Well, it’s finally here! The trip we’ve been planning and praying to happen is finally coming to fruition. With all of the chaos that has happened in the past 3 months, we have really been looking forward to this trip. We weren’t sure it would happen as many parks and campgrounds around the country have been closed. However, we have been extremely lucky in that everything has opened back up for those with reservations (which is us!) Our plan this summer is to take a MUCH shorter, distance wise, trip through the central parts of the country. Our main goals are Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. In the 4 weeks we will be out, we will be visiting 10 National Parks, and driving approximately 6,000 or so miles. Last summer, we did 15 National Parks and about 10,000 miles of driving. We are looking forward to less driving and more park exploring!

I’m combining these two days as there isn’t a whole lot to see or do between Ohio and our first destination: Rocky Mountain National Park.

We started our drive out West heading through Ohio, Indiana, and much of Illinois.  Our trip is mostly going to entail us taking I-70 across the country. We ended up camping for the night at Eldon Hazlet State Park in Carlyle, Illinois. This state park boasts the largest lake in Illinois. The campground was a little difficult to find and navigate, as the letters on the signs were incredibly small, and there weren’t any signs designating where to turn for the specific numbered campsites. We did a little driving around before we arrived at our campsite. Once settled at the campsite, we enjoyed a quick dinner and some down time of reading at the campsite. We are hoping this summer that we stop our typical arrival time at campgrounds (we always seemed to arrive when it was getting dark and somehow always raining!).

Eldon Hazlet State Park was a really nice place to stay for the night. It was DEFINITELY humid and hot, but coming from Ohio, we are used to the humidity. There was a lot of wildlife around including woodpeckers and heron. We had a view of the lake from our campsite, and there was a nice little walking path to get right up to the lake! Scott also got a slow motion video of a fish jumping out of the water 🙂

 

The next morning, we woke up early for a looong day of driving (it would end up being 11 hours total). We drove through the rest of Illinois, Missouri, and through most of Kansas. At one point, Scott spotted a bald eagle! Not much else along this drive other than the major cities (seeing the Gateway Arch again), doing a drive by wave at Jones BBQ (made famous by Queer Eye- still hoping to convince Scott to stop on the way home!), and crossing the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. The drive through Kansas wasn’t that special either. The land is super flat, which is cool because you can see for miles. The temperatures were insane though- it was between 90 and 100 degrees the whole drive!

Our stopping point for the night was the WaKeeney KOA in WaKeeney, Kansas. We have stayed at KOA’s in the past, and while they aren’t our favorite places to stay, they are convenient and have all the amenities you could want from a campground. This KOA was above the rest, however! We were greeted by the most friendly staff who provided us with a lot of great information and directions, and they even had a worker escort us to our campsite! The campground was super clean and well maintained. There were flowers everywhere, and even though I had read reviews of there being no trees (VERY common in the high plains), the campground had a fair amount of them!

Being that it was still above 95 degrees and WINDY as all get out, we made the decision to cook and eat inside. This is very rare for us when camping so it felt really weird! It was nice to finally have a good meal after driving all day. Once the sun went down, it cooled down a lot, so we went for a walk around the campground and this time enjoyed the nice breeze that seemed to have settled down some. Overall, a long day of driving but worth it because tomorrow will be a quick 300 miles to Rocky Mountain National Park! Stay tuned!