From The Vault #4: Mt. Rushmore

Hello and welcome to the newest edition of From The Vault! The series where I go back and dredge up old, lost, or unwritten stories of my travels. In this edition I’m going to reconstruct the epic adventure to South Dakota with my good friend Ethan. This is quite possibly the first ever trip with an ‘Official Plan’. Before this, one could think of the plan as a scribble on a napkin and a hasty “Goodbye! I’ll be back soon!”

This was a big trip so I’m going off of pure memories, photos, photo timestamps, my google timeline, the Official Plan, and Ethan to write this post. Nothing will be left out. Anyways, I hope you find it interesting!

***Ethan is also making his first ever blog debut! I have given him special behind the scenes access to my blog site and anything that is in bold / italicized is actually him speaking.***

Background Info

I had been talking about this for ages and at some point Ethan started asking if I was actually going to go. Of course! It almost felt like I had to go after all that talking.

The original plan was to take 2 out of my 3 off days to drive up and see Rushmore, but Ethan thought that was insane so he kind of forced me to take 3 days. Good thing too because there was so much packed into those 3 days. This was about 2 weeks after I went to Kansas in 650ft Hole In The Ground. (link will open to the Kansas trip). As a seasoned veteran I was confident we could pull this off and still end up at work in one piece. At the time, this was the longest/most ambitious trip ever while working at Philmont.

Day 1

We left early at around 3 am. Ethan was tired, but it was necessary to leave so early in order see everything in one day. I thought I had planned everything out, but I failed to think of Denver rush hour traffic! You see, New Mexico doesn’t really have ‘rush hour’ per-se so I didn’t consider it at all. We got to Denver at roughly 8am, which happened to be peak ‘you are totally not moving for an hour’ time. After that we only had a few more hours until the first stop of the day: Cheyenne, WY.

The one in Pennsylvania seemed bigger.

Usually I try to cram in as many National Parks as possible into a day, but I also like to add weird things, interesting monuments, worlds largest, and other attractions to my trips. The Big Boy Steam Engine 4004 was one of these attractions. If you are caught up on my posts you might recall that I just visited a Big Boy steam engine in Pennsylvania. There are only 8 of them left in existence in the USA and now I have seen two of them! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot to do at the Cheyenne one since it was surrounded by a chain link fence and in a relatively quiet part of the city. After a few pictures we moved on.

All smiles after about 8 hours

Next up was Ft. Laramie National Historic Site. It took about 2 hours to arrive here from Cheyenne. Almost half of it was a nice relaxing drive north on I-25, but google maps wanted me to take a rather questionable ‘short cut’ by turning onto a gravel road in Wheatland, WY. This was before I really scanned street view when planning to see if the suggested route was worth it / even doable, so we went for it. It saved us 5 miles! Why not?

There’s always a lot of green grass at forts!

Well, it turned out to be a nice 34 mile gravel road through mostly farmland and nothing. Hooray! Anyways, eventually we arrived at Laramie. It started out as a fur trading post, but then it was bought by the U.S. Army and turned into a fort. Usually the Forts in the mid/southwest are manned by the U.S. Army and served as an army outpost, trading post, rest stop for travelers… stuff like that. Fort Laramie happened to be the number one fort in the Northern Plains. If it seems like there is nothing now, imagine what it was like back then. “Ah yes, time to travel 300 miles by horse in the middle of summer to get to a fort. Hope I remember where all the waypoints are!”

Shhhhh! Aiming takes precision
Ethan confidently staring down the barrel like a pro

At the fort there are a bunch of cannons. I loooooove cannon pictures. Not sure why. Ethan also likes cannons I think. [Ethan’s Note: I can confirm. I do enjoy a good cannon.] The fort also has a bunch of the normal garrison buildings such as a barracks (sleeping quarters), a kitchen / dining room, an infirmary, a stable, a blacksmith, and a post office.

Imagine a gun fight in here!

One unique thing here was the addition of a saloon! It is still operational today and you can get root beer floats, sodas, and other authentic garrison goodies. Pretty neat! However, I think it was either closed or it wasn’t in the Official Plan because we didn’t buy any drinks. (Quick side note that I’m pretty sure that it’s still open, but don’t quote me on that.)

I reeeeeaally wanted to go in.

The next location was Register Cliff State Historic Site. I couldn’t get a stamp for my passport book, but it seemed online like I could venture inside the tunnel. It just so happens that you can’t since there is a wooden gate across the entrance. Kind of a bummer. There was plenty of graffiti carved into the rocks though and some of it looked pretty old.

Such good technique!

After a short stop at Register Cliff we drove 4 more hours north to the last official stop of the day: Devils Tower National Monument. On the way there Ethan took a turn driving. I think he did at least 100 miles. This is considered a prestigious honor because not just anyone has the privilege of driving my car. [Ethan’s Note: I’m honored! Had to contribute to the trip somehow!]

I’ve driven tens of thousands of miles, but I’ve never seen something like this.

This is the rock formation from the movie “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”. (Movie about aliens and ranked ‘Trash’ on my movie list). It is massive and you can see it from a ways off as you approach. This also was the first location of the trip where my National Park Annual Pass covered the admission fee.

Could you climb that?

It looks a lot smaller up close. There are really only 3 things you can do. The first is a nice walk around the base of the monument. By doing this you get to gaze in wonder at all its magnificent sides. [Ethan’s Note: The rocks were super cool! They were hexagonal in shape, likely due to erosion of the igneous rock.] The second option is to climb it, but you can only do that if you get advanced permission and have all the proper gear. The last thing was to come and pray to it. Ethan and I saw many people who took a pilgrimage here. A bunch of the kids had bible names like Ezekiel or Methuselah (I have never heard of anyone in modern times with names like that and I think it is interestingly cool.) The people all had ‘church clothes’ as I like to put it. The men had nicer pants / button down shirt / jacket / formal hat and the women wore dresses and bonnets. I thought that was crazy since it was about 95F out with at least 80% humidity. I was dying in shorts and a t-shirt so I didn’t understand how someone could wear such heavy clothes in that weather.

Ethan getting a better view. [Ethan’s Note: I got a better view.]

We actually didn’t really spend a huge amount of time here since there wasn’t a lot to do besides look at the rock and melt in the sun. Not too far away from this is the Devils Tower Trading Post. It mostly sold touristy stuff, but also had a ton of Devils Tower related stuff as well as Sturgis Motorcycle Rally stuff.

This was most of the 300 miles through Wyoming.

The Motorcycle Rally is a really big event in Midwest / West USA every year that hundreds if not thousands of bikers join in on. Even though the event wasn’t happening, there were still a lot of rather intimidating looking people on Harley’s there. Really exciting to see something so out of place. I encountered a bunch of bikers in Fort Davis and the concept was that they just love driving so much that they will (as a group) go on a 300mi trip just to soak in the views. That must be what the Sturgis rally is all about. The only thing to see here besides Devils Tower is the vast rolling hills of yellow flower fields in northeast Wyoming.

Only a cool 700 miles away from Philmont, but we made it! [Ethan’s Note: Was Pretty surreal to see MT.]

Ok so after the tower the Official Plan was to just go straight to the hotel in Rapid City, but I invoked the rule of the infamous 100 mile detour to go see the Montana state sign. (If it is within 100 miles of the intended route and I have time I can go.) It’s not everyday that you can visit Montana from Philmont, much less in one day and we were only 35 miles away. Totally worth it!

Goooooo Ethan!

You can see Ethan running between the Wyoming sign and Montana sign. [Ethan’s Note: It was further than it looks!]

More traffic in Montana than in Wyoming.

After that, we ended up driving through a corner of Montana to get back to South Dakota. I picked the Country Inn & Suites by Radisson as the hotel for the night and no complaints there. For dinner we went to Sickies Garage Burgers & Brews. They are known for there many many burger creations and shakes and since I loooove burgers I wanted to go there. Ethan has a bunch of life threatening allergies so I made sure to call ahead to see if he could be accommodated, no worries.

Goofy picture?

Overall it was a pretty fun and packed day of travel, but there were still 2 more days to go and we were getting up early again in the morning. Ethan was less than pleased I bet! [Ethan’s Note: False. I was having a great time. Just had to adjust to the whirlwind style trip!]

Day 2

Day 2 was meant to be the “short” day in order to rest before the long drive back to Philmont. Just 250 miles of driving. I think we got up at 6:30am, checked out, and were on the road by 7:30am in order to make it to Mt. Rushmore by 8am. (The park officially opens at 5am, buuuut that was vetoed by Ethan when planning the trip haha). [Ethan’s Note: I don’t recall vetoing it, but sounds like something I would veto….so checks out.]

There it is!!!

The vast majority of the drive to Rushmore from Rapid City is through the mountains, which was a very big change from the Wyoming flower fields the day before. On the way there you have to drive into a small valley with a MAJOR tourist trap. The small town looks like a movie set that was built solely to make money off of visitors since it seemed like it had really nothing to do with the monument. So…we skipped it. When we finally showed up at the park admission was free, but parking was $12 in a massive car garage.

This is facing away I think. [Ethan’s Note: NC represent!!]

On the way to the faces you first have to walk down a path with pillars that have every US flag on them. Pretty sweet photo op. At the end of the path on either side are gift / food shops and straight in front is the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Like Devils Tower it turned out to look smaller than it does in pictures online.

Great view!

There is not a lot to do here other than enjoy the view unless you come during an event. However we missed the events since they are pretty spaced out. Bummer! I spent a pretty decent amount of time in the jewelry store getting a necklace for my Mom. It is a pretty epic store that boasts a sizable collection of necklaces, rings, and other jewelry made exclusively from authentic Black Hills gold. I ended up buying the great Christmas present of an 18k rose gold necklace. Heh, sorry Ethan for the long wait. (There is no need to wait for Black Friday every time.)

Selfie’s are mandatory here
Get there early!

Besides all the stores and the seemingly nonexistent events, there was not a lot to do at Rushmore so we actually didn’t stay very long. I’d definitely recommend getting there at 8am or before because it will get really crowded if you come later in the day. Less people = more likely it’s just you in the picture.

I’d say they were 40% done in 2019. Don’t quote me though!

The next stop of the day is the Crazy Horse Memorial. Crazy Horse was a Lakota (Native American) war leader who fought back against the US westward expansion. This memorial, much like Rushmore, is carved out of the side of a mountain. At the time we went in 2019 it wasn’t finished yet, but the outline of it was clearly visible from the visitors center.

This is what it will look like when finished

The entry fee was super expensive at $15 per person and I was glad that there was only 2 of us in the car. Like Rushmore, there is basically just the monument and some gift stores. Instead of a jewelry store though they had a massive store with handmade Indian products. One cool thing we each took was a free “sample” of the excavation. They were giving out free softball sized rocks to anyone who wanted a unique souvenir. I still have mine at home in my room. I’m not sure about Ethan, but I thought overall that Crazy Horse memorial was kind of overrated just because of the admission cost. [Ethan’s Note: The rock is somewhere in NC…..could not tell you where, but I did fly home from NM with it. Also definitely overrated.]

Henry’s sign pic for Mom
Ethan’s sign pic for (Ethan’s) Mom

That marked the end of carved out mountains for the trip and next up was Jewel Cave National Monument. It is located about 30 minutes way from Crazy Horse so we got there pretty earlier than intended.

Claustrophobic yet?

Much like the outside of Carlsbad Caverns, Jewel Cave is mostly a giant parking lot (except it’s in a forest rather than a desert) since the main attraction is underground. There were also a few hiking trails, but we didn’t have time to try any of those plus it was too hot to be outside for too long. Unfortunately the visitors center was kinda small and I occasionally felt cramped with all the people inside. We got there at roughly 10:30am and I think our tour was scheduled for 11am.

Cool cave wall

Pretty soon the announcement came and thus started one of the best cave tours I have ever been on. [Ethan’s Note: It was an AWESOME tour. Caves are so fascinating.] We did the very popular Scenic Tour, which took about 1 hour 20 minutes and brought you deep underground. There were a total of 734 stairs you had to use on the tour, although we used a high speed elevator to get down most of the way at the start. Outside the cave it was a sweltering 95F while inside it was a cool 49F. One of the rangers outside asked if being in shorts and a t shirt would be a problem to which I replied: “Absolutely not! Bring it on” (Something like that but more polite).

Short sleeves for the win!

This was the first cave tour I’d ever been on and right away it was really cool. The inside was very dark of course and rather damp with a cool breeze occasionally coming through.

You actually had to pay attention on these stairs

There were tight spaces, steep narrow stair cases, slippery ramps, low ceilings, and occasionally water would drip onto you. The stairs didn’t magically appear in the cave, they had to be painstakingly carried in and built, which was mind boggling.

What it must’ve felt like on the first exploration.

One thing that happens pretty regularly in all cave tours is the “what it was like for the first cave explorers” experience where the park rangers turn off all the lights and ask people to be quiet to simulate what it must’ve been like to explore a cave or have your candle / flashlight die. Wew, not sure that even an adrenaline junkie like me would like to be blacked out 600ft underground.

Ethan enjoyed the flash too!

One of the only ways to get a good picture in the cave was to take a flash picture. This very much pleased Ethan. It made it difficult to get a clear picture of any of the cave formations. I wish I had my iPhone 14 Pro when I was there instead of the iPhone 8. The camera on it would make a world of a difference I think! Anyways, I won’t bore you with more blurry cave pictures. Moving on!

While researching the trip I noticed a lot of ‘Which is better: Wind Cave vs Jewel Cave?’ sort of questions and there is plenty of debate to be had there. The solution is to obviously just see both of them!

Boxwork in action

It took just half an hour to reach Wind Cave National Park and Ethan took way more pictures than I did so I will be dipping into his collection a bit here. Wind Cave gets its name from the wind entering through an opening in one side of the cave and blowing through to the other side. The first explorers mapped this one by candlelight and used string to avoid getting lost. [Ethan’s Note: Wind Cave also has these really unique rock formations called Boxwork. They can not be replicated and are slowly fading.]

This is probably why caves were closed for Covid.

We went on the Natural Entrance Cave Tour. One person on the tour brought a baby in one of those front carriers on your chest. Super annoying because in a cave a baby’s crying can loudly echo everywhere. Not to mention the stairs were slippery…if you fall that baby is in serious trouble. Anyways, this cave has more to do on top than Jewel Cave, but Jewel Cave is the bigger cave BY FAR. Jewel Cave is the 3rd longest cave in the world at 200 miles.

Really low ceilings

The lowest point in Wind Cave has a low height so someone like me at 6’2″ has to stoop to not hit the ceiling. This is also a sort of meeting point for the tour group with a trashcan, a weird bag thing (not everyone used the bathroom before entering the cave), and a bench or 2. The Wind Cave tour only lasted about an hour, so we were in and out rather quick. There was really only one last stop of the day and then we would make our way to the next hotel for the night.

This is the goal of digging

After another hour of driving we made it to The Mammoth Site. When researching things to do in South Dakota I found that this place was mentioned often and it had about 5k 5 star reviews on google maps so I thought we just had to come check it out. Ethan was not as adventurous here. [Ethan’s Note: I can confirm. I remember being exhausted and wondering what a “Mammoth Site” in SD could have that was so special.]

Wearing them was actually kind of embarrassing I thought [Ethan’s Note: Even more dumb when you realize the tour guide was only 5 feet away…..]

The Mammoth Site is the sister site to the Waco Mammoth site in Texas. It is an active dig site where you can walk around above the archeologists as they work on uncovering more fossils. To see this you had to go on the tour. Christopher was our tour guide and he handed out these weird earphone things to help hear what he was saying during the tour. Maybe 10 minutes into the tour Ethan nudged me and motioned to take off the earphones. It turns out we could hear Christopher just fine without them on! They look amusing when you wore them and I was glad to have them off. [Ethan’s Note: Yeah and the way the tour guide wore his microphone, you could hear other tour guides better than our own with those earbuds on. Worthless tech when ears work just fine.]

It was an organized mess

I had never been to an actual dig site before so it was really interesting at first. The archaeologists would leave all their tools and measurements in exactly the right spot when they left to go home so the dig site looked like an actual worksite and not just a museum exhibit.

Every expert needs a spoon and a toothbrush

Just like Waco Mammoth, The Mammoth Site has specific days where members of the public can come and assist the experts in digging up the mammoths. I asked how long it would take to uncover everything and the tour guide said probably not for a few centuries at least. The excavation process is really slow in order to not damage anything.

There were many fossils in here

The theory is that one of the mammoths got stuck in the mud. When the rest came to help they all got stuck too and died there. Then got covered by more mud and debris, which eventually fossilized everything. Along the outer walls of the dig site are artifacts and a mini museum. If you go into the basement you can see the lab where they inventory everything, painstakingly identify all the bones, and try to reconstruct them. That day there was an expert inside working on just that. Really cool!

After finishing up looking at bones we both hopped back in the car and made our way south for a spot that I thought looked cool. I couldn’t have been more wrong! I expected Cascade Falls to be a cool waterfall and stream that you could explore and such. Instead it turned out to be a parking lot, full trash cans + trash on the ground, and a ton of swimmers. (Cascade Falls in South Dakota in case you get confused). At this point Ethan and I were about done with adventuring, but there was no time to be tired! Still a few hours of driving before the hotel.

The Wall Drug dinosaur is famous!

For dinner we stopped at a Wendy’s because that is one of the few fast food places that can accommodate Ethan’s food allergies. After that it was just about 1 hour to Wall, SD, home of the famous Wall Drug (store). There were a bunch of billboards up and down the highway for it. On the way to the hotel I got a call from the hotel asking if I was still coming for the night. While cruising at 90mph (speed limit was 85mph) I replied “Yes!!!! Please don’t give away our room! We are only 15 minutes away!”

We stayed at the Best Western Plains Motel and once again there were no problems. As one of the few hotels in the center of SD, it was packed with motorists. We started our day at 6:30am and finished at 9:50pm. Wow! Only one more day and then back to work!

Day 3

The last day was originally just a drive back to New Mexico, but since Ethan forced me to extend the trip to 3 days, I reworked the plan so we could include the Badlands National Park. One of my well known slogans is “As long as I see what I want to, it doesn’t matter when I get to the [hotel].” The hotel in this case was Philmont and basically that means I’m cool with getting back at 3am as long as I saw everything I wanted to. Ethan is more of a “Lets get back at 11pm” type of guy haha.

It was sunny!

Before Badlands we headed to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. It is almost touching Badlands NP and you can’t really miss it. Here you can tour all the way down to the control room where the U.S. Army turns the keys to launch a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately you needed to book the tour at least 2 months in advance. Ethan and I planned the trip about a week prior to leaving so at the time I thought a miracle would happen and maybe 2 people would cancel right before we arrived. No such luck!

Think you could turn a key?

The only other thing there besides the tour is a tiny gift shop, a small museum, and a park film. Needless to say, we didn’t stay very long. If you haven’t passed one of the scattered missile silos around the Great Plains they basically include a chain link fence, a few antennas, a giant door hugging the ground, and a bunch of warning signs. Supposedly if you climb the fence a bunch of humvees will show up with a helicopter or two and soldiers will pour out demanding to know what you are up to.

Sign pic for Mom
Sign pic for (Ethan’s) Mom

After the missile silo, we drove 20 minutes to the north entrance of the Badlands National Park. First we went to the visitors center to get our bearings. The scenic road through the park is a whopping 39 miles long and has 16 viewpoints. According to Google Timeline we visited 5 total. Just like in the more recent Canyon De Chelly blog, the views at the Badlands also seem preeeetty similar once you visit around 6 or so overlooks in a row. So to compensate we drove the entire road and saw a few different parts of the park.

The Badlands got its name from literally being a horrible place to live. The climate was trash with super cold winters / hot summers. The soil isn’t really ideal for farming and you are in the middle of nowhere so help is nonexistent if you run into problems.

These Badlands pictures will never get old for me!

First up was the Big Badlands Overlook. This is a location where you can look out and see a huge swath of what the Badlands are mostly known for: pointy rocks. At this overlook you are kind of looking at everything from a sideview glance. The rock formations are truly impressive when surrounded by endless green prairie.

~Ok a quick side note: at this point I have no real way of knowing the difference between the overlook pictures, so I’m doing my best guess. Picture time stamps here seem unreliable for some reason.~

[Ethan’s Caption: What a Panoramic Point….]

Next up was Panorama Point (about an hour drive away). Here the views were similar, yet different. Here you mostly looked out straight through/over the pointy rocks.

This is the perfect Ethan picture!

Next up about 10 minutes further was the Homestead Overlook. This is what your land might’ve looked like as the average homesteader. This is a prime view of what the Great Plains are classically known for.

The Badlands are so big!

Next up was the Pinnacles Overlook, which was another small drive of 11 minutes. This is a most intense version of the Big Badlands Overlook in my opinion. It is also considered one of the most popular parts of the Badlands NP. There is a rather diverse animal population here which you can see on if you are lucky: ground hogs, bison, big horn sheep, deer and possibly a Thunderbird on a stormy day.

He is about 1ft from a 200ft cliff :3 [Ethan’s Note: I survived, Mom.]

The last overlook was a bit of a hike to get to and literally almost no regular visitors go here. Sheep Mountain Table Overlook! I have this National Park guidebook and in it it basically says that if nothing else, see this overlook.

That’s a long way down!

It is located on top of a mesa very far from any visitors center and it took about 37 miles of driving from Pinnacles Overlook to get to. Once you are within sight distance the road switches to a maintained dirt road that winds up in between the different mesas to get to the top.

A sedan is the perfect car for a dirt road.

The top of the mesa was very much like a field and unless you knew better I bet you would think you were anywhere but a mesa. At the top of the dirt ramp you could look over the edge of the mesa and see the vastness of the Great Plains once again, but this time we were completely alone so it was much more peaceful. [Ethan’s Note: This was one of my highlights from the trip. The serenity and majesty of the cliffs and plains were surreal, especially with just us on the mesa. Those pictures we took still amaze me today.]

It was very far off the main highway. (Sorry the audio quality is poor)

I took a video of driving back down the road. The sides of the road dropped sharply so it was extra important here to not make any mistakes. After leaving Sheep Mountain Table Overlook we drove south 180miles on a very remote road through the rest of South Dakota into Nebraska. On the way there we encountered a funeral procession. Since it was a simple 2 lane road I had the ethical dilemma of passing them or following them at 30 miles per hour for 100 miles, as the next actual town was super far away. After a few moments of not very intense debate…I passed.

It’s like Stonehenge, but with cars.

About halfway we stopped for a quick break at Carhendge in Alliance, NE. I had already been here with my Mom on the first Philmont drive, but for Ethan this was his first time visiting. He initially thought this was a waste of time while we were on our way, but upon arrival discovered the magic.

Mom & I are here somewhere from 2018, but probably got painted over.

There is also a car tower and an autograph car. Can you spot Ethan’s signature? Mine is buried in there from my 2018 spring drive. I bet it’s painted over every once and awhile so new people have a fresh carvas. (heh get it?)

He’s holding it! [Ethan’s Note: Apparently NE is really proud of this rock. Ok. It’s a rock. I’m holding it in my hand. Nothing special.]

Shortly after that at 3:30pm we arrived at Chimney Rock National Monument in Nebraska. Ethan thought this was an incredible waste of time and made that known pretty well. [Ethan’s Note: I was definitely grumpy, and they wanted to charge us some $20 to get a “better view” of a spiky rock on a plain.] I thought the visitors center was geared heavily towards kids so it was therefore a waste of time for us.

It has been a waypoint for hundreds of years.

The actual monument, however, was actually pretty cool to see in person. Think of the design on the back of the Nebraska state quarter. We were there! Since you aren’t really supposed to hike up to or on the actual rock pillar there wasn’t a whole lot to do so I think we were only there a grand total of 20 minutes according to my notes.

This is a great place to watch the sunrise I’ll bet.

The last official stop of the trip was Scott’s Bluff National Monument. It was supposedly about a 30ish minute drive, but we were pressed for time since we would be arriving just before closing time. About 10 miles out we noticed that the park rangers cars looked very much like green cop cars. Lights, antennas, front grill…all of it. Surely they don’t have the power to enforce highway rules?! Not soon long after the first sighting we saw other visitors getting pulled over for thinking the same thing! The only difference between them and me is I slowed down to the speed limit upon sighting the first one and stayed there. No tickets for careful me!

Scott’s Bluff NM offered a small bookstore, but the main attraction was driving up the the top of the bluff. The road was paved and wound its way up the side of the cliff. We even went through a short tunnel!

Ethan enjoying the view. [Ethan’s Note: It was a truly majestic view.]

The views from the top of the monument were fantastic! On the east coast you can’t really see the rain falling in the distance like you can here in the central plains / midwest / southwest / northwest and Texas. (Texas is so big that it’s kind of a mix in my opinion). [Ethan’s Note: This was an unexpected highlight from the trip! The views were incredible and standing and looking out, you could really understand how a mesa/bluff could serve as a beacon to the early western settlers.] After enjoying the view for 10 minutes we made our way back down to the highway south back towards Philmont. Still just over 600 more miles to go and we had work the next day at 5am.

Imagine a road like this, but for 6 hours. (Pic is from my NE trip blog)

Rather than cut through Cheyenne like a normal person would we decided to take a detour straight into eastern Colorado to another Wendy’s. After that we really bucked down and committed ourselves to finishing the rest of the 500 miles as quick as possible. Ethan was exhausted, but I looooooove night driving and near Monument, CO I did the most epic night highway driving you would ever see! I will never forget Ethan’s words after that moment: “Henry, let’s never do that again please.” [Ethan’s Note: I think it was the CO mountain driving that led me to make that statement. Night mountain driving is not for me!] Google timeline has us arriving at Philmont at 12:30am, but I feel like it was more like 2:30am. (Sometimes it is wrong). Fortunately I was actually sort of ok at 5am at work. Ethan on the other hand could barely stay awake. Eh? I guess a 765 mile drive before an AM shift is not for everyone! [Ethan’s Note: No it is not! I need my sleep, but was happy to trade it for the trip.]

This is my laptop background. (Sheep Mountain Table Overlook)

I think overall this is the greatest trip I have ever taken at Philmont in my 6 years here. I talk about it pretty often and I now relate almost any long drives to the Nebraska / Wyoming portion of the drive. Super happy Ethan came for the adventure and had a great time. Road tripping is so much better with a friend I think! [Ethan’s Note: Was happy for the invite. Easily my greatest road trip to date! 10/10 travel buddy too.] Just want to say thank you for reading this far! I didn’t think this story would be as good if I broke it up. Finally done with this blog.

Classic Ethan smile. [Ethan’s Note: I needed sunglasses 😎]

One more time: Thank you so much for joining me Ethan! [Ethan’s Note: Lifetime highlight for me, was happy to join. Here’s to our next adventure!]

See you next time!

Trip Stats

  • Trip Total estimated mi: 1,661mi (30 hours 30min of driving) (I technically didn’t calculate one in my journal because the plan changed so many times, so I got this off google maps)
  • Actual Trip mi: 1,763mi 
  • Total national parks seen: 9
  • BB8 pictures: 0 (forget why I didn’t bring him)
  • Ethan’s favorite moment: “Easily the Sheep Mountain Table Overlook. Breathtaking.”
  • Henry’s favorite moment: “Hands down the Badlands Sheep Mountain Table Overlook.”
  • Cave ranking: Jewel Cave, SD > Carlsbad Caverns, NM > Strataca Salt Mine, KS > Wind Cave, SD > Natural Bridge and Caves, VA
  • At the time, the 765 miles on day 3 was the longest ever solo drive out of Philmont on off days. Ethan was in the passenger seat the whole time. Yay! – That record has since been broken