Cross Country move from Seattle to Chicago
Why Here
Fourth of July week 2017, my girlfriend and I finally decided to end our long-distance relationship… So, we rented a one-way U-Haul in Seattle and headed east.
Before leaving, we stopped by a Cabela's to purchase a tent so that we could set up camp along the way if we wanted. The sales associate assured us that the tent we chose was simple to assemble… "no more than 10 minutes."
Along the way, we spent the night in 4 cities. Because we didn't want to restrict our time along the way, we had no reservations made in advance and booked all rooms on arrival the night or day of.
Our first night, Spokane. This was a fairly uneventful night. It did involve mapping out the nearest superstore to find a lock for our U-Haul rear.
The next day we made an unplanned stopped in Missoula because our U-Haul started to make an alarming noise. We tried to find a mechanic, but they were closed by the time we got there, so we stopped at a great craft bar to wait for a U-Haul rep to come and meet us. After driving around a few blocks with him, I learned that the noise was normal engine noise that was louder than normal due to the extreme heat (90 +degrees). Well, we wasted half the day due to diagnostics, so we decided to stay the night there. We found a hotel and then a nice restaurant for dinner.
Night out on the town of Missoula
Turns out that there was an earthquake that we sort of slept through. As we checked out the next morning, we saw the newspaper headline, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hits Missoula!
After a few hours of driving, we finally arrived at Yellowstone—via the North Entrance. A $35 fee (if traveling by vehicle) grants you entrance for 7 days.
Exploring Yellowstone Park
Towards the end of our southward path, we reached Old Faithful.
After we looped back north and exited the park via the Northeast Entrance/Exit. That night we found a hotel in the neighboring town of Cooke City.
Outside view from our hotel
General tips about Yellowstone
We spent a long half day, essentially traversing most of the park. We didn't get a chance to see the Grand Prismatic Spring, which I regret. So, if you want to see wildlife and most if not all of the major sites, I would recommend spending an entire day or at least split it over 2 days. You may also want to head south to Grand Teton National Park, which could take another day.
If you want to camp in the park or stay at an onsite lodge, fish, or do any serious hiking on foot—this trip requires some pre-arrival research and/or reservations. As I stated earlier, we pretty much "winged it" when it came to our visit to the Park.
We got lucky, mainly because we came during the busy summer season (all roads we wanted to use were open), and we didn't plan to stay in the park (probably would have been no vacancy if we did).
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The following day we headed east towards Mt Rushmore. Upon arriving at the monument, we found that there is also another monument commemorating Crazy Horse. There was no fee for entrance but a $10 fee to park your vehicle. We decided to tour both monuments.
If you do both tours and spend time walking around the grounds of the national park, you may want to allow a few hours to a ½ day.
After Mt Rushmore, we planned to set up camp at a campsite further east in South Dakota. Unfortunately, we arrived only an hour before sunset, and the tent set up proved to be a lot more complicated than promised. We gave it a dedicated yet frustrated effort, but after getting well into dusk, we gave up. We packed up all our equipment and headed towards Sioux Falls but again came up with the fail as no hotels had a vacancy. We begrudgingly headed for a Super 8 in Beresford SD. I'm not a fan of motels, and this place definitely reinforced that dislike. Our nonsmoking room smelled like an ashtray, and we were so fearful of bed bugs that we slept on top of the covers.
The following day we continued on and stopped in Sioux City to check out the tri-state border of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
We found an outdoor patio for an impromptu brunch.
Later that day we finally ended at our destination, Sweet Home Chicago.
General Tips for cross country travel
If you're renting a U-Haul or similar for travel requiring you to leave the truck unattended, make sure you have a lock purchased in advance.
Beware of the mountain passes. I'm from Chicago, a very flat city in an also flat state. The pacific northwest and mountain states have an entirely different topography.
Navigating these areas means driving along sometimes steep mountain "passes." These passes were scary at times (to me), especially in a sizeable U-Haul truck.