Foreword:In the summer of 2008 my wife and myself embarked on what I guess could only be called an epic trip of a lifetime. We traveled almost 4000 miles and went to 5 National Parks over a span of about two weeks. It is not a trip that most would do and it is a lot of work, and a lot of miles in the car. For the most part we tent camped the whole thing and would do it again in a heart beat. I am doing my presentation on this trip because I have a very strong feeling that every American should make this trip at least once in their lifetime. It truly gives you a very clear understanding in

why our country is so great beyond what you just see on TV.

Yellowstone NPStop 3

Grand Teton NP Stop 4Badlands NP Stop 1

Mt. Rushmore NP Stop 2 Rocky Mt. NP Stop 5

Our first stop was Badlands National Park, it was day two of our trip, and even though you know you are getting close, it kind of sneaks up on you. The Badlands are literally in the middle of nowhere, which makes this National Park pretty amazing.

2693 ft 852 miles

Click to go home

The Badlands are located in South Dakota about 45 minutes east of Mt. Rushmore. • The Park covers more than 244,000 acres• It is open all year except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.•The Park does offer lodging and camping.•There are designated hiking trails that are available.

History•The Badlands where formed by deposition and erosion. •The Process began aproximately 65 million years ago. It ended 28 million years ago.• The erosion process did not start until just recently, 500,000 years ago. • It host one of the most complete fossil records in North America.

Link to Park FAST FAQS

5000 ft and 900 miles

Mt. Rushmore is an iconic symbol of and for America, its location makes it even that much better on this trip. Located only about an hour away from the Badlands and located in the Black Hills it is a total change of scenery from the last two days. You start to have an understanding of why the Native Americans thought this area was so magical. We spent two nights here and also went to Custer State Park which is simply amazing in its own way.

https://gfp.sd.gov/state-parks/directory/custer/

Yellowstone National Park Stop 3

What can you say about Yellowstone other than probably the most amazing place I have ever been to. It is for the most part Americas last and only completely wild territory. The parks amazing amount of wildlife only matches the natural wonders that make this place truly one of a kind.

7279 ft 1412 miles

Geyser Cam

Wild Life

Bear Safety Link

Tetons National Park Stop 4

7000 Feet 1500 miles

The Grand Tetons are located just south of Yellowstone National Park, and in fact almost border one another. The thing about the Tetons is they are not the biggest range in the country but are a site to see do to their appearing to come straight up out of the ground.

Fly Over Video

Rocky Mountains National ParkStop 5

Rocky Mountain National Park, the last stop on our journey. Rocky Mountain NP offers stunning views and an amazing drive on the highest road in the US. We decided that the last stop on the trip we would reward ourselves with a well deserved bed and hot tub.

Longs Peak Webcam

Closing NotesWhen I started this project I was going to make it mostly on the Tetons, then I decided to include Yellowstone, then I decided to include all of them. That might have been a mistake on my part but it was still fun looking at the pictures.

As I stated in the opening that I feel everyone should experience this trip at least once and I hope the pictures in the presentation gave you reason to understand and maybe think about it. These areas are America at its best, and you can see it and feel it. I was lucky enough to take this trip with my wife and sometime in the next few years I will take the same trip with my daughter so she can see this amazing part of our country.

I am very proud to say that the pictures used in the presentation are all my own with the exception of the Google Earth Mapping pictures. I am guessing there are over 1100 pictures from the trip and I tried to include what I thought were the best but it was not always an easy choice. I tried to include links to all the parks so that you could do some of your own further investigation. Honestly I did not really run into any issues except having a brain lapse in how to put in a hyper link at one point. I guess if there was an issue is that I could have made this thing about 100 slides and that might have been a bit much. There is so much to include that it is just a hard thing to do, so I took the easy way out, I thought, but it was still A LOT of work.

Looking back I wanted to include more but it just did not work out, I had a movie that I made in Camtasia, flying over the Tetons and another that is the map in motion but did not include those after I changed some thing around. All in all I thought the presentation looked good and to me was maybe a little to simple, or maybe not. In regards to using transitions in pictures I am not a big fan due to the time it takes for these to process in the presentation. I think it takes too much time. I also went with the visual overload to help establish my point. I hope you enjoyed it and I encourage you all to pull up your sleeves, pack up your car and family and go see this amazing country.