A month tour: Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South & North Dacota, Chicago in July?

[USvisitor]

Oh, darn... you're right, I confused names. Thanks for correcting.

[USvisitor]

I did my homework: put some of the offered places to google maps.

Looks good to me. Now we can start looking into things along this road and counting time...

Google tells this route is only 2 days 17 hrs drive. Of course I know it's not quite so. Stops, traffic, etc. And no time for siteseeing, camping or anything given. All of that must be added little by little to get the full image.

Before adding Badlands NP, I had Parks in this order: Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, so Google led us along more southern road across Nebraska and Iowa. Is there anything out there to trade for Badlands and SD?

Chi 6.jpg
(Edit: your image was apparently a screen capture?) If you have the URL from Google maps, you can add the larger image here. Or use the RTA Maps URL...

[USvisitor]

It seems I can't get how things work here. First I posted double post , now there are 2 images attached, instead one... Sorry.

Hope this is not too bad.

[Southwest Dave]

Your attached images are a little small to show detail. Have you checked out the RTA Map Wizard or Map centre where you can create custom routes ? Place your cursor over the 'Maps' link in the green tool bar above and you will see both options. In the Wizard you create an 'A to B' route and find attractions like below, or follow instructions in the Map centre to creater your own route using 'Way points.

A quick example.



You can zoom in and out and click on the flags for more info on the 113 attractions already listed between Yellowstone and Chicago.

[USvisitor]

Thank you very much, Southwest Dave.

My picture is larger on computer but became smaller when posted.

No, I haven't explored this tool yet. I saw similar map in someone's post but didn't know how to use it.

It's a great one.I sure will try it.

Thanks again.

[USvisitor]

All these auto appearing flags are very cool but I don't see an option to add more than 1 destination and compose a round trip route like the one in my picture.
If I save several maps for each "leg" of the trip, will I be able to see all of them at the same time?

[Mark Sedenquist]

All these auto appearing flags are very cool but I don't see an option to add more than 1 destination and compose a round trip route like the one in my picture.

We make round trip maps all of the time. The issue is that you can only add 8 waypoints (beyond the start and finish points) so to see a total map, you'd need to limit the number of points.

If I save several maps for each "leg" of the trip, will I be able to see all of them at the same time?

Not at the current time, we are limited by the vendor's requirements. Here is a thread that discusses how to add waypoints and create routes.

Mark

[USvisitor]

Thank you very much Mark. You did a great job putting together that tutorial. Too bad I didn't know about it before wasting so much time earlier this afternoon. It's too late now and I'll have to try again the other day.
For now I just have 3 separate parts of my circle. Good enough for exploring places of interest and making more decisions on what to add and what to skip.

[USvisitor]

I made a map of our imaginery trip. It looks like this now: http://www.roadtripamerica.com/maps/...%20tour%202012

The pins in the map mark the most important stops we thought of so far:
Chicago, Minneapolis, Bismark, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Mt. Rushmore, Badlands National Park, Madison, back to Chicago.



Google maps calculated that it's nabout 65 hrs of driving, it would make about 13 days w/ about 5 hrs of driving each day. I've seen people telling they are ready to drive much longer but we don't think it's the way vacation should be. We want to give time for rest and food stops as well as some poits of interest along the road.

Speaking about POI, there are so many marked around our route! We'll sure have to take lots of them off but it'll be a long lasting process. We both need to check all of them and decide what to leave. Which places along our route, besides of a few mentioned above, would you name as a must to visit?

So, driving+ rest/food/POI stops will take about 2 weeks, plus, 2-3 days in Glacier, and 2-3 Days in Yellowstone, and 2 days in Tetons- would make 3 weeks, plus Chicago time- that's most of the month. Sure I read comments in other threads saying that Yellowstone deserves 3-4 days at least... means we hardly fit into the whole month! Wow! I thought we've got lots of time.

[AZBuck]

I do the same thing when I plan my own RoadTrips. I find many more places than I will ever have time to visit, and look into them enough to know a bit about what they have to offer, when they're open, directions, that sort of thing. I then pick my spots on the fly as I drive depending on how well I'm doing at getting down the road, what the weather's like, what I feel like. I'd certainly rather have to drop a few sites (I will never get to see everything in any area I visit) than to know that I had time but missed something worthwhile because I hadn't done my homework. With as much time as you have at your disposal, don't worry about which are the 'must sees'. Just hit the places that intrigue you from your research, and spend what extra time you have at the ones that really speak to you when you're there. You've got a great trip lined 'up. Now is the time to start to relax and enjoy.

AZBuck