2025 Season

[Merlin]

We are planning our first time taking a major camping trip in the spring. Past extended trips have all been summer/fall, but in 2025 we'll be heading out in early May.

The rough plans are to head west from Michigan on I-70, then north on I-15, then west on I-84, then spend some time on the west coast, and then head back east to Michigan on I-90. Any ideas for things we shouldn't miss are welcome.

I know mountain passes will still be snowy in May and we'll need to avoid freezing overnight temperatures, but it will be nice to not have campgrounds closed from summer forest fires (and driving through miles of endless smoke). We are also looking forward to not having to deal with 100F degree heat that wiped up much of our trip west in August 2023. 

[Chappy133]

After retirement back in '21 we did a long trip out west to visit sites and friends.  I still want to go back to Alaska one more time, we were stationed there '86 - '90, and still have friends there. 

We have become true Florida snowbirds.  Will be headed south to Florida in late January to visit friends and my Mother along our way to Key West for February and March.  Then reverse the travels in April to back home in Pennsylvania. 

No summer travels planned yet but I would like to visit Maine again too. 

Happy Trails! 

[djsamuel]

In May 2024 we took a trip from our home in Central Florida out to California, up the west coast to Seattle then east to Montana, through Idaho and Utah to Colorado and then home.  It was an amazing trip running from May 3rd to June 29th.  We still hit snow in some locations but nothing that really hindered us.  The strangest was towing the camper through an accumulating snowstorm in Idaho on June 17th.  The biggest issue we faced was some heavy rains in Texas on our way west and very strong headwinds heading west.

Our stops were Williams, AZ for the Grand Canyon as well as Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments.  The Grand Canyon is a favorite of ours and we really enjoyed the National Monuments.

From there we went to California, stopping at Joshua Tree National Park where we met up with our daughter and son in law.  We enjoyed that.  From there we hit Pinnacles National Park, which was nice, then Lassen Volcanic National Park which still had a lot of snow and was absolutely amazing.  The snow drifts were much taller than us.  The main road was closed in the middle but you could walk it when you hit the point of closure.  From there we went to Redwoods National Park and enjoyed hiking there. 

After California we headed north to Seattle to visit our niece and her family.  We really enjoyed Olympic National Park (took the ferry to get there) as well as North Cascades National Park. 

From Seattle we headed to Glacier National Park in Montana, staying at the West Glacier RV Park.  That was a REALLY nice campground and the National Park was AMAZING; Easily one of my favorites.  The Going to the Sun Road was open up to Avalanche Creek so be sure to make reservations to get on the road from the western side.  Lake MacDonald Lodge was really nice to see and the scenery all around the western side was beautiful.  Since we couldn't drive the entire Going to the Sun Road, we drove around the southern end of the park to visit the Many Glacier area of the park.  That place was incredible.  We saw a lot of wildlife, the highlights being a female grizzly and her two cubs on the hiking trail as well as a large male grizzly that came out of the woods and entered the trail we were walking towards about 30 feet in front of us.  We also saw a moose and her calf swimming across the lake near the Many Glacier Lodge.  I highly recommend this National Park.  We were threre 8 days and I'm ready to go back.

After Glacier we headed to the Craters of the Moon National Monument.  We were really surprised how much we enjoyed that stop; very surreal environment and great hiking.

We then headed to Torrey, Utah to visit Capitol Reef National Park; the last only Utah National Park we've never been to.  That park was very scenic, easy to plan, had great hiking, and you could see most of it in 3 or 4 days. 

We then drove into Colorado and visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Montrose, CO.  We stayed at the Riverbend RV Park and really liked it.  The park is beautiful and while we only styed on the west side, there was planty to see. 

From there we headed home.  It was a long two month trip but we are still talking about it today; a trip of a lifetime.  The camper was great (21BHS), and while the truck certainly was revving high on some really steep inclines in the mountains, it did a great job towing.

Hope this helps! I know not everything is on your proposed route but I wanted to put it all out there just in case.  If you're taking I-90, consider Glacier but if you're up there in early May the snow may be an issue.  We didn't arrive until June 9th and aprt from the Going to the Sun Road being closed we had no issues in terms of weather.

[Merlin]

Thanks for the ideas. I'll see what we can include. One thing I appreciate is noting the use of private campgrounds. I'm still reluctant to use those, but maybe I should give them a look on our route. Every one of the worst campsites we've experienced over our 11 years of camping with our trailer have been at private campgrounds. I guess I need to be more diligent in looking at reviews!

[djsamuel]

I use the reviews that are part of the RV Trip Wizard site I use for planning.  I read many of the reviews to try to eliminate the "optimistic" reviews as well as the overly critical reviews.  I also check out the photos in the reviews.  The RV Life Campgrounds page you can open for any campground has all the reviews and photos.  So far its worked very well for us; very few surprises.