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| Bison in Custer State Park, 2009 |
Growing up in Wisconsin, "the Great Western Road Trip" was a classic vacation. There were three routes west - through North Dakota, South Dakota or Nebraska. The North Dakota route usually headed to North Yellowstone over the Beartooth highway. The South Dakota route passed Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore on the way to East Yellowstone. The Nebraska route typically crossed the Rocky Mountains at Aspen on the way to Arches and Zion National Parks in Utah.
The Great Western Road Trip normally included two of the three routes and sometimes stopped at the western side of Utah or Wyoming. After all, a two week vacation did not leave time to drive across Idaho or Nevada; Yellowstone was West enough for Midwesterners.
Great Western Road Trips Over the Years
1936
By 1936 cars had become more reliable and road trip vacations were gaining popularity. My mother's family loved to travel, so it's no surprise that they drove from Wisconsin to Yellowstone. Along on the trip were my mother (Marge), her father (Dr. David Sr.), her brother (David Jr.) and her sister (Catherine). Marge documented the trip with excellent photographs - she had had lots of experience taking pictures for her college paper and yearbooks (the same way Tom became an experienced photographer).
Driving through North Dakota, they drove the Beartooth highway when it was a gravel road. In Yellowstone the family visited all the classic views - photos show the men in suits and ties and the women wearing dresses and dress shoes. (Apparently leisure clothing was not part of a 1930's road trip.) The family headed home through South Dakota, visiting Mt Rushmore while it was still under construction, and stopping at Badlands National Park.
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| 1936. David & Catherine Twohig at Red Lodge, Montana |
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| 1936 Bear Tooth Bute. Dr. David Twohig Sr, Catherine Twohig, David Twohig Jr, Marge Twohig (Mary's Mother) |
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| 1936. Dr David Twohig Sr (Mary's Grandfather) at Tower Falls, Yellowstone. You can't go to the base of the falls today because erosion has destroyed the trail. |
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| 1936. Mt Rushmore was under construction. |
1947
In 1947, when Tom was 16 moths old, his parents (Ruth and Elmer) and maternal grandparents (Andrew and Fritzi Anderson) took him west to visit Fritzi's parents (Alex and Olga Daus) in Colorado and her brother (Juni Daus) in San Francisco. Along the way they visited national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone and Badlands, as well as Mt Rushmore.
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| 1947. Tom's parents' first car on their western road trip. |
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| 1947. Baby Tom with Ruth (mother), Fritzi (grandmother), and Andrew (grandfather), Grand Canyon. |
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| 1947. Driving through the Wawona Tree in Yosemite National Park. |
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| 1947. Tom's mother Ruth at Lower Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park. |
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| 1947 Mount Rushmore was as finished as it would get. |
1960
In 1960, when Tom was 14 and his sisters were 12 and 8, his family designed and built a camping trailer to tow behind their blue station wagon. They spent a couple months touring as many of the western national parks as possible, including Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde, Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks.
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1960. Tom's family headed west in a station towing a camper they designed and built.
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| 1960. Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park |
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| 1960. Square Tower House, Mesa Verde National Park |
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| 1960. Checkerboard Mesa. Zion National Park. |
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| 1960. Bryce National Park. |
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| 1960 Grand Canyon National Park. |
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| 1960. Driving through the Wawona Tree in Yosemite National Park This tree fell in 1969. |
1975
In 1975, when Andrea was 5 and Dustin was 2, we met friends in Nebraska and drove the southern route to Arches and Zion. Our rotate back included Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Badlands National Parks on our way to Madison, Wisconsin. (See Growing up Backpacking, Part 1.)
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| 1975. Aspen, Colorado. Traveling west with our friends, with our big tent and poles on top of the car. Mary, Dustin, Henning and Johnathan Leidecker |
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| 1975. Arches National Park. |
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| 1975. The Great White Throne, Zion National Park. |
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| 1975. The Three Patriarchs, Zion National Park. |
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| 1975. Tom, Andrea, and Dustin. Grand Teton National Park. |
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| 1975. Bison blocked the road in Yellowstone/ |
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| 1975. Badlands National Park |
1984
In 1984, when Andrea was 14 and Dustin was 11, our family drove through South Dakota, stopping at the Badlands, Mt Rushmore, and Devil's Tower. Our destination was Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Park. After I injured my knee while backpacking in the Tetons (See Growing up Backpacking, Part 2), we returned through North Dakota.
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| 1984. We took our teenagers west. |
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| 1984. We stopped at Mt Rushmore. |
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| 1984. Devil's Tower National Monument. Wyoming. |
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| 1984 Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park |
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| 1984. Dustin with his camera, Lower Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park. |
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| 1984. Andrea and Dustin at the Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone National Park. |
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| 1984. Mary, Andrea, and Dustin at Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park. |
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| 1984. Hidden Falls. Grand Teton National Park |
2009
In 2009 we headed west through South Dakota with Andrea and her daughters Karen and Becca (ages 13 and 10); Dustin drove with us for the first half of the trip and Andrea's husband Brian flew in to join us for a few days in the Tetons. We drove home on the Northern route, via the Beartooth highway and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
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| 2009. We took our granddaughters west. |
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| 2009 Of course we stopped at Mt Rushmore. |
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| 2009. Karen, Becca, and Andres. Badlands National Park. |
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| 2009. Karen climbing to "the Needle" Black Hills, South Dakota. |
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| 2009. Custer State Park. South Dakota. |
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| 2009. Dustin photographing Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming. |
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| 2009. Dustin, Tom, Karen, Becca, Andrea, Lake Helen, Cloud Peak Wilderness, Wyoming. |
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| 2009. Lower Yellowstone Falls. Yellowstone National Park.. |
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| 2009. Dustin & Andrea, backpacking with Tom in the alpine meadows of Death Canyon, Grand Tetons. |
2017
In May of 2017 we headed south for five weeks in April and May starting in Nebraska, going south through Great Sand Dunes National Park, then heading to the Four Corners region. We explored Red Rock Country before the hot season, then headed east through Colorado, where snow in the mountain passes was just starting to melt. (See "Red Rock Country.")
Three months later we headed west again, this time along the northern route, to see a solar eclipse. We stopped at Theodore Roosevelt National Park and took the Beartooth Highway toward Yellowstone. The sky started to get smoky, but fortunately, photographs at Yellowstone do not depend on on a clear sky. Next we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument before heading to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area where we had a wonderful view of the Eclipse (See "Eclipse Chasing").
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| 2017. All of our camping gear fit in our minivan. |
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| 2017. Car Camping set-up. Roosevelt National Park. North Dakota. |
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| 2017. Tom photographing vie from the Beartooth Highway. Montana. |
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| 2017. White Dome Geyser, Yellowstone National Park. |
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| 2017. Mammoth Hot Springs. Yellowstone National Park. |
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| 2017. Mary at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Idaho. |
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| 2017. Stanley Lake, Sawtooth Recreation Area, Idaho. |
2018
In 2018 we headed due south on April 1st to see Texas wildflowers and blooming cacti. After visiting Tom's sister Sue in San Antonio we headed west along I10, visiting Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, White Sands, and Saguaro National Parks, as well as Glia Cliff Dwellings, Chiricahua, and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monuments. By then it was HOT in the desert, so we headed north to Red Rock Country (see "Red Rock Country") and eventually to Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain National Parks on the way to Karen's graduation in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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| 2018. Sunrise, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Texas. |
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| 2018. Plowing Sand at White Sands National Park. |
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| 2018. Blooming Cactus. Saguaro National Park. |
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| 2018. Square Tower House, Mesa Verde National Park. |
2019
In 2019 Tom and I headed West in mid-February so we could photograph spring wildflowers blooming in the desert. We ended up at Zion National Park in a rare, beautiful snowstorm. We stayed at Joshua Tree National Park, in an even rarer snow storm, saw super blooms in southern California, and weathered a ferocious wind storm in Death Valley National Park. On the way home we visited my sister Ruth in Nevada, photographed several redwood parks in California, then drove the entire Oregon Pacific coast, through the Columbia River George and took the northern route home.
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| 2019. Great White Throne and Angel's Landing from Photo Point. Zion National Park. |
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| 2019. The Three Patriarchs. Zion National Park.. |
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| 2019. Our camping base in Joshua Tree National Park. |
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| 2019. Rare Desert Flowers. Joshua Tree National Park. |
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| 2019. Harmony Borax Works, Death Valley National Park. Twenty-mule teams pulled full wagons 165 miles to the nearest railroad spur. |
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| 2019. Mesquite Flat Dunes near Stovepipe Wells campground. Death Valley National Park. |
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| 2019. Super Poppy Bloom. Taken from our car along I5 near Lake Elsinore, California. |
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| 2019. Super Bloom. Diamond Valley Lake. California. |
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| 2019. Rockefeller Forest, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California |
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| 2019. Mary photographing the moss-covered trees, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. California. |
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| 2019. Beachfront at sunset. Brookings, Oregon. |
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| 2019. Multnomah Falls. Columbia River Valley. Oregon. |
