Cowboy Country - Cruise America

Fifteen nights in a loop from Denver in a motorhome, across five states, with the flights included.

Denver takes the first night in a hotel, then Cheyenne, which calls itself the rodeo capital of the United States and has the Frontier Days to back it up. Mount Rushmore follows by way of the old Fort Laramie stagecoach post, with the four presidents carved into the granite, then Devils Tower, a volcanic plug standing nearly four hundred metres out of the plain.

Sheridan and Billings come next, by way of the Little Bighorn battlefield, where Custer’s command was destroyed in 1876 and the markers still stand where the men fell. Cody follows, with the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and a rodeo every summer night, then two nights in Yellowstone, the first national park anywhere, with geysers, elk, bison and grizzly bears. Jackson Hole comes through Grand Teton, then Salt Lake City, Dinosaur National Monument and Estes Park on the way back to Denver.

Flights, a night in a Denver hotel and thirteen nights of motorhome hire sleeping up to five with a fifteen-hundred-mile pack and insurance are included; national park entrance fees are payable locally. Sixteen days for five states means steady driving, with only Yellowstone getting two nights. The season runs roughly June to September, since the Yellowstone roads close for winter, and no wildlife sighting can be promised. The mileage pack is worth checking against the route, since five states adds up quickly and the excess is charged by the mile.