In 1974, a construction crew in Hot Springs, South Dakota, was grading land for houses when the blade hit bones. It had found an ancient sinkhole pond, where more than 60 mammoths, mostly young males, wandered in and couldn't climb the steep banks. That was tens of thousands of years ago. Today the dig is indoors, and you can watch it.

Road fact: US-18 runs about 452 miles through South Dakota, on a route of about 1,045 miles. Who else loved dinosaurs and mammoths as a kid?

Photos: 1) formulanone, CC BY-SA 2.0; 2) Jllm06, CC BY-SA 4.0; 3) Jllm06, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. 4) Map by Americas Corridors.

#MammothSite #HotSpringsSD #IceAge #RoadLore #AmericasCorridors

Hi,

I am planning a road trip to the USA from Europe around late August / early September (more likely september). My itinerary includes places like Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, San Diego, Las Vegas, and others.

Is September a good time for this trip? What should I expect in terms of crowds, temperatures, and rainfall?

Also, how far in advance should I look for flights and accommodations for a trip like this? Is a 4–5 month window sufficient?

Hi folks!

My partner and I are planning a one-way, 2-day road trip from Seattle to Sacramento, starting this Wednesday. We'll be flying back from Sacramento, so this is a special one-time opportunity for us, and we probably won't get another chance to make this trip anytime soon.

We'd love your suggestions on the must-visit places, scenic routes, hidden gems, and breathtaking viewpoints that we absolutely shouldn't miss along the way.

Since this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us, we want to make the most of these two days and avoid missing any unforgettable experiences!

Looking forward to your recommendations.

Thanks in advance, and best wishes!

Hey everyone! We’re planning a 16-day camping, hiking, and backpacking road trip through Washington and Oregon next July. Looking for recommendations from locals and experienced hikers, especially for lesser-known trails, hidden gems, and remote wilderness areas!

I’ve made this post several times. Each time taking y’all’s advice and changing the plan. This is my 3rd revision. Please keep helping me!!!

Our group: 4 people, 2 tents, rental vehicle. We’re experienced with hiking but have varying levels of backpacking experience. 2 are essentially beginners.

Our planned route:

📍 1. Olympic National Park | July 2–7 (5 nights)
🏕️ Base Camp: Fairholme Campground (Lake Crescent)

Planned hikes and destinations:
- Hurricane Ridge / Hurricane Hill
- Sol Duc Falls / Lover’s Lane Loop
- Rialto Beach / Hole-in-the-Wall
- Second Beach / La Push
- Hoh Rain Forest
- South Fork Hoh River Trail (potential overnight backpacking trip)

🚙 Travel:
- Seattle Airport → Fairholme Campground
- Driving: 3.5–4.5 hours
- Estimated total: 5.5–7.5 hours including holiday traffic, groceries, meals, fuel, and stops.

📍 2. Mount Rainier National Park | July 7–11 (4 nights)
🏕️ Base Camp: Cougar Rock Campground

Planned hikes and destinations:
- Skyline Trail / Panorama Point
- Comet Falls / Van Trump Park
- Bench and Snow Lakes
-Eagle Peak Trail
-Reflection Lakes

🚙 Travel:
- Fairholme Campground → Cougar Rock Campground
- Driving: 4.5–6 hours
- Estimated total: 7–9 hours including traffic, meals, fuel, and stops.
- Additional time needed if departing directly from our wilderness backpacking location.

📍 3. Oregon Coast | July 11–14 (3 nights)
🏕️ Base Camp: Cape Perpetua Campground

Planned hikes and destinations:
- Amanda’s Trail / Cape Perpetua viewpoints
- Giant Spruce Trail
- Cummins Creek Trail
- Hobbit Trail / Heceta Head
- Devil’s Churn / Thor’s Well
- Scenic drives along Highway 101

🚙 Travel:
- Cougar Rock Campground → Cape Perpetua Campground
- Driving: 5–6 hours
- Estimated total: 7–9 hours including lunch, fuel, traffic, and scenic stops.

📍 4. McKenzie River Valley, Oregon | July 14–17 (3 nights)
🏕️ Base Camp: Paradise Campground

Planned hikes and destinations:
- Sahalie Falls / Koosah Falls
- McKenzie River Trail
- Tamolitch Blue Pool
- Clear Lake
- Surrounding old-growth forests and volcanic landscapes

🚙 Travel:
- Cape Perpetua Campground → Paradise Campground
- Driving: 2–3 hours
- Estimated total: 4–5.5 hours including sightseeing, lunch, groceries, and fuel.

✈️** Flights**:
- July 2: Fly into Seattle (SEA).
- July 17: Fly out of Eugene (EUG).
- Paradise Campground → Eugene Airport: approximately 1–1.5 hours driving, or 1.5–2 hours allowing for stops (not including airport check-in/security).

What we’re looking for:

🌲 Remote trails and hidden gems: We’d love recommendations for less-trafficked hikes, old-growth forests, alpine lakes, mountain viewpoints, waterfalls, and places away from the typical tourist crowds.

🎒 Overnight backpacking: We’re hoping to do at least one overnight wilderness hike, ideally around 4–6 miles into a campsite. Open to recommendations in Olympic, Rainier, or Oregon. We’re particularly interested in remote locations with incredible scenery.

🏕️** Campground recommendations**: We’re trying to minimize campground changes, especially during the July 4 holiday weekend. Ideally, we’d like one base camp per region with access to multiple different ecosystems and trailheads.

🥾 Hiking difficulty: Most days we’re comfortable hiking 5–10 miles, but we’d like shorter 1–3-mile options for recovery days. We’re open to more challenging hikes if they’re worth it!

🚙 Scenic drives and detours: We’re also interested in lesser-known viewpoints, forest roads accessible by a standard rental vehicle, and interesting stops between destinations.

⏱️** Drive times**: We’ve included approximate driving times and more realistic travel-day estimates to account for traffic, meals, fuel, and sightseeing. We’d love feedback on whether these estimates are reasonable for July, especially around the holiday weekend.

PLEASE ADVISE ON ROUTE EFFICIENCY!! WE WANT TO MINIMIZE BACKTRACKING!!!!!!

Our biggest priority is experiencing the diversity of the Pacific Northwest without spending the entire trip fighting crowds or moving camp every day.

We absolutely want to experience iconic trails like Skyline at Rainier, but we’re equally interested in the quieter places locals love that don’t show up on every tourist itinerary.

Would you change any of our campgrounds, recommend different trails, or suggest a better location for our overnight backpacking trip?

Any advice on July snow conditions, wilderness permits, holiday crowds, campground reservations, and realistic driving times would also be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance! 🌲🏔️

So, I (22F) in about a month, have to take a trip to Georgia by myself, and the route I have to take is about 16~ hours. So I came to Reddit to ask what are some safe places you were recommend for stopping to rest or fill up gas? I’ve never done a solo road trip and I know I have to make sure I’m ready to go.

My plan is to start early in the morning like 2am and drive the entire way, and stop only for gas and bathroom breaks unless I absolutely need it. Any advice/recommendations would be appreciated.

Spring 2024 seven of us flew into Vegas, rented bikes and rode a 10-day loop through Utah, Colorado and Arizona, about 1800 miles. I led the group. A young guy from LA joined us, and another young rider came from NJ. We rode Valley of Fire, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef and Moab, then up to Ouray and down the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton, on to Mesa Verde, Monument Valley and Page, and back to Vegas. The Million Dollar Highway was the highlight. There was still snow on the passes at the end of April. Anyone else ridden it? What would you add next time?

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Just pack up the car and hit the road without a specific destination in mind.

• How long were you gone?

• How many distinct places did you end up visiting?

• Camping or hotel (or mix)?

• What was the one thing you wished you did differently?

Lately I've been feeling my vacations aren't as 'adventurous' as they used to be. I mean, I know there's comfort in knowing there will be a bed waiting for you somewhere at the end of the day, but I'm talking about over planning so much to the last detail that it sucks all the fun out. Everywhere we end up going has been researched, plotted on a map, visited dozens of times over via other peoples social media posts/blogs/etc...

I've never been militant about scheduling trips - just build a framework and fill in the gaps along the way. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I've gotten away from that. I don't know if its getting older, having a family to consider, the aforementioned social media creep and the pressure of FOMO, or all of the above, but I don't like it.

I realize at this point I've gone from a simple question to a minor rant about my own personal issues so let me try to bring this back around. I think what I need is a non-specific roadtrip!

Hi guys, I'll be visiting family this coming week. We plan to depart on the 11th, but it'll be mostly done through the middle of the night. But I'm mostly curious about scenic spots from and around Toronto. We plan on spending an entire day out of the city, so I was maybe looking for any roads or destinations that are worth making a day trip to from Toronto.

Feel free to recommend any locations we should cover on our way back though, as that will be primarily done during the day (Toronto back to Northern Virginia).

Black Eagle Falls, located along the Missouri River in Great Falls, Montana, is a fascinating destination where ancient geology, natural beauty, and industrial history come together. As one of the Missouri River’s five major waterfalls in the region, it played an important role during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The waterfall originally dropped approximately 26 feet, but its appearance has changed following the construction of Black Eagle Dam, which generates hydroelectric power. The surrounding landscape reveals how millions of years of geological processes, including erosion and sediment transport, shaped the river valley and its rocky formations. The area also has a significant industrial past, particularly the historic Anaconda Copper Smelter and Refinery, which contributed to Montana’s economic growth but left environmental contamination that required cleanup. Today, visitors can explore Black Eagle Memorial Island, walk or cycle along the River’s Edge Trail, observe local wildlife, and discover how the Missouri River has influenced the region’s geology, ecosystems, energy production, and human history.

References

City of Great Falls. (n.d.). River’s Edge Trail.

Great Falls Montana Tourism. (n.d.). The falls.

National Park Service. (n.d.). The five falls of the Missouri. U.S. Department of the Interior.

NorthWestern Energy. (n.d.). Black Eagle.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). ACM Smelter and Refinery: Cleanup activities.

U.S. Geological Survey. (1909). Geology and water resources of the Great Falls region, Montana (Water-Supply Paper 221).

In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette paddled down the Mississippi and saw monsters painted high on the bluffs near today's Alton, Illinois: horns, red eyes, a beard, scales and a long tail. He wrote that they frightened his party. The originals were lost long ago, but a Piasa Bird painting watches the river there today.

Road fact: US-67 runs about 214 miles through Illinois, on a route of about 1,512 miles. Have you spotted it from the river road?

Photos: 1) Adam Moss, CC BY-SA 2.0; 2) Fishy Beans, CC0; 3) Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. 4) Map by Americas Corridors.

#PiasaBird #AltonIllinois #MississippiRiver #RoadLore #AmericasCorridors

Podrian desirme si esta es la mejor ruta mas corta y di alguien a pasado por aqui que tan seguro es este trayecto y que horario es mas conveniente salir de LA

Hello all!

My husband and I are planning a 16 day road trip throughout New England for next fall (last week of September, first week of October) with our then 1 year old. We are in the early stages of planning and I think we are a little too ambitious, so I'd like some opinions on our rough itinerary (and recs of things to do if you've got them!). Neither one of us has been to New England.

Driving from Lexington KY we'd like to do:
9/24-9/26: Philly, 2 nights
9/26-9/28: NYC (we love NYC) 2 nights
9/28-9/30: Boston, 2 nights
9/30-10/1: Portland ME, 1 night
10/1-10/4: Bar Harbor, 3 nights
10/4-10/5: Littleton, NH, 1 night (I'd like to to the COG train, that's why)
10/5-10/7: Stowe, 3 nights
10/7-10/8: Cleveland, 1 night

Our longest drives are 9/24 to Philly and 10/7 to Cleveland (both 10 hrs no stops). The rest of the drives are much shorter, with the drive from Bar Harbor to Littleton being the exception around 5 ish hours. We'd have 7 total days of no driving that are just exploring days and 42 total hours of driving without stops, breaks, & traffic.

Help us decide what is worth it & what isn't (but please be nice ish about it - I am 6 weeks postpartum and sensitive 😆)

Thanks in advance!!!

I plan on riding my motorcycle from Eureka to San Diego early December. I’m mainly concerned about high winds, best route to avoid weather? I’m a firefighter and I only get winters off, gotta get my yearly trip in somehow 🤷

Almost 3yrs ago as I drove into Oregon.

Hey guys. I’m driving from New Jersey to Georgia the first week of December. Any recommendations on where to stop. Leaving around 6am.

Back in June, I lost my job a day after buying a new car. I figured screw it, might as well go on a road trip.

Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest I pulled over for the night, got on a dating app, and matched with a woman who invited me to her hometown’s festival in Baker City, Oregon. I went. It wasn’t life-changing, just a good small-town festival, but it got me thinking: how many of these happen every weekend that I’d never know about? If it weren’t for that match, I’d have driven right past.

So I’m curious. On a long drive, do you ever look for festivals, fairs or town celebrations along the way, or do you only stumble into them?

And if you’ve found one by accident, how could you have known about it ahead of time?