Family vacation: See the best of the West at national parks
When my wife Jenny was nine, her family of seven took a road trip in a ’71 Pontiac station wagon to Mount Rushmore National Park. For a few years now she has been dreaming of taking a similar family vacation with our son, Zeke, who is eleven. While out West, we want to go hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, take in a rodeo at Cheyenne Frontier Days, and, as long as we’re in the neighborhood, visit Yellowstone National Park.
It’s a tall order, I know, and when we consulted an atlas the mileage was daunting. Mapquest confirmed we would log over 3,000 miles on our family sedan if we drove from Chicago. We considered driving out West in a rental car and flying home from Denver after we’d made all our stops, but it was still a lot of miles, and one-way flights plus one-way car rentals were more costly than round-trips. Fortunately, my sister-in-law, (who will be joining us along with her 11-year old son), suggested flying out to Denver and renting a car from there. This ended up being a more cost efficient and hassle-free option. We booked cheap round-trip flights to Denver, and our car rental was considerably less.
