Wisconsin to Washington State

Hello,

My husband and I will be taking a road trip from Central Wisconsin to the coast of Washington State for a family gathering in September. We will be traveling through Minnesota - North Dakota - Montana - Idaho and finally Washington State. We will be following WI-29 W/WI-29 Trunk W, I-94 W and I-90 W to WA-8 in Thurston County for what it says about 27 hours and we are looking for a few nice pit stops that wont take us far from the interstate or highways that we will be on. Any help would be amazing since I will be doing most of the driving I do not want to do a full 29 hours driving non stop.

Thank you,

T and J

I've done the run across Montana, Idaho and Washington going from N. Colo to Seattle.
The major towns in Montana go in order headed west -Billings, Butte, Bozeman and Missoula. All of them have many hotels. Since we don't stop to sightsee I can't speak to attractions.
But I've been reading a lot about the mining district in Idaho known as the Coeur D'Alene district (which covers CDL, Mullan, Kellog and other towns) and would someday like to explore the area. September would be a good time for that kind of exploring.

Try YouTube videos about Mullan and Kellogg. Some are really well done.

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Be aware, the travel time estimates provided by online mapping programs are a complete fantasy. More importantly, a trip of this length needs to be measured in days and not hours. Not only could you not drive this in anywhere close to 29 hours, attempting anything close to that non stop would be homicidally dangerous.

At a little over 1800 miles, you're looking at a bare minimum of 3 very long days on the road (11-12 hours each day). Your Overnight stops would pretty much have to be Bismarck and Butte, and those are already pushing the limits of safety and the limits of what professional drivers are allowed to do in a single day. If just one person is going to be doing most of the driving, I'd really look to make this a 3.5 day trip and make your stops in Jamestown, ND; Billings, and Spokane.

Teddy Roosevelt National Park is right off I-94 in North Dakota - there's even a rest area with a nice overlook into the park - and the Little Bighorn Battlefield is a relatively short detour. Of course, the RTA Map Center can provide many more stopping ideas, big and small.

Bismarck has a number of hotels, but be aware that the oil boom in western North Dakota has driven up hotel prices, including Bismarck's. We stayed 3 nights in Bismarck (one was unplanned), spent $90/night at the Days Inn, but the nice thing was that it had a free HOT breakfast with eggs cooked the way you liked them.

At Billings, we stayed at the Econo Lodge. It had a nice hot tub inside, and a pool outside. The outdoor pool is "seasonal", though. Not sure when it closes for the season, so September may be "iffy".


Donna