STEAL These Midwest Road Trip Ideas
+ is everything advertising these days?!
This time last year I was prepping for a three week solo road trip around the Midwest! This year I’m prepping for a little backpacking trip in the near future, and some fun rough water paddling weekends, but I’m feeling nostalgic for car camping in the rain.
I’ve had a super busy winter, and I’m looking forward to a medium-busy spring. Here are some ideas to make your spring medium-busy!
Oh hey there! Check out the Washburn Paddling Film Festival next Saturday:
Head over to Washburn, Wisconsin on April 12th to catch the Paddling Film Festival! Washburn is right outside of Bayfield, one of my favorite places in the world, and this is a fun way to meet other paddlers and local adventurers and watch some sick award-winning paddling films! Tickets are available online, or at the door.
Make it a weekend and hit some of my favorite hiking, waterfalls, and restaurants in Bayfield!
Midwest Road Trip Ideas:
Contrary to popular belief, you actually *don’t* need to leave the Midwest to have a great vacation. But likely, if you’re here you already know that :)
Here are a few of my favorite road trip ideas in/near the Midwest:
1) Ultimate One-Week Great Lakes Road Trip:
This one-week Great Lakes road trip is based on my own road trip I took after finishing up my first ever season as a guide on Lake Superior, and includes all of the must-see spots along the Great Lakes.
Hike the Sleeping Bear Dunes and swim in tropical-like waters, explore the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, waterfalls of the Upper Peninsula, and lighthouses of the North Shore. This is the perfect road trip for anyone looking to see the absolute best things the Midwest has to offer on a budgeted timeframe– this is for people who want to get up early, hike most of the day, and make every second of their trip count.
2) Northern Wisconsin Waterfall Road Trip
Looking for the best under the radar road trip in the Midwest? Consider taking a waterfall road trip through the Wisconsin Northwoods. Here, you can find dozens of incredible waterfalls, beach hikes, unique cabin stays and so much more. A Wisconsin waterfall road trip is the perfect road trip for anyone looking for solitude, wilderness vibes, and to be able to travel at a slower place to appreciate the scenery.
There’s also a number of great one-night backpacking trips in this area! Or, head up this weekend (April 12-13) and pair it with Saturday night at the Paddling Film Festival!
Be sure to check out Copper Falls State Park, Amnicon Falls State Park, and Pattison State Park. There are dozens of other smaller waterfalls here worth exploring as well, outlined in the full article below:
3) Hocking Hills and Red River Gorge Road Trip
One of the coolest Midwest Road Trips you can take for caves, cliffs, waterfalls and overlooks is to head to Hocking Hills in Ohio, then continue on to Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. I’ve been to “the Gorge” twice– once in college, when I had first gotten into camping and exploring, then again in Spring 2024 on a big solo road trip through the southern Midwest.
Hocking Hills was on my list this trip, but I ended up cutting the trip short! Next time for sure!
In Hocking Hills, had I had the chance to visit I would’ve checked out Ash Cave, Conkle’s Hollow, and Cantwell Cliffs.
The Red River Gorge remains one of my absolute favorite destinations! Though it is certainly the South and not the Midwest, the Gorge is an easy drive from a lot of major Midwest cities. The Gorge is truly incredible in that it is home to the highest concentration of natural sandstone arches outside of Arches National Park! This area is truly a treasure for hikers or people who love the outdoors, and I deeply recommend planning a trip here.
READ: Top Ten Midwest Road Trip Ideas
Is everything an AD?
Having a blog is really fun in a lot of ways, especially when it’s not your full-time job. I really like writing and creating trail guides, and I even don’t really mind making silly little instagram videos (though I much prefer to be off social media than on it). But making content, it turns out, is expensive. My website, software, and all of the programs and services I use adds up to a couple thousand a year and at a certain point, like it or not, you’re either donating your time and money to create content or it becomes a job.
For me, it’s become a job. One I love, but a job nonetheless. There’s a tipping point with every sort of media where the expenses and time required mean that it must in some way be monetized to be sustainable:
Enter the AD.
I’ve strived to keep my blog almost complete ad-free— no pop-ups, nothing to interfere with the reader experience. I augment that with affiliate linking to make sure I’m not losing money, but the reality is you can’t keep everything AD-free and create good content— good content takes time. In order to have that time, your basic needs need to be met. For the most part, I’ve relegated almost all of my ad content to Instagram— I passionately hate a website popup ad, but a well-done Instagram ad doesn’t bother me so much.
But once you begin to work in media, you start to realize just how much of everything is an ad around you. Moreover, you start to realize how many undisclosed ads there are around you.1 This week, I read this WILD, interesting article on product placement in Emily in Paris:
Basically, the article dives into how much product placement is in Emily in Paris, and the confirmed instance of McDonalds basically becoming the plot of an episode. Nowhere is it disclosed that it’s an ad. Overall, really great read.2
a very quick list of thoughts from my real life lately:
I’m going backpacking in the desert again soon and I’m very excited but also very tired! I’ve been doing SO much travel lately (none of which I’ve published anything on yet but I will!) on top of a full time job, and things have been… exhausting. That said I kind of thrive on chaos and know that if I didn’t live my life at a breakneck pace I’d have too much time to think. Ew.
I’ve been traveling, but I’ve also been in SUCH a funk this spring. The weather has been gross, living where I am now I’m just a little father from hiking and nature than I was on the North Shore, and for some reason that extra ten minutes makes a difference. I really love where I live, but at the same time I miss the North Shore sometimes. Ultimately though I think Northern Wisconsin is a better fit for me and what I want long term.
I feel like the sun came back and spring started (but also not really we have so much snow) without my permission. Mentally, I’m still in February and it’s making me grouchy.
I’m in the middle of six different books right now
And seven different knitting projects
And there’s an unfinished painting sitting in the dining room
I bought a bunch of empty notebooks to finally start that writing project I’ve been planning for ten years. They are sitting, empty, reminding me that the easiest way to get something done is just start but once you chose any one thing you give up a thousand other possibilities. So the notebooks will sit blank and full of potential and possibility a little longer before I back my ideas into a corner.
Why is it so hard to come up with what to make for dinner?
which is WILD because influencers and bloggers are held to SUPER stringent ad disclosure laws through the FCC but it would seem Netflix is not?
irony not lost on me that in a show where the main characters watery-a** marketing ideas are regularly touted as groundbreaking they’ve decided to make the show itself a pretty egregious billboard. that’s actually quite funny. perhaps even protected under satire?
Hocking Hills is amazing! I need to go back though. The last time I was there, none of the waterfalls were "activated." Still was a great time walking the trails and the campgrounds were pretty spacious