As I've mentioned throughout these pages, we like to plan our trips in the wintertime. We start by writing away for various maps, guides and brochures on places of interest. Most often these are available for free from various agencies like the National Park Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service and so on. Another good source of materials is a local Chamber of Commerce. And of course, you'll find a ton of useful info on the Web.

After gathering these resources, we then pore over them and daydream. Naturally, we keep some road maps nearby and start to think about possible routes. As we get more serious about this, I then boot up the Delorme Map 'n' Go program and check various distances in more detail.

At this stage we start to lay out a possible itinerary based on driving distances and days of the week. I usually do this with a spreadsheet program. Now I have certain acquaintances who deride me for this planning. However, my approach yields a number of distinct benefits:

• You'll find out about things only the locals know. Think how disgusted you'd be if you drove 500 miles to a certain part of the country and completely missed a neat museum or hiking trail or geological curiosity, only two miles further down the road.

• Some attractions are more fun and make more sense if you prepare a little bit ahead of time. Good examples of this would be traveling on the Oregon Trail or knowing to look for the Steller's Jay along the Trail Ridge Road in the Rockies.

• Unnecessary driving is eliminated. Once you've collected a list of sites you'd like to visit, you can try out various permutations on a map before leaving home. Often times a simple rearrangement will chop off fifty or even a hundred miles of excess driving.

• By consulting the maps along with a calendar, you can arrange an order which will avoid lodging disappointments. For example, most National Grassland campgrounds are small (good!), but this means that you probably should arrive in the middle of the week or early in the day if you wish to secure a site.

• Finally, planning a trip adds to the pleasure. Even a short one week adventure grows in size due to anticipation. Relaxing and fulfilling vacations are 90% mental, don't you know.

Abbreviations

Perhaps some people resent an itinerary, thinking it represents a plan which must be obeyed. (Does Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation movie come to mind?)

But it's important to realize that an itinerary represents possibilities not etched-in-stone eventualities. It is nothing more than a carefully laid out plan of attack which makes all of your options plain. You can later choose to bypass some of these owing to various circumstances (poor weather, too many people, bad vibes, whatever).

IIn fact, we broke the itineraries, shown below, a number of times. As one example, when we pulled into Lake Minatare State Recreation Area, we found that flooding had closed down some of the camp sites and the others were way too crowded. So we simply booked a quiet motel room in nearby Scottsbluff. (Anyway, the temperature had risen into the 80's, never a sweet time for camping.)

So, here are itineraries for you to look over from some of our vacations. I've presented them here just to give you a feel for the kinds of rewarding vacations that are possible in the Great Plains. I'll be adding more over the next several months, so keep checking back!

Our Introduction to Nebraska Trip: 1998

Marie had never been to Nebraska before, so we put this short trip together just to whet her appetite. I was "between jobs" and dead broke, so we had to plan an inexpensive vacation. In fact, this trip cost very little to prosecute and yet was tremendous fun. (Among other things, the temperatures were ideal for camping and we saw very few other people in the wilds). In a nutshell, we started from Mankato, Minnesota, threaded our way just barely into South Dakota, and then cut south to northeastern Nebraska. See what you think of this, just for a quickie outdoor holiday:

Our First Big Grassland Aventure: 1999

As you can see from the itinerary below, this was a grand vacation on a rather major scale. I was back in harness as a college instructor with a legitimate income for a change, and Marie had carefully saved up her vacation days. So, we set out on a rather ambitious expedition to explore both the mountains and grasslands of Colorado.

Our route took us along parts of the Lewis & Clark Trail in northeastern Nebraska, and then along the Oregon Trail in the Panhandle. From there we struck out for the Pawnee National Grassland — our favorite. After letting the wind rough up our tent a bit, we climbed in elevation to the glorious Roosevelt National Forest in the Rocky Mountains, enjoying both shirt sleave weather and snow storms. Naturally, we took in a bit of the National Park there, too, reveling in elk and mountain goats and exceedingly scary alpine roads. Then it was back to the Oregon Trail, this time in Wyoming. Working our way home, we explored the Oglala National Grassland and the McKelvie National Forest in Nebraska, with just a bit of horseback riding in Niobrara State Park before returning to Mankato. It was one heck of a vacation, let me tell you!