Forest (Mount Rushmore). Along the way, we kept seeing signs for Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, so we figured we had to stop. It was some sort of gymnasium with corn murals on the walls – each mural was done with actual corn cobs and husks! There was free entry and a gift shop was set up in the center court of the gymnasium. A quick, fun stop, then on to Badlands. The first views of the Badlands after we drove through the park gates were unexpectedly breathtaking. Giant colorful rock formations adjacent to just as colorful canyons – really beautiful! We stopped at Cedar Pass campground, which is located at the eastern end of the park along the scenic tour road of the Badlands. We arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon, and all the sites at this campground were full. So, we continued across the scenic route (stopping at almost every overlook to take more pictures) to the western end of the park to get to Sage campground. The last 10 miles or so to the campground were dirt road (you can also stay right and exit the park instead of continuing onto the campground). Sage campground is completely free and when we arrived, there were still a few sites available! We signed into the visitor’s book and set up our tent to claim our site (#24). I wouldn’t say there are better or worse sites at this campground, maybe just based on location to the pit toilets at either end of the loop – they are all very close together, with no privacy, since you are just on the plains. There were many uprairie dogs that had set up their homes in the campground, so you just had to be careful not to set up your tent on top of one of their holes! It was already pretty late since we took our time driving through the scenic road (about 2 hours), so we immediately started to cook dinner. On tonight’s menu was fish tacos. We ended the night reading, watching the sunset over the adjacent rock formations. We highly recommend a visit to this park! There are also some hikes, that we unfortunately, didn’t have time to explore. One hike that was recommended was Notch Trail.

We woke up early at Sage campground (mostly because you can hear your neighbors very well). But we had wanted to get an early start anyways. Through the entire state of South Dakota, we had seen billboards advertising for Wall Drug, a cowboy themed mall of sorts. One of these advertisements was 5₵ coffee, so of course, it had to be our first stop of the day (plus it was at the western end of Badlands in Wall, SD). Turns out, the coffee was 65₵ if you took it to go, but still a great deal for a 20 oz. coffee. Wall Drug had a lot of kitschy items but also had some great old photos/newspaper clippings of the history of South Dakota, which were interesting to browse. We didn’t stay for too long though, as we wanted to get over to the Black Hills National Forest. A few friends had told us about an annual 10-day motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD, which happened to be occurring during our visit. Again, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see the rally in action. So we headed there next. As we got closer to Sturgis, the number of motorcycles on the freeway increased. Sturgis is a small town, and it was overwhelmed with motorcycles! The main roads were lined with tents set up with motorcycle gear/equipment, food trucks, tattoo shops, and more. Since we were there early in the morning, the rally wasn’t at its peak attendance/craziness, but the timing didn’t work out for us to be there at night (when concerts were happening as well – Toby Keith was the headliner for the night we were there). We browsed the motorcycles and the tents for about an hour, and then decided to head on to Black Hills.

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We took the scenic route and encountered only motorcycles for the entire drive (and maybe three other cars). The scenic route is definitely worth the drive. The ultimate destination was of course, Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore was the main reason for our selected northern route to get out west. Patrick had never seen it before, and I had seen it as a child. You can see the four carved presidential heads on the drive approaching the actual visitor’s center. We pulled over to take a picture. It’s a $10 fee to actually park and go up to the visitor’s center, which we paid for (since again, this was the reason for our visit). Unfortunately, the path that you can walk up to get closer to the monument was closed for renovations, so we had to take pictures behind a construction fence. Overall, probably not worth the $10, but still cool to see! We didn’t stay for very long as it is a very touristy spot and once you take your pictures, there’s not much else to do. Note that there are a lot of other activities near the monument itself (zipline, adventure park, many caves to explore). Since we are on a budget, we had to pass on some of these activities, but they would probably be great for kids! I also had explored the caves when I visited as a child.

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With our visit to Mount Rushmore complete by early afternoon, we had a decision to make – stay in the Black Hills National Forest for the night and maybe do a short afternoon hike, or continue on to Grand Teton (and drive as far as we felt like). We opted for the latter and started driving to Grand Teton, as we were eagerly awaiting this part of our trip. We quickly crossed into Wyoming and the landscape became quite desolate. We were glad we had elected to fill up on gas leaving Black Hills because there was nothing for miles in Wyoming. Because of this, we ended up driving about 6.5 hours to Dubois, WY, which is about an hour east of Grand Teton. We had to fill up on gas in Dubois and saw a KOA (Kampground of America) behind the gas station. It was already late and we were both hungry, so we checked to see if the KOA had any availability. There were two vacant tent sites, so we were in luck! If we had gotten there earlier in the day, we likely would have continued on to Horse Creek campground (a free campground located in Shoshone National Forest, about 20 miles from Dubois). The woman that helped us at the KOA said that area near the campground is very pretty, so she would recommend it in the future. For us though, we were ready to eat dinner and get some sleep after a long day. Tomorrow would be another early morning to try to get a walk-in campsite in Grand Teton National Park.