California to Indiana I-80 Road Trip – Top Stops Along the Way

When Andy first told me he’d have to travel back to Indiana in July for a wedding, I planned on hanging back in Cali with my pup for him to enjoy a short weekend with his friends. Well, as it tends to always happen in our lifestyle, plans changed. After putting together some travel ideas for the summer and fall, we decided it’d be best if we took our pup back to my parents for the next few months.

A roundtrip mileage of 4,514 miles and just 7 days to spare, the idea of driving looked pretty grim, especially knowing what it’s like from when I made the trip last November while moving to Cali. After realizing that my hubs and I would be able to make some stops on the way to make it more of a vacation, we decided to go for it.

Here’s a look into our Roundtrip I-80 Road Trip:

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California

We packed up my pup along with all the road-trip essentials and headed out on the road, leaving at about 5 pm. Conveniently enough, Interstate 80 is about a mile from our house and we can actually take it all the way to Indiana with only about another 30 minutes on a different Interstate until we hit home.

We weren’t completely sure how long it was going to take us to travel the 2,257 miles to Indiana, even though Google Maps told us it’d be 1 day and 9 hours but that’s not taking into account sleeping, gassing up, and of course, stopping for some photos on the way.

North Lake Tahoe

We only live about 2 ½ hours from Lake Tahoe and, even though we haven’t had the chance to explore there yet, I knew it would be one of the best places to be driving through around sunset time. We stopped at a rest area near Truckee at North Lake Tahoe and snapped a few pics. What I love about this area is the uniqueness of the landcape with its stoned bluffs, dips in elevation and coniferous trees embellishing the hillsides.

Donner Lake

11 miles north of Lake Tahoe is Donner Lake, a vast body of freshwater nestled in between pine tree mountains. The sun was just starting to set for the west coast, except it seems much earlier when you’re in a valley like here at Donner Lake. With the sun reflecting off of the mountain in the distance, I knew this was a perfect place to pull off to catch a shot.

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Nevada

It’s only about a 30 minute drive from Truckee to the state line, landing in Reno. While I haven’t had the opportunity to explore Reno yet, we do plan on getting over there one of these days. After driving for a few hours in the dark in Nevada, we stopped over at a rest area for a quick snooze at around 3 a.m. When I woke up the next morning, I walked over to use the facilities and seen a historical marker over near the edge of the walkway.

The California Trail

I had learned about the Oregon Trail in history class years ago but really don’t recall hearing about the California Trail. While both are similar in that they split off into many different routes, the California Trail was marked to show alternative ways to get through Wyoming and Utah. People began emigrating on the trail in 1847, roughing through the Forty Mile Desert then coming upon the Sierra Nevada mountains before making it to Northern California and the coast.

At an eastbound rest area there are some short trails that hike out into the desert that are a great pit stop to the trip!

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Utah

Since we knocked out a lot of time through Nevada the night before, we didn’t have much longer before coming up to Utah. I already knew what was waiting for us at the state line of these two states and I was excited for my hubs to finally see them too:

The Bonneville Salt Flats

When I was driving through here in November, I reasonably thought the white coating on the ground all around was snow, except it was in the 60s so it didn’t make sense why it wasn’t melted. Not long after driving through Salt Lake City I noticed a Morton Factory off into the distance and realized… that’s not snow, it’s salt!

Read More: The Salt Flats of Utah

The Black Rifle Coffee Company

My husband and I are coffee fanatics so on our way through Salt Lake City we stopped by the Black Rifle Coffee Company. I’m an obvious Patriot, as my husband serves our country daily in his job, but this business only heightens that feeling for me. It’s a company that is owned by veterans and ran by veterans, while also contributing to various charity cases all related to the men and women who have served our country.

We made a quick stop at a rest area before the border of Wyoming and was surprised to find multiple trails leading around the enormous bluffs.

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Wyoming

I’m going to be completely honest: after stopping once in Wyoming, I slept through the entire state, waking up in Nebraska somewhere. There were many places I wanted to stop in Wyoming but hey, my sleep comes first.

I love everything about Wyoming: the sagebrush, the antelope who feed on it, the bison and buffalos, the rocky-Utahish environment and the openness of God’s country with rolling hills being grazed by cattle. It’s seriously one of the most gorgeous states and is so underrated! Most people don’t even know that Yellowstone National Park is in northwest Wyoming, with the other half in Idaho. If you’ve never been to Wyoming, GO! It’s so unbelievably stunning.

The one stop we did make was pretty much directly off the highway. Another thing I love about Wyoming is the scarcity of people: they don’t feel the need to pave most of their roads because they’re barely traveled so when you do get off an exit in the middle of nowhere (with literally nothing around but some wildlife) you’ll find yourself roaming around on gravel and dirt. We found this historical marker where the Continental Divide and the first main transcontinental automobile route, the Lincoln Highway, ran through. Henry Bourne Joy, the first president of the Lincoln Highway Association, said that he had witnessed the most beautiful sunset of his lifetime right in this very spot & requested that he’d be buried here. While they didn’t ultimately lay him to rest in this place, a monument in honor of him was built that can be seen at a rest stop near Laramie.

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Nebraska

As stated, I slept most of the day away (Wyoming & Nebraska are looooong states) and woke up about sunset somewhere in Nebraska. There was a thunderstorm rolling in with enormous clouds and the lighting was insane, definitely that golden hour! I told my hubs we HAVE to pull over and get some shots in this lighting. Low and behold we did and the sunset was out of this world:

My husband and I both agreed that states like these, Fly-Over-States as I call ’em, are so underrated for the beauty they have. And the sunsets here are definitely underrated as well! While I’ve never taken a sunset for granted, we realized we hardly ever see them here in Cali since we live in a valley between mountains, blocking the beauty of the day transforming into night.

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Iowa, Illinois & INDIANA (aka Home)

Iowa and Illinois are such a blur to me because we stopped somewhere to sleep on the edge of the Nebraska and Iowa border. When we woke up, it was pouring so hard we ended up driving straight through to Illinois with only a few more hours to go in our trip. After an all day drive through the rain, we made it home to Indiana late in the evening, taking us exactly 50 hours to get there from the time we left Saturday night.

Andy headed on to where he had to attend his wedding festivities and I hung out with the fam bam all weekend, playing bingo with my mom, “tinkering” around the shop with my dad, having good conversations with my older brother, shopping with my sister-in-law, and spending time with my furry friend before going our separate ways.

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