Family-Friendly
A family road trip through the West asks everyone to give a little — the ten-year-old, the teenager, the grandparent who'd rather sit in the shade — and the good stops give something back to each of them. These are the places broad enough to hold that range: a short walk with a big payoff, a bench and a view, a visitor center out of the heat, a story worth the drive. Plan for the slowest and hungriest among you, and the West does the rest.
Laurel Street at CA-1, downtown Fort Bragg1
US-23
Great Plains Dinosaur Museum
Home of Leonardo, the duckbill that kept its skin for seventy-seven million years, found in the breaks north of Malta in 2000.
Havre Beneath the Streets
Basement storefronts under a railroad town that burned twice in one January day in 1904, furnished now as a tour.
Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery
The world's largest salmon hatchery when it opened in 1940, built to make up for the runs Grand Coulee Dam cut off, on the fishery the Wenatchi were promised.
NM-41
I-51
I-5 / US-501
US-61
MT-71
UT-91
UT-101
Scenic Byway 125
Anasazi State Park Museum
Ruins of a 900-year-old Ancestral Puebloan village
Escalante Interagency Visitor Center
Your essential stop before heading into the backcountry
Escalante Petrified Forest State Park
Walk among 150-million-year-old stone trees
Lower Calf Creek Falls
A 126-foot waterfall hidden in a desert canyon
Mossy Cave Trail
A hidden waterfall and ice cave just off the highway
US-122
Travelers' Rest State Park
The one Lewis and Clark campsite with proof in the ground: hearths, gun lead and a latrine still laced with mercury.
Whitman Mission National Historic Site
For forty years the only marks at Waiilatpu were a granite shaft on the hill and a marble slab over a common grave, and the stone arrived from Vermont too late for the anniversary it was made for.
SR-141
US-14/16/201
I-155
Hill Aerospace Museum
Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac
Lagoon Amusement Park
A beloved family amusement park operating since 1886
Ogden Union Station
A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
Temple Square
The spiritual and architectural heart of Salt Lake City
Thanksgiving Point
A massive complex with dinosaur bones, gardens, and a curiosity museum
I-15 (Ghost Town Road exit)1
I-15 / I-40 / Historic Route 661
I-15 / I-701
Kelbaker Road (off I-15 / I-40)1
CO-171
SR-171
SR-181
UT-181
I-191
US-201
US-242
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Redwood stumps buried by a volcanic mudflow 34 million years ago, sold off by the piece for a century, and saved in 1969 by scientists ready to lie down in front of bulldozers.
Pikes Peak Cog Railway
A mattress maker's answer to a two-day mule ride, running since 1891, shut in 2017 and rebuilt from the rails up with Swiss trains in 2021.
UT-242
I-251
US-261
US-341
I-402
Blue Hole
A bell-shaped artesian spring in Santa Rosa, 81 feet deep and a steady 61 or 62 degrees, where divers from across the region learn to dive at altitude.
Petroglyph National Monument
Some 24,000 images pecked into the dark basalt of Albuquerque's West Mesa, protected in 1990 and then crossed by a city boulevard.
US-404
Dinosaur National Monument
A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found
Jordanelle State Park
A sapphire reservoir nestled between the Wasatch and Uinta mountains
Utah Field House of Natural History
A dinosaur museum with life-size replicas in an outdoor garden
Vernal
The self-proclaimed Dinosaur Capital of Utah
CA-491
CA-49 / CA-201
CA-49 / Parrotts Ferry Road1
MT-491
US-501
US-50 & US-3951
Pioneertown Road (off CA-62)1
US-621
US-641
Historic Route 66 (Mt. Vernon Ave.)1
Historic Route 66 terminus area1
I-704
Fremont Indian State Park
The largest known Fremont Indian village ever discovered
Georgetown Loop Railroad
Scrapped in 1939 for $450, rebuilt a century after it first opened, and running again over the bridge that crosses its own track.
John Wesley Powell River History Museum
The only U.S. museum devoted to river history, on the bank of the Green River.
Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
Mustard gas, nerve agent and pesticides for forty years, then bald eagles, bison and black-footed ferrets on the same ground.
I-70 / US-1911
US-701
CA-711
I-761
I-804
Elko
The railroad built it, cattle made it, and gold keeps it — the working capital of northeast Nevada, a frontier cow town that never got around to becoming a relic.
Expedition Island
Where John Wesley Powell's 1871 survey left for the canyons of the Green and Colorado; where his 1869 trip started has never been proven.
Reno
The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
Winnemucca
The crossing town at the western end of the Humboldt — Basque tables, a 1900 bank robbery the town still pins on Butch Cassidy, and the spot where I-80 meets US-95.
I-80 / Donner Pass Road1
UT-831
I-84 / Cole Road south of Boise1
US-872
Giant Springs State Park
The spring William Clark called the largest he ever saw, and the 201-foot river a fifth-grade class got into the record books.
Shep, Fort Benton
A sheepdog who met every train at Fort Benton for five and a half years, waiting for a master who had gone home in a coffin.
US-897
American West Heritage Center
A living history farm spanning 160 acres of Cache Valley
Bear Lake
The Caribbean of the Rockies — a turquoise lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border
Bear Lake Raspberry Shakes
Legendary raspberry milkshakes from locally grown berries
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary
The largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the United States
Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park
Sweeping dunes of coral-colored sand framed by red cliffs
Logan Canyon
A winding National Scenic Byway through limestone cliffs and alpine forest
Palisade State Park
A pioneer-built lake turned central Utah's favorite state park
US-89 / US-911
I-904
A Carousel for Missoula
A cabinetmaker's promise to the city council: give it a home, and he would carve the horses.
Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site
A Métis trader's 1862 house, a cattle king's headquarters, and a grandson who threw nothing away.
Museum of the Rockies
The bronze T. rex on the lawn is a cast of the one that went to Washington.
Pictograph Cave State Park
Three sandstone shelters outside Billings whose 1937 dig gave the northern plains its timeline, and whose paintings are fading.
CA-911
UT-922
CO-931
US-951
US-1011
UT-1012
UT-1131
WY-1311
CO-1501
UT-1503
SR-1551
CO-1721
US-1892
CA-1901
US-1918
Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum
An Ancestral Puebloan ruin you can climb down into
Flaming Gorge Dam
A 502-foot concrete dam with a free guided tour inside
Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area
A turquoise reservoir carved into blazing red canyon walls
Hole N the Rock
A 5,000-square-foot home carved inside a massive sandstone boulder
Moab
The adventure capital of the American Southwest
National Elk Refuge
Stephen Leek's photographs of starving elk built this winter refuge in 1912; a century of hay feeding is now its hardest question.
Steinaker State Park
A warm-water reservoir popular for swimming in the desert heat
Wilson Arch
A stunning natural arch visible right from the highway
CO-1941
UT-2111
MT-2121
I-2151
UT-2242
UT-2431
WY-2581
SR-2611
MT-2691
MT-2781
UT-2791
US-2853
International UFO Museum and Research Center
A 1930s movie theater on Roswell's Main Street turned into a museum by two men who had been part of the 1947 story, one of them the officer who announced the flying disc.
Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park
A zoo and garden of the Chihuahuan Desert on the Ocotillo Hills above Carlsbad, whose animals are injured or orphaned wildlife that cannot go back to the wild.
South Park City Museum
A mining town assembled in the 1950s from buildings hauled out of South Park's dying camps, by a Colorado Springs lawyer who wanted no imitation town.
MT-2871
CO-3401
US-3802
Bottomless Lakes State Park
Nine sinkhole lakes under red bluffs east of Roswell, named by vaqueros whose ropes never touched bottom, and set aside in 1933 as New Mexico's first state park.
Smokey Bear Historical Park
The small park in Capitan where the living Smokey Bear is buried, a cub found clinging to a burned tree in the Capitan Mountains in 1950, six years after the cartoon was invented.
US-3951
C-4701
US-5503
Aztec Ruins National Monument
A Chacoan great house on the Animas River, misnamed by settlers who thought the Aztecs built it, with original roofs nine centuries old and a great kiva rebuilt whole.
Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad
Steam to Silverton up the Animas since 1882, and the coal-fired locomotive cinder that federal investigators blamed for the 416 Fire of 2018.
Ute Indian Museum
On the farm of Ouray and Chipeta: a spring the DAR roofed with a concrete tipi in 1924, Chipeta's grave of 1925, and a museum rebuilt with the three Ute tribes in 2017.