We Took A Spontaneous Trip To Colorado!

I’m writing this a bit late, but you know, life.

Anyways, in October of 2024, Nathan and I decided to hop in the Jeep and drive to Colorado.

We had taken a few shorter trips before this one to West Virginia, Virginia, and New York, but this one was going to be the biggest by far.

Now, I grew up traveling the country with my family in our RV, and this really put a love and desire to travel in my heart. I have seen a lot of the country, but Nate had not yet seen hardly any of it. And so, I booked two nights at a campground in the Rocky Mountains.

There was very little planning that went into this trip. We had only 8 days to drive from PA to CO and back (about 23 hours one way to reach the Rockies), and see as much as we could see. I kind of chose the campsite dates as a “motivator” to drive out there in a certain amount of time and to stay on track.

It was October 8th, and we decided to leave at 11pm when Nathan got home from work. I had already packed most of our stuff into the Jeep, and Copper was good and tired and slept in his crate the entire first night. We drove almost to the border of Indiana by 4am, and decided to stop at a random gas station to sleep for the night. Yes, we slept at gas stations on our way out. Who wants to pay for hotels? We grabbed our big blanket, wrapped it around the roll cage of the Jeep, and made a tent of sorts. We napped from about 4am to 7am, then hit the road again (after some gas station coffee, of course).

October 9th we woke up at 3am and drove through Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Kansas City. To be honest, the traffic in these cities felt mild compared to Pittsburgh.

By October 10th, we reached Colorado at around 7am. A few minutes prior to entering Colorado, we found a cute coffee shop called Good Grounds Coffee. We got amazing drinks and breakfast sandwiches, and got to watch the sunrise from our seat. So, yes, we made it out there in under two days.

Already the scenery was nothing like Nathan had ever seen before, and I was so excited to watch him experience the west for the first time. The western United States is such a nostalgic place for me, but seeing someone else see it for the first time was so much fun. I had never been to Colorado in the fall, however, so seeing the beautiful yellow aspen trees was new for me.

Still on the 10th, we drove through mountain passes, got pizza, met a neighborhood dog, and drove our first loop through the Rocky Mountain National Park. As always, it was stunning. It was definitely cold, but Copper absolutely loved it. We were fortunate to see some bighorn sheep and elk that morning as well.

That night, we made it to our campsite at the Arapaho Valley Ranch. Since we camp in our Jeep Wrangler, we just pick tent sites to camp in, which is great cost wise! We had a beautiful campsite with gorgeous views of some of the smaller mountains. We went down a somewhat suspicious dirt road and over a dam, but it was pretty cool.

While we were setting up our camp, I saw what I thought was a large dog lurking in the campsite across from us. Instead, it was a huge red fox. Copper wasn’t sure what to think, but I got some pretty good pictures of it since it was so curious and close to us.

That night, just as I was about to fall asleep, I looked out the crack of the window of the Jeep and saw red in the sky. I grabbed my phone quickly, took some pictures, and saw the brightest aurora borealis I’d ever seen. (Don’t worry, I’ll put pictures of everything below!)

Early the next morning, October11th, we woke up early to a beautiful sunrise. We packed up the Jeep and headed back for the national park to drive around again and take some more pictures. As we were driving around, I had the idea that maybeeee if we left early the next morning, we could make it to see Devil’s Tower (WY) and camp at the Badlands (SD) for a night. This was no surprise to anyone really, since our trips are usually mostly spontaneous and I tend to think that anything within an 8 hour drive might as well be seen since we were “already out there.”

We stopped at a beautiful pull-off to cook some pasta for lunch, then headed back to our campsite. I set up my hammock while Nathan worked on making a YouTube video on how we set up our Jeep for camping (watch here). You can also watch our video summing up this trip here.

Later that night we drove back to Granby to grab some pizza for dinner and watch the sunset. We got back to our campsite after dark, and went to sleep early.

We woke up at around 2:30am on October 12th to pack up our camping stuff and hit the road towards Wyoming. Our fox friend greeted us outside again, which was a bit startling but also amazing. We made it to Wyoming at about 5am. We saw an incredibly vibrant sunrise, elk, and a landscape that was already so vastly different than the previous. We made it to Devil’s Tower at around noon and drove around the loop, and of course checked out the gift shop. The prarie dogs were yipping, and the red dirt blew around in the fall breeze. This trip was just feeling incredibly magical.

After we sat and admired the tower for a while, it was time to move on towards South Dakota so that we could reach the Badlands before sunset.

After passing an OBSCENE amount of Wall Drug signs, we made it to Badlands National Park at 4pm. We drove half of the loop and were able to see some bison, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, and even a small pack of coyotes. We then made our way to our boondocking campsite on the edge of the badlands, where we saw a gorgeous purple sunset. It was pretty cold, and got down to around 30F overnight, but our sleeping bags proved to be pretty warm.

When we woke up the next morning (October 13th now), the sunrise was beautiful. We drove the full loop this day, and stopped at the shop again as well. When it was time to leave we were a bit emotional since the trip had been so much fun. We drove late into the night, then woke up early to try to get home with enough time to unpack before we had to go back to work. Unfortunately we ended up hitting a deer at 2am on the 14th, and the Jeep was undrivable. Long story short, we got towed, stayed at a hotel, and left the Jeep in Iowa for almost a month. My mom and aunt were luckily able to come pick us up and bring us back home. The Jeep has long since been fixed and is in perfect shape again. So, the trip ended up being a little bit longer than 8 days… But I wouldn’t go back and change a thing. If not wrecking the Jeep meant not going on that trip, I would never trade the two.

There’s just something about driving across the country and seeing all that God has made that just has made a fire in my soul to continue to adventure. There is so much out there to see, and being connected to nature with very little to live on is such an amazing experience. Until hitting the deer, we slept in the Jeep every single night of the trip. We got lucky with wonderful weather the entire trip too, which was a blessing too.

If this post has done anything, I hope it’s inspired you to take the spontaneous trip. You just need your car, a map, and a desire to adventure. Life is hard, but it’s beautiful too.

Now for some pictures!