I liked the Sleeping Bear Dunes lakeshore area of Michigan better than Mackinac, so if you haven’t been there, definitely add it to your list as well!
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Per person roughly we paid $900 for BOS-LHR-GLA with a return LHR-BOS. Last summer we paid closer to $700 each JFK-CDG round trip. I mentally budget $1000pp to fly to Europe in general.
We just went round trip BOS-SEA and that was (what I felt outrageous) also about $700 each but I was very inflexible with dates and times.
BOS-MCO round trips can vary really wildly but I could definitely do it for around $200 but sometimes probably closer to $400. Caribbean destinations would probably be roughly similar depending on the time of year. My parents go to Aruba in Feb (not technically Caribbean) and spend $500ish to fly around President’s Day.
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I recommend using Scott’s Cheap Flights to find good deals on airfare. It’s a paid service, you set up your home airport and you get emails when a really good deal comes up. And by good, I mean really good like 75% lower than regular fare. The catch is that your deals may not be on dates convenient to you or the specific place you want but it can be really helpful to spot a deal and then begin planning from there.
I haven’t forgotten about your question! I will write up a mini-trip report—hoping to have time during this long weekend!
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I look forward to it!!
We are still waiting
Better late than never! Here’s a high-level trip report…
What gave me the easiest start in planning is that I went on a very similar trip with my parents in the 1990s. 
I remembered our big main stops, but I also pulled out my pictures from that vacation and made notes about what we did on specific days when we stayed longer (like at Yellowstone). What complicated our trip was the flooding there in early June. We actually didn’t know that it would reopen in time for our planned arrival until about 36 hours before we left. Had it not, I was going to switch directions and figure out at the last minute a trip to New England/Acadia instead. I knew there would still be plenty to do out west had we not been able to go to Yellowstone, but I also didn’t want to drive all that way and not be able to go. Fortunately, the southern loop did reopen in time for us, so west we went!
We are in Louisville, so we took a northerly route out up through South Dakota, with stops along the way. Our longest day of driving on the way out was just around 7 hours. On the way back, once we left the Grand Tetons, we had about 2.5 days of straight driving back. By “straight,” I mean no “destinations”…we stopped overnight, but we didn’t do much of anything. Heading back, our longest day was about 12 hours.
Day 1- Louisville to Dubuque, IA- my husband wanted to see the Field of Dreams baseball field, and it’s nearby in Dyersville, IA. Stayed in a Hampton Inn.
Day 2- saw Field of Dreams, drove to Brookings, SD. Stayed in a Hampton Inn. (This stop set up the next day for me. 
I read the Little House books over and over as a kid and could not go to South Dakota again without visiting De Smet (something we hadn’t done on the trip as a kid). Brookings was the closest town with a hotel brand we were looking for.)
Day 3- Went to various locations that were in the later Little House books and actually spent much of the day in the De Smet area. Drove to Kadoka, SD, that afternoon and stayed in an AirBnB.
Day 4- Kadoka is only about 20 minutes from the entrance to the Badlands National Park. Spent the day there doing the various shorter hikes and driving around to the other lookouts. Finished the day in Wall, SD, and visited Wall Drugs (huge touristy trap, but there are a ton of billboards for it along the road in SD, so you can’t not go). Drove to Rapid City, and stayed in another Hampton Inn & Suites (sensing a theme? ) for the next two nights.
Day 5- Went to Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorial. We could have spent more time in the Black Hills or going to Keystone or Windcave National Park which is also nearby, but we opted for a small sight-seeing break and actually decided to play a round of miniature golf! It was pirate themed, so absolutely nothing to do with what I’d picture for SD/“out west” at all, but fun (I won!) and right next to a grocery so we could stock up before heading to Yellowstone. Stayed the night again in Rapid City.
Day 6- Left Rapid City via Deadwood and Devil’s Tower to head to Yellowstone (east entrance, Cody, WY, is the closest town to it). We were originally going to stay at one of the new buildings at Canyon Lodge, but due to the flooding, they were not going to reopen before we arrived. I switched our lodging to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel cabins instead, and that’s where we checked in this evening and stayed for the next 4 nights. (I’m not fond of hotel hopping when possible, so both the Lake Hotel area and Canyon areas are both good, more central spots for day trips in any direction.)
Day 7- We went west from the Lake cabins today, following the southern loop. Visited the West Thumb Geyser Basin, Old Faithful area, Grand Prismatic, Gibbon Falls, and Beryl Springs, with some stops being short hikes and some just going to the lookouts/park paths.
Day 8- Went north from the cabin this day towards the Canyon area, and visited LeHardy rapids, the Mud Volcano area, Hayden Valley, and both the north & south rim drives along the Canyon. (Again a mix of short hikes and lookouts/park paths.)
Day 9- Headed back to the Canyon area and did a longer, backcountry hike along the rim in the morning. This afternoon we did a horseback ride from the Canyon Corral and then went to the Norris Geyser Basin area.
Day 10- Went back to the Old Faithful area and did a longer walk to see some of the geysers that we didn’t visit on the first day. Had lunch and then left YNP, heading to the Grand Teton National Park. On the drive through GTNP, we stopped at the various pull-offs/lookouts along the road to Jackson, WY. We stayed at another Hampton Inn in Jackson for the next two nights.
Day 11- Took a rafting trip on the Snake River this morning. Did a hike around Taggert Lake in GTNP that afternoon and saw Jenny Lake, and that evening we rode the gondola to the top of Teton Village.
Day 12- This was our last official sight-seeing day. Did a hike around String Lake and the Leigh Lake area, had lunch, and then headed out to start our trip back home. Stopped in Laramie, WY, at a Hilton Garden Inn for the night.
Day 13- Drive from Laramie to Kansas City, MO. This was actually our longest travel day of the whole vacation. Stayed the night at a Springhill Suites. Got frozen custard on the Kansas side of the city, since that was a state that we hadn’t hit yet so the kids could say they’ve been there.
Day 14- Drive from Kansas City to home; official end of the trip. 
Overall great trip. We did and saw a ton in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, but we could have done a ton more still. Since the northern loop in YNP hadn’t yet reopened while we were there (it actually did the day we got back to Louisville), we missed all those areas (like Mammoth Hot Springs and the Lamar Valley). Had it been open while we were there, I would have rearranged some of our days and maybe not seen all of the things we did go to on the southern loop. We also could have spent more time in the Teton/Jackson area (loved the hiking there!) and explored more in the Rapid City area, but given that the trip was already a full 2 weeks, I don’t think we could have added days even though I wanted to! That just leaves some for a future vacation—maybe flying out next time though!
Hope this gives you some ideas…Let me know if you have questions about anything specific!
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Thank you for the details of where you went each day. I’m only a couple hours east of Louisville so it was very helpful and fun to read! My brother swears Glacier is the best place on earth.
Here are some questions:
Did you have trouble booking NP lodging/AirBnB stays? How far ahead did you reserve them? Did you have huge crowds in Yellowstone? And what was the make up of your travel party? Adults/kids?
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Since we didn’t get to do the Northern loop in Yellowstone, I’ve said that we’ll need to do another trip to see it and combine that with going to Glacier!
I actually booked Yellowstone originally only about a month before we were set to arrive! Things were a little up in the air on when we could go, so while we had the idea that we wanted to do the big road trip, I was uncertain of dates we could do for a while this spring—and then end of school year stuff kept me busy and procrastinating. Once we heard that the park would reopen, but Canyon Lodge would not, that’s when I rebooked to the Lake Hotel cabins, and that was only a week before we arrived. I had heard about how everything books up a year in advance, so I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to get reservations. Now, I’m sure I would have had more selection had I booked earlier, but we were happy with where we were, and the cabin pricing wasn’t bad at all for a National park. What I did notice being more limited were reservations for activities within the park. As for outside the parks, Jackson probably had the least selection (and most expensive), but I didn’t have any trouble elsewhere. If you want to stay near the Badlands, there’s not much around in general. An alternative to what we did staying in Kadoka would be to make it a day trip from Rapid City.
I had also heard of the huge crowds at Yellowstone too. However, we had no issues there either. When they reopened, guests staying within the park had full access (at least to the southern loop), but day guests were limited. They did a system where if your license plate ended in an odd number, you got in on odd dates, and even numbers on even dates (with some other rules I don’t remember for alphabetical plates). This was so they could make sure the south loop wasn’t overrun and doubly crowded since the north loop was closed. I also think they had some employees diverted working to cleanup the flooding issues so they didn’t want to overwhelm them too. The park reopened the day before we arrived, and I remember reading a report about how that first day went—there were usually 10,000 cars on the south loop in that June timeframe, and that first day only saw 5000. I don’t know if those numbers stayed similar for the dates we were there, but we never had any of the parking issues or waits like I’d read about. Once we heard what they were going to do with limiting visitors, it was actually one of the things that still sold us on going—I had said it might be a better experience even though we couldn’t do everything because it would be like when WDW first reopened in 2020.
We are 2 adults, 3 kids (but not super young ones).
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I second this opinion! We were supposed to go August 2020, but rescheduled to August 2021. Took my MIL and it was the best trip ever. Maybe even better than Disney World. 
Of course, because we were taking MIL (who never travels) we did All. The. Things. Horseback riding, fly fishing, whitewater rafting, boat tours, hiking, Amtrak. Maybe that was why it was so wonderful. Normally we pick one or two extras, and do lots of hiking. She’d just had knee surgery, so the hiking was short - 5 miles or so, tops.
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After reading this, Glacier just went to the very top of my list. I had never looked too much into it (the kids were small and hiking with little kids can be hard) but it looks absolutely amazing.
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I missed this thread the first time it came around, but I keep meticulous records on what each trip cost. All the trips shown are for 4 people. Basically every vacation we’ve ever done cost less on a per person/per day basis than the Starcruiser would. The only thing that rivals it is our Pandemic Revenge Travel trip to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos with National Geographic coming up in December, which is the most money I’ve ever spent on a vacation. It’s so much more than any of the others that I’m almost afraid to publish the number. We’re also planning a trip to Italy for Spring Break 2023, but I don’t have a good estimate for that yet. “Europe 2019” was Belgium, the Netherlands, and a few days in Paris. We all love Star Wars, and I think doing the Starcruiser would be a blast, but I know EXACTLY what else we could do for that money.
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Holy shit!
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This is amazing! I keep “goodish” records but nothing like this. I’m going to start keeping better track of our vacation spending.
Your Alaska 2019, was that a Disney cruise or a different line?
The Alaska vacation was on Princess, which I highly recommend, then we went our own way on land once we got to Whittier. We also started with a stop at Olympic National Park in Washington before taking Amtrak up to Vancouver to board the cruise.
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Holy shit for the nerdy records or for the $$$$$ Galapagos trip? I did indeed say “holy shit” before I hit the purchase button on that one. The trip was funded by my overtime hours in 2020 due to my profession, which I’ve mentioned in a different thread. I ran out of contract hours by August (they were supposed to last through the end of the fiscal year). I can’t get the untold hours of my life back from that year, but this is what we decided to do with the money.
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I’m sure it will be a nice couple of weeks! The memories are well worth it.
It’s still coming up in December, but I’m really looking forward to it. It will be a once in a lifetime trip. We were supposed to go last December, but Peru wasn’t open to tourism yet, so it got delayed.
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Fixed it. I noticed that before and then forgot 
. It sounds like an amazing trip.
The spendy trip. And hey, it’s your money, you don’t have to justify yourself. I hope you have an amazing trip!