The End of the Road

The final leg of the trip saw us heading northeast across the middle of the country, generally aiming for Michigan but meandering just a little along the way.

Golden Eagle

Exiting Utah into Wyoming put us on a high cold plain for hundreds of miles. Our goal was Devil’s Tower in northeast Wyoming, so we crossed the state in a couple of days. While heading for a camping spot, Molly spotted an eagle on a telephone pole and thought it may have been a Golden. Pulling a U-turn in our bus is not the easiest maneuver, but I’m glad we did because sure enough: big Golden Eagle. We had seen one in Organ Pipe National Monument, but it was quite far away and I could not get a photo. This one thankfully stayed in place long enough for us to get set up, and then flew several close loops. A wonderful experience.

Devil’s Tower National Monument

Not much to say about this, it was just very cool!

Prairie dogs on the approach

There’s a walking path around the tower, so here it is from several angles. Also, someone climbing it!

Wind Cave National Park

If we weren’t so National Park focused, we would’ve gone to Custer State Park at this point. There’s enough stuff in this area to warrant a return visit someday. Wind Cave itself is a small park, and there’s not much to do other than the cave tour. But the cave tour is good!

Here’s Molly enjoying the cave tour. My ranking of the three National Park cave tours we did on the trip would be:

It will be interesting to go to Mammoth Caves someday and see where it ranks.

I tried something more abstract with this set of images, I think to some success.

Badlands National Park

Sage Creek Campground

We entered Badlands from the southwest, which is kind of the back way in, but that meant we came across this free first-come-first-served campground inside the park, with bison roaming freely among the campers.

I want to point something out about this first photo: as we stood near our bus, watching the sunset and the bison graze, it hit us both that this was the end of the trip. We had about a week of travel yet to get home, but the next day we’d be leaving Badlands, our 36th and final National Park. I’m glad we had such a sight to mark the occasion.

Rim Road

It was very cold and completely overcast the next day, so our plan was mostly to drive the Rim Road and stop at whatever overlooks caught our eye. The photography was difficult in these conditions, but I think I made the best of it.

Bighorn Sheep Interlude

The sun came out by the time we made it to the east side of the park, so we did get in a short hike through a little notch canyon.

Smith Falls: The Tallest Waterfall in Nebraska

It’s alright.

Pikes Peak State Park

Alright everyone, here we are: the last photos of the trip. We had two more nights in the bus after this, but we spent them snowed in in a park in Wisconsin, so no photos there. Pikes Peak gives you a high overview of the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers, which is funny because we currently live on the Mississippi River, just 160 miles or so north of this spot.

I don’t have some grand summary of our travels or experiences to share here, but I thought I’d collect some random thoughts as I write this 6 months removed from the end of the trip:

We hit 36 National Parks, which means there’s 27 left for us to visit. There’s a couple that we’ll probably never get to (Virgin Islands, American Samoa). There’s 3 in Colorado and 5 in California that we’ll definitely hit someday. And we’ll see about the rest!
We spent at least one night in 46 of the 48 continental states. Somehow we missed Kentucky and Arkansas. Luckily there’s a National Park in each of those that we also missed, so we have goals.
The Southwest was my favorite region, and I’m glad we got to visit it twice. On the other hand, I could only handle it for about a month before I needed to leave and see some trees and lakes.
Washington was my favorite state, the ecosystem diversity is just unmatched.
Maine and upstate New York were great, but in general I don’t feel a strong need to revisit much in the eastern half of the country. Too flat and too dense. I would like to explore the Carolinas more, I don’t think we gave them enough time.
After doing a complete circuit of the country, it simultaneously feels smaller, but also like there’s so much more to explore.
We generally avoided cities, but we did spend some time in: Detroit, Wichita, San Francisco, Portland, Boise, Bismarck, Cleveland, Buffalo, Syracuse, Boston, Providence, and Tampa. I wouldn’t mind doing a more city-focused trip some day, but I’d want a slightly more zippy vehicle.
Of course I would recommend that anyone who has the means and desire to take a trip like this should do so. The time, effort, and expense to build our bus and travel for a year with no income was absolutely worth it. On the other hand, re-integrating into “normal” life has been more difficult than I expected, and I wish there was some way we could have done it more gradually.
I took just over 30,000 photos (not counting the ones that I deleted immediately), which really is not that much for a trip of this length. I tried to be a little judicious, and to be honest this was not a photography-focused trip. While my photography definitely improved, I think my progress was hindered by constantly having to adjust to environments that were completely new to me. Still, I’ve obviously made some images that I’m immensely proud of. If anything, my ability to compose and shoot on the fly got the biggest improvement.
And that’s it! I’ll still be posting photo blogs here, just more local stuff from our new home of Minnesota. I’ve unfortunately missed all the amazing auroras we had this summer, but we’re heading into fall bird migration and autumn colors, so I hope to get out more.