About two weeks in advance, a change in my husband’s work schedule meant that we would both be able to take the same week off at the end of March. Obviously, that meant it was time for me to plan another last-minute trip.
But where to?
With such a short time until our planned departure, combined with current world events, plane ticket prices were far from ideal. Nonetheless, I pulled up the Google Flights explore tool, entered our dates of travel, and scanned the results.
Surprisingly, there were a few destinations with some affordable options. Excellent!
But over the course of the next couple days, each destination was eliminated one by one. The first didn’t seem like a place we’d need to spend a full week. The second had cheap flights but with terribly inconvenient arrival and departure times. The third had temporary closures at two of the main local attractions we wanted to visit. And prices for accommodations at the fourth destination were absolutely through the roof.
Frustrated but undeterred, I shifted my efforts to searching for last-minute cruise deals. I’ve never been on a cruise, but it’s something my husband and I have talked about trying out. There actually were some decent last-minute deals. However, the logistics of learning about cruising and planning shore excursions and obtaining recommended vaccines proved too overwhelming for such a last-minute situation.
Finally, we turned our focus to roadtripping; far cheaper, fewer logistics, and therefore much less stressful. Or so I thought.
It was now eight days before our trip, and we’d finally settled on a destination: the Black Hills region of South Dakota, with stops in Wyoming and Nebraska on the way there and back. It’s a place I’ve researched before, so the itinerary was mostly put together and everything really just fell into place. I spent an evening booking hotels and securing tickets for cave tours, and just like that, we were all set.
Until I woke the next morning to the news that there was a new and rapidly-growing forest fire burning in the Black Hills.
Not a problem I thought we’d be facing in March.
Over the course of the next week, I was monitoring the fire while brainstorming other ideas, and by two days before our planned departure, we had a(nother) new plan: if the fire was mostly under control by Friday evening, we’d still go to South Dakota. If it wasn’t, we’d head south to New Mexico instead.
It’s a good thing I’m a relentless travel planner who has backup plans for her backup plans, because boy oh boy did we need them.
Thankfully, by Friday night the fire was in fact mostly contained and no longer expanding. So, on Saturday morning we loaded up the car and headed north.
Destination: Devils Tower, Wyoming.
On Sunday morning, we crossed into South Dakota, marking my husband’s first visit to the state. We spent the day hiking in Spearfish Canyon before heading south to our home base in Custer State Park for the next few days.
Sadly, on Sunday evening we received news about a family member that required us to abandon the remainder of our plans and drive to the upper Midwest (and eventually all the way back to Colorado a few days later).
At one point during the planning process, after telling her about all the trip ideas we’d already ruled out, my sister commented that perhaps the universe was telling us the trip wasn’t meant to be and we should just stay home. Looking back, I think she might have been onto something. Had we flown to California or been on a cruise ship in the Caribbean or even just driven south to New Mexico, it would have been much more difficult – if not impossible – for us to abandon our plans at the drop of a hat and be there for our family.
It was only because we were in South Dakota that we were able to make it.
In the end, it certainly wasn’t the roadtrip we had planned. But it was a roadtrip that led us to where we needed to be at the time, and I’m thankful for that.
South Dakota will still be there next time.
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