Jon and I set out on the road heading west a few months ago. We were fortunate to book a month’s lodging staying right next to Jon’s big brother Jeff. Jeff lives in the Lake Tahoe area and moved into an apartment above a garage next to a house that is rented out to lucky people like me and Jon. But first, we had to get there and we wanted to make the most of the trip.

We fit in a few stops to see quirky things along the lines of the Australian big things we enjoyed stopping to see in the past.

Our first big stop was in Arlington, Iowa to visit Jon’s uncle, cousins and their families. They took us on an epic adventure on side-by-sides to see a side of Iowa we didn’t know existed.

After a fun bacon, sausage, and beer filled stop we made our way to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had a blast hanging out with Jon’s cousin Sara and got to enjoy being outdoors in Minneapolis during the few days you can enjoy the outdoors there – hahaha. We also visited Sara’s favorite locals and played endless fetch with her cute dog Penny.

Our next stop was deep in ye olde wild west, Deadwood, South Dakota. It was an interesting place to walk around and get a good night sleep before heading to Custer State Park, also in South Dakota.

—  Hiking in Custer State Park —

We did a half-day of hiking in Custer State Park and then drove to Casper, Wyoming. Wyoming was not exactly full of lovely scenery, the state tree is sometimes said to be a telephone pole, but Casper was a great pit stop. We stayed walking distance to a brewery that turned out to have good food and beer. We were also walking distance to a trail along the North Platte River which did provide lovely scenery with an unfortunate side of mosquito bites. I think I got 10 on a 30 minute walk!!

Our next stop was the picture perfect town of Park City, Utah. We stayed at a Hilton Grand Vacations property a bit away from downtown, but still ski-in/ski-out in the winter. It was by far our fanciest accommodation on the trip.

We took a gondola up to explore the hiking trails available at the resort when snow hasn’t buried them.

After getting our hiking in, we headed further west to Elko, Nevada for our last night on the road. Along the way we stopped at the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats.

We had surprisingly good Chinese takeout in Elko and in the morning we headed to Tahoma by way of Costco in Reno.