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Theodore Roosevelt National Park
We’re slowly working on visiting all National Parks and RVing in every state. But a stop at Theodore Roosevelt National Park and nearby Dickinson, North Dakota was special for me because it’s where my Grandpa was born and raised. We had a dry campsite at Cottonwood Campground inside the park booked for the week of Labor Day. Luckily as soon as we arrived and dropped the trailer, we drove the scenic loop, visited some overlooks, and saw a lot of animals because a few hours later an apocalyptic amount of wildfire smoke showed up and settled in for several days. We only spent one night dry-camping before moving to an…
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Banff, Canada
I don’t have too many photos to share of our 2 weeks in the town of Banff. The best thing to do is visit Moraine Lake and Lake Louise, and we’d been there the week before. There were a few days of smoke and/or rain and Michael took a work trip out of Calgary. Banff is the main food/lodging hub for Banff National Park visitors. The Tunnel Mountain campgrounds have over 1000 RV/tent campsites and are so popular that our entire Canadian Rockies route was planned around the 2 weeks I was able to book at the end of our trip only after school was back in session. The Trailer…
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Lake Louise, Banff National Park
Our 6th week in the Canadian Rockies was a vacation week for Michael. We were in Lake Louise, the most iconic and most popular area of Banff National Park. Lake Louise is a teeny tiny village with a huge campground, a ski resort, and a stunning turquoise lake with a resort-style hotel. There is an even more stunning lake named Moraine Lake (cover photo) nearby that is one of the most photographed sites in all of Canada. We stayed at the Lake Louise Hardsided Campground, which has been our least favorite of the amazing Parks Canada campgrounds we’ve stayed on this trip. It’s an electric-only campground and 99% of the…
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Jasper National Park
Weeks 4 and 5 of our Canadian Rockies road trip were spent at Jasper National Park. We felt like we’d won the campground lottery getting a 2 week reservation in a full hookup site at the recently renovated Whistlers Campground in Jasper. A lot of trees in this area have been wiped out by pine beetles, but the openness of the campground gave us mountain views and a great Starlink signal. The campground was a 5-minute drive from the cute mountain town also named Jasper. And there were seemingly endless beautiful sites close by that we could visit in the afternoons after work. Jasper NP is huge and we ventured…
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Icefields Parkway
We spent our third week in the Canadian Rockies on the Icefields Parkway, the very scenic 144 miles of Alberta Highway 93 that links Lake Louise in Banff National Park to Jasper National Park. It’s known as one of the most stunning drives in the world, lined with mountain peaks, glaciers, and glacier-fed lakes and rivers. We’ve wanted to visit this area for a long time and it is just jaw-droppingly beautiful. We stayed at Silverhorn Creek campground. There were no hookups, no water source, no dump station, and no cell service. But our solar panels and Dishy worked great with the open sky. And we had views of glaciers!!…
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First Two Weeks In Canada
After loving the beautiful mountain scenery of Glacier National Park last summer, we were excited to visit the Canadian Rockies this year. Months before I had somehow managed to get 8 weeks of reservations in various campgrounds in 4 Canadian National Parks. It’s a chaotic lottery system, with up to 50K people on the website trying to make reservations for the entire season at the same time, so we felt very lucky with what we got. Our luck ran out in Montana when we noticed a heavily worn trailer tire and had to limp across the border on our spare. Besides that problem, the actual border crossing was a breeze.…
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Family Trip To Yellowstone & Grand Teton
The first week of July finally felt like summer! Michael had the week off work and my brother and his family came out to visit us and experience the magic of Yellowstone and the Tetons. This was part of an epic 3-week trip that my sis-in-law planned for them. Our niece graduated high school and our nephew graduated elementary school so this was the perfect time and I know a lot of memories were made! I completely forgot to get photos of our campsites but we spent 3 nights at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana, and 3 nights at Fireside Resort in Jackson, WY, and were within…
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Cody From Cody, WY
We decided to make the big 570-mile move from Dillon, CO to Cody, WY in 2 days, spending Saturday night at Riverside City Park in Douglas for free. Several states, mostly in the plains, offer free camping in city parks for travelers which is very appreciated. And on Sunday, we settled into a nice lakefront water/electric site at Buffalo Bill State Park for 2 weeks. We came to Cody for a few reasons. First, we wanted to be hanging out near Yellowstone because my brother and family were coming out to visit us!! Also, we wanted to do a couple of scenic drives in the area as well as go…
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Twin Lakes To Dillon Lake, CO
After our stay in Colorado Springs, we moved back into the mountains just ~35 miles north of where we’d been previously near Buena Vista. I found a boondocking spot overlooking Twin Lakes that is going to be hard to beat. This was free dispersed camping in the San Isabel National Forest off county road 24 at an elevation of 9,700ft! We had unbelievable views of the lakes and the highest peak in Colorado, Mount Elbert (14,439ft). The flip side was this was the worst spur road we’ve ever taken the trailer on and I spent the week wondering how we were going to get out. But of course, Michael maneuvered…
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Colorado Springs, CO
I had read many accolades of the campground at Cheyenne Mountain State Park in Colorado Springs so when trying to decide where to make reservations for a holiday weekend, we thought it’d be a great choice. This is a relatively new state park, built above the city on the side of Cheyenne Mountain, the former headquarters of NORAD. It overlooks Fort Carson, so close that you can hear the bugle calls. The park is huge and feels like you are in the middle of nature, yet you are 5 minutes from anything and everything you would need in a city. There are a ton of things to do in Colorado…
