As someone who grew up in Montana and North Dakota and has been an amateur astronomer from my early teens, I think you're being overly dismissive. Sure, sometimes and they're more of a faint white glow (which is pretty impressive just by itself), but in over two decades of semi-dedicated skywatching (before moving further south), I saw, with nothing but naked eyes, bright green curtains on multiple occasions, dazzling blue-white pillars all the way up to the zenith once, and red curtains twice. And that's living between 46 and 48 degrees of longitude where they're not that common.

If you're setting out on a trip to specifically view the aurora borealis, you'd want to make sure you're viewing from an area with very low light pollution, make sure you stay dark adapted, and schedule your trip around solar max. Under those circumstances, and given multiple clear nights, I would expect the odds would be excellent for seeing some quite breathtaking auroras.