ROAD TRIP: INTRO | my momma heart

Welcome to our Road Trip Series! If you are just joining, start here or scroll down for links to all the Road Trip Series posts.

Oh, friends. I wasn’t totally sure what we had gotten ourselves into, but last summer we kept throwing around the idea of a summer road trip back to Minnesota and somehow it stuck. So, we did it! I was hoping it’d be an epic adventure filled with family time, memory-making, and so much fun with our friends and family in the Midwest. In a dream world it would also NOT include: whining, arguing, pouting, yelling, or are-we-there-yets. A girl can dream, right? I knew all those things will happen but with some planning and organizing on the front-end, we can helped things run more smoothly and keep everyone [mostly] happy along the way.

There was so.much.planning. We did a hybrid trip that included both hotel stays and camping along the way. We were super excited to add more camping to our summer but this also came with some unique challenges. We packed for both camping and everyday life once we get to the Midwest. We decided to invest in a cargo box to help free up space in our vehicle. We had planned on getting one anyway since our camping trips and the boys’ legs are getting longer (so we can no longer shove things under their feet). I actually love having something to plan so this was fun..and then the weather decided to throw a wrench in our plans and as I looked ahead to camping in Yellowstone, it ended up being 25 degrees overnight. Oy. So we packed for camping, hotels, 25 degrees and 95 degrees, hiking, church, and everything in between. It was a bit crazy but we did it and after the week of travel, we actually all wanted to do more.

We have most of the camping gear we needed but we did invest in a travel grill and, like I mentioned above, a cargo box for the roof of our car. Because of the weather situation, we ended up buying some XL Ziploc bags. They fit our pillows and quilts (that will go inside sleeping bags) perfectly. To close, we laid on them to get as much air as possible out before pinching them shut. I expected them to pop right back open but they didn’t which helped us get even more space in our cargo box. I also made a run to the Dollar Tree since I had seen a ton of posts about what to grab there. I’ll list everything we got there as I go through the different categories of planning. I’ll break this up into different posts and try to keep it concise as possible (I know, not my strong point).

The first step was deciding a timeline. We knew we needed to be in Iowa by a certain date so that was easy. We knew we wanted at least a week to get there and that meant pulling the kids out of school before their last two days of school. I mean, come on, I was a teacher with lots of teacher friends. Not a lot was going to happen on that Monday and Tuesday. We started brainstorming places we wanted to make sure we visited. Yellowstone, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Grand Tetons and Badlands National Parks were all on our list but we knew we wouldn’t be able to, and absolutely did not want to, squeeze it all in. We are more the stay-and-wander type of explorers and we really like to not feel rushed. At first, we were going to hit up one of the parks with friends on the way back home but plans changed when they realized their kiddos were not quite ready for that kind of time in the car. So, we scrapped those plans and decided on Yellowstone and Badlands (and all the other South Dakota goodness) on the way in and in an epic twist decided to spend time with those previously mentioned friends in Door County, WI instead. I’m not going to lie; Door County was surprisingly beautiful!

As this point my planning notepad was filled with scribbles and crossing off and all the rewriting and it’s time to get the details locked down.

Follow along with us to see how we planned, prepped, and what adventures we had along the way.