The Birchwood Pie Project: Let's Go Places: The Great Blogger Road Trip Wrap Up!

Friends, the Great Blogger Road Trip of 2026 has gone from being a conversation to a spreadsheet to a memory. Let's get into how it all began, where we went, and find some silly and profound things to say to wrap it up.

How This Trip Came to Be

Many months ago Kyria and I had a conversation about 2026 travel plans. My list was: lots of state capitals, an Amtrak trip, and meeting Michelle. Kyria's list was bike trips, national parks, and meeting Michelle. Hmm...how about we meet Michelle together? We could take Amtrak there, and go to the nearest state capital (Helena) and national park (Yellowstone).

We kept talking until we had all of our puzzle pieces and started sorting through them. The longest that I will be away from home is two weeks, so that dictated the trip duration. If we took Amtrak we could do a lot of it by train but would need to rent a car for portions of the trip. All Amtrak departures near where I live are in the obscenely early AM, which meant a guaranteed loss of sleep for one night. My workaround is to "just" drive six hours to Chicago where trains have humane departure times.

Kyria put together a list of potential points of interest between my house and Michelle's house and the Amtrak stops in between. The result was...a lot of time spent getting on and off trains. From there it was a short leap to go from "let's drive to Chicago" to "let's just drive the whole thing". Originally we were going to part company after we saw Michelle, but that left me with a solo 26 hour drive home, so Kyria volunteered to come back with me. We planned our stops so that we would never drive (much) more than six hours in one day. Kyria dropped the whole thing into ChatGPT to get a second opinion of the setup.

When I first looked at Kyria's spreadsheet my eyes crossed and my brain went blank. It was Too.Much.Stuff for one trip.

Or was it? There was nothing on the list that I didn't want to do, so even though I didn't fully understand the scope, I felt that the adventure was worthy of trying. The worst that could happen is that we would get tired.

The Trip Snapshot

Normally I start my travel recaps with the snapshot list. Here is why I didn't do that back in part one of the trip recaps.

Common sense, since I started blogging about the trip while we were on the trip.
Although a lot of the trip was planned and set in stone, there were still some "choose your own adventure" points, especially toward the end. Even we didn't fully know where we were going!
Tee hee...like I said I didn't fully understand the scope of this trip and my eyes glazed over every time I tried to figure it out, so I couldn't have written up a quick snapshot even if I'd wanted to.

Anyhoo, now that it is all in the past, here is where we went and what we did:

Wednesday Aug 12 to Saturday Aug 15: Kyria flew to Birchwood HQ and we hung out and did some local touristy things.

Sunday Aug 16: wheels up! We drove to Burr Ridge IL We hiked at Indiana Dunes NP on the way and had dinner with Ernie.

Monday Aug 17: We drove in Minneapolis MN and stayed with Lisa. On the way we passed through Madison and had lunch with Engie and Sarah.

Tuesday Aug 18: We drove to Bismarck ND.

Wednesday Aug 19: We toured the Bismarck capitol and drove to Richardton ND where we met up with a friend of Kyria's. He drove us to Medora for a day of North Dakota fun: we visited the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library, the TRNP (Teddy Roosevelt National Park) where we saw prairie dogs and bison, and then we had Pitchfork Fondue (steaks deep fried in oil on a pitchfork) and saw the Medora Musical.

Thursday Aug 20: We hiked the Painted Canyon in the TRNP and drove to Billings MT.

Friday Aug 21: We drove to Helena MT. We hiked on our backyard mountain, had a fun dinner at the Windbag Saloon, and took the Helena Trolley tour.

Saturday Aug 22: We toured the Helena capitol and drove to Michelle's house. She and her husband gave us a tour of their cattle ranch and we had dinner.

Sunday Aug 23: We started our day by driving tractors on the ranch as one does and then drove to Yellowstone. Hiking ensued.

Monday Aug 24: More hiking around Yellowstone, then it was the official turn around point of the trip. We drove to Ten Sleep WY.

Tuesday Aug 25: We drove to Horse Creek SD, with a fun stop at Buffalo WY on the way. We met up with another friend of Kyria's and had dinner.

Wednesday Aug 26: We saw the sights of SD: Mount Rushmore, Needles Highway, and Crazy Horse. We were both tired so we took a chill afternoon and watched TV for the first time on the trip in the evening.

Thursday Aug 27: We drove to Pierre SD and hiked at Badlands NP on the way.

Friday Aug 28: We toured the capitol and drove to Lincoln NE.

Saturday Aug 29: We toured the capitol and went to Omaha to have lunch and to drive past Warren Buffet's house (nerds!). Then we reached the end of the official trip and it was time to start driving home. We spent the night in Ottawa IL.

Sunday Aug 30: We drove to Birchwood HQ.

Monday Aug 31: We laid around the house like slugs and binged the rest of season one of UK Traitors.

Tuesday Sept 1: Sob! I drove Kyria to the airport and returned to normal life.

A (Incomplete) Summary In Pictures

I took one million pictures during the trip, but still managed to miss a few days

Day One: Indiana Dunes NP

Day 2: Blogger photo fail

Day 3: Quick stop in Fargo. It's a pretty town that's going on the Potential Future Trips List.

Day 4: First Capitol of the trip! Bismarck is business on the outside, Art Deco gorgeousness on the inside.

Also Day 4: first bison sighting at the TRNP! To be very clear, this picture was taken from inside the car.

Also Day 4: the gorgeous backdrop of Medora

Day 5: hiking in Painted Canyon at the TRNP

Day 6: our "backyard" mountain in Helena

Also Day 6: a fun dinner at the Windbag Saloon

Day 7: Helena sunrise

Also Day 7: gettin' some dome. I have not seen the TV show Yellowstone so I cannot confirm, but we were told on the tour that a scene was filmed on these stairs.

Also Day 7: MICHELLE!!!! CHIP THE FARM DOG!!!!!! Why did we waste our time going to capitols and NPs when this was the true purpose of the trip?

Day 8: Yellowstone

Day 9: More Yellowstone, and the official turnaround point of the trip

Also Day 9: Ten Sleep WY

Day 10: Buffalo WY and Horse Creek SD

Day 11: South Dakota gorgeousness: Mount Rushmore, Needles Highway, Crazy Horse

Day 12: Badlands NP

Day 13: Pierre! Capitol! Stone shaped hearts that were used to repair cracks in the capitol floor.

Also Day 14: Lincoln!

Day 15: Final capitol hit of the trip in Lincoln. After that we had an unpictured stop in Omaha and started the drive home.

Day 16: blogger fail, quick morning hike in Ottawa IL and then we drove home.

Day Last: recovery day lying around Birchwood HQ and binging season one of UK Traitors. Doggo was quite the fan.

Pick One Place As The Best Place

I'd rather not. It was two solid weeks of best places, and the trip would not have been complete without each and every one of them. But OK, for argument's sake if I could only have one, then it would be Medora ND, specifically the Painted Canyon hike at TRNP.

Quickies

List of States Visited/Driven Through: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa

Ohio License Plate Sightings in Each State: Ohio - yes (stating the obvious but it needed to be said), Indiana - yes, Illinois - yes, Wisconsin - no, Minnesota - yes, North Dakota - yes, Montana - no, Wyoming - yes, South Dakota - yes, Nebraska - No, Iowa - No.

Life Skill Needed on this Trip Learned From Previous Travels:

The pull down shower diverter. We encountered not one but two showers like this on the trip. If not for the silly shower that I had in Toronto last year I would not have known how to start the shower.

City Names That I Was Pronouncing Incorrectly: Helena MT and Pierre SD

I've always pronounced Helena to rhyme with Elena. It's Helen with an A at the end.
Pierre is pronounced "peer" and not "pee-air".

Celebrity Deaths that Occurred During the Trip: it was a rough two weeks to be a celebrity. RIP Hayden Panettiere, Dolly Parton, and Tim Curry.

Educational Facts Learned On the Trip:

Kyria is very observant, in a way that leads to a lot of Googling. Related to the celebrity deaths, we learned that the correct term for a flag that is lowered half way on the flag pole is "half staff" and not "half mast". Flags were flown at half staff for an entire week for Dolly, which is an extraordinarily long time (and befitting to a very extraordinary lady).
I was pleasantly surprised at the number of No Kings signs in Helena. Kyria had never heard of the No Kings movement, so it was a "tell me that you lived outside of the US for most of 2025 without telling me that you lived outside of the US for more of 2025" moment.
Kyria had never heard the word grok before! I think it came up on one of our podcasts. It's a word that I know but do not use nearly enough.

Nosy Stuff

Finances: Kyria and I are both early retirees and credit card travel hackers.

All gas/car expenses went on my card, since those points were more valuable to me than to Kyria.
We decided who was paying for hotel nights based on who would get the most points.
Kyria picked up most of other expenses since her credit card lineup is better for restaurants and grocery stores.
The one night that we ate at a cash only restaurant I was the sugar mama.
We kept a spreadsheet of expenses and trued everything up at the end of the trip.

Personal Habits/Goals for the Trip:

I did pushups and lunges every other day without fail.
I had the intention to keep up my routine of every-other-day 3 x 30 second hangs on a pull up bar (to be done on the monkey bars on playgrounds) and met 0% of the goal.
I did not do any formal cardio, but in general I got a minimum of 10k steps per day due to hiking and wandering around.
I did a minimum of one Duolingo lesson each day, with more Spanish study when time allowed.
Eating started out highly decent and got a little more YOLO the further the trip progressed. Regret level: 0%. Weight gain: 0.0 pounds.
I set a very ambitious financial goal for the trip. As you know, I am in my first year of early retirement, which brings with it a tendency to over-monitor the stock market and my portfolio. I don't necessarily look at the numbers every day, but I do check them on most days. For the trip I went cold turkey and did not check either the stock market or my portfolio for the entire time. Result: this was way easier than I thought it would be, the world did not end, and I think this might open the door to doing more living and less number checking.

I am sure that there is so much more that I could say, but I'm getting ready to leave for my next trip so let's call it a day. Kyria, it was great traveling with you. This was not our first trip and it will not be our last! It's probably our last 4,000 mile road trip...or is it?

P.S.: More fun stuff on our trip from Kyria here.

Great Blogger Road Trip Series: