Thank you for the quick response. I am certainly happy that I posted here, I have not attempted such a road trip before, it sounds as if you have. I would welcome any information/advice you have for us.

Answer to some of your questions:

My second daughter is 13.

We do have additional time we can add to this road trip. I can do up to 14 days.

How do you begin the planning process? How do you pick lodgeing and food?

Do you advise taking a shorter trip to begin and a longer one at a later date?

You could do a wonderful trip, which the kids, a great age for this idea, will never forget, if you choose Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Why? Geysers, wildlife, scenery, river rafting or float trip, horseback riding, and so much more.

You could do this in 7 days, but a few more would allow more time to relax on your drive and to see the parks.

Read the official, national park service, websites for the two parks. Select "Lodging" and you'll see the sanctioned lodging options for inside the parks. If these are unavailable, lodge in adjacent communities.

Here is an example: Yellowstone National Park Website: http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

The park website contains a massive amount of useful information. See “Things to Do”, it opens a menu of options. If what you want is not easily found, use the search box.

See “View Map” on home page for interactive map. http://www.nps.gov/yell/

If you like this idea, post on the TA Wyoming Forum. Rather than drag this out here on the WA forum, we can provide the answers you'll want there.

Alexismom, this single mom and her 16 year old son (named Alex, btw!) did this road trip last summer! I have to say that if your ONLY aim is to take your daughters to Mt. Rushmore, then save your money for airfare instead. It is a long haul to Mt. Rushmore, especially since you'll be the only one driving. I totally agree with making a full trip of it, to include Yellowstone at the VERY least. Your daughters will not forget the geysers and the other sites there. Here's a rundown of our trip and stops last year:

Day 1: Departed Puyallup at noon and stayed overnight in Spokane (5 hr drive)

Day 2: Departed Spokane around 8 AM and arrived in Bozeman (6 hr drive)

Day 3: Departed Bozeman, arrived at Yellowstone in approx. 90 minutes. Spent this day and the next 2 days in Yellowstone (tent camping).

Day 4 in Yellowstone. Lots of sites and driving.

Day 5 in Yellowstone; took a drive BY Grand Tetons down to Jackson and back to Yellowstone (about 5 hrs of driving) BEAUTIFUL view of the Tetons (and my Prius managed to get a whopping 62 miles per gallon that day, for some odd reason!)

Day 6: Departed Yellowstone 7 AM. Hard drive all day to Rapid City , SD (8 hour drive). Beautiful drive through Big Horn Nat'l Forest, but some white knuckle driving for part of it. You might want to get back up to I-90 instead of driving all the way through Wyoming.

Day 7: Mt. Rushmore (for all of a 2-3 hour visit! Bonus: Kate plus 8 was filming there. I think they were there for all of an hour, most of it being spent in the gift shop while the little ones huddled in the cold fog outside with their nanny), Custer State Park (should have gone there first thing in the AM, when more of the animals would have been out) . The drive all the way around Custer took about 3 hours, with a few stops here and there.

Day 8: Continued east for a daytrip to the Badlands. My son loved climbing on the rock hills. We also toured the minuteman missle site (one of my favorite stops), and made a pit stop at Wall Drug (tourist trap that it is...it's huge, and there are entirely too many people there at any given time.) Stayed over in our hotel in Rapid City.

Day 9: Left at 8 AM, heading home. Made a little detour to see Devil's Tower Nat'l Monument. Continued driving to Bozeman, MT (8 hrs)

Day 10: Bozeman to Spokane: 6 1/2 hrs

Day 11: Spokane to home (5 hrs)

For any road trip, I recommend buying a travel atlas so you can see where main cities are. Then use Mapquest or Googlemaps to see the distance and driving time estimates between cities you may stay overnight in. One thing that you can't see on Mapquest or Googlemaps is the terrain or elevation. A good atlas will show significant elevations (and mntn passes), as well as mountain ranges. Our drive conditions in the Big Horn Nat'l Park were a complete surprise to me because I failed to look at the map closely when planning. It was a beautiful drive, one of my favorites, however.

Camping will definitely keep your costs down, but you should pre-book your nights ahead of time when you are visiting popular areas.

I am currently wrapping up planning for this summer's trip to Utah's National Parks. I didn't want to spend 4 days driving there and back, so we're flying in on this one. We still have a tight squeeze for our 12 day trip!

Please feel free to message me with questions, if you'd like!

Nice report, very helpful to anyone considering such a trip.

Terrain (mountains, plains, etc.) can be seen on GM by selecting Earth or Satellite view, instead of map view, box in upper right hand corner.

To see altitude, download Google Earth. As you move the cursor carefully over an expanded map, both altitude and position are shown at the bottom of the map. For example, carefully running the cursor over Snoqualmie Pass, it confirms the approximate 3,100 ft. altitude. The more the map is expanded, the more details are shown. Fun for trip planning, tell your kids that you'll be going over passes at certain altitudes; they'll wonder how you knew. Or let them play with it in planning trips.

You might have seen this, good for your trip planning to the S. Utah parks.

http://www.utah.com/nationalparks/grandcircle.htm

A Utah DE has made this excellent site for tripplanning in Utah:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g28965-c177493/Utah:United-States:Trip.Planning.html

Hi, my family did a similar trip some years ago now. We flew to Seattle from the UK, spent 3 days in Seattle and then picked up our hire car. We visited Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens, Mt Hood (stayed at Timberline Lodge), John Day (great fossil beds), Halfway (Snake river gorge), Riggins (white water rafting), Missoula, Big Sky (horseriding), Yellowstone ( a must visit and allow as much time as you possibly can, we stayedat Old Faithfull Inn), Cody (rodeo), Devil's Tower, Mt Rushmore,Sturgis,Scott's Bluff, Carhenge, Cheyenne, Rocky Mountain NP. We flew from Denver to Chicago where we spent 3 days before flying home!

We were away about 5 weeks in total. It took me months to plan the trip because it just kept growing! My husband and I shared the driving, we mostly found our accommodation as we went along. However, we hadn't accounted for the bikers making their way to Sturgis, which we hadn't heard of, and sometimes finding accommodation for 5 became a challenge. We decided to visit Sturgis and see what all the fuss was about and spent a fun afternoon there.

This remains one of our family's best holidays and we often reminisce about our adventures on it. Not only was it a holiday but it had an educational element to it as well - my eldest son was waiting to see if he had got into University to do Architecture, my middle son was doing Geography A level and my youngest son was doing American history at GCSE, all of which was covered on our trip at some point.

This is a great run down! Everyone has given such wonderful information! Puyallup 83 I know you mentioned on Day 5 and on you felt a bit rushed? What would you do different?

This is a great run down! Everyone has given such wonderful information! Puyallup 83 I know you mentioned on Day 5 and on you felt a bit rushed? What would you do different?

If you want to add Grand Teton NP I suggest to stay overnight in Jackson and drive from Jackson to Rapid Cty via Moran, Riverton, Casper and Lusk and not drive back to Yellowstone first. Jackson-Rapid City still is a 10 yours drive though but it will take much longer if you drive back to Yellowstone fro Jackson.