My only thought is the drive to Aberdeen is not very scenic and while its 101 you won't see the ocean. With that in mind as long as your in Astoria why not go down the coast a little bit if only to Cannon Beach. Personally that would be nicer than Mt St Helens, or adding a day in the Columbia River Gorge would be a nice addition. In Astoria hoping you at least drive up the see the Astoria Column. Aberdeen you may be able to find Kurt Cobains house as a bonus stop, but Aberdeen won't be very impressive as an overnite. I'm sure you'll get more input but hope this is useful

Do you have campground reservations lined up? This year that seems to be an important detail that might determine you itinerary.

I figured Aberdeen is basically a drive-through/short stop at the park under the bridge, but yeah, the draw is Kurt Cobain. I'm of that generation and while I wouldn't plan a whole trip around it, we're definitely going to make a few grunge-history stops while we're in the area.

The internment memorial is a similar sort of personal-interest thing. Japanese studies is one of my older daughter's majors, she studied abroad in Japan and has developed a particular connection to Japantown in SF since moving there for school, so the internment is an interesting era of history to her. We stopped at Minidoka in Idaho on a 2019 road trip and they have information about the Bainbridge memorial, so it made our must-see list. We can't pick the campervan up until 1 pm and will mostly spend that afternoon driving anyway, so I thought it would be easy enough to fit in then - good place to stretch our legs and move around, but not so time consuming that it would slow us down in getting on our way.

We do enjoy the outdoors and would like to do some short to moderate hikes while we're traveling, but I'm trying to take it a little easier in ONP than I might otherwise because this is a sort of side-trip add-on to the end of a long Alaska trip so I'm a little worried my girls, especially my 12yo, might be "hiked out" by the time we get to Washington. I would like to have time for Hurricane Hill on the day we're in that area, but will probably just do the short Hall of Moss loop at Hoh. The only longer/more difficult hike I would really like to do while we're in the area is the Truman trail at Mount St Helens, at least to go as far as the pumice plain.

Astoria Column is definitely on my list while we're in the town. It looks really cool even if it is still closed to climb this summer. I'll check out Cannon Beach too. it doesn't look like it is much further down the coast from Astoria, and beaches are always good. My daughter's other/primary major is marine biology, so the tide pools in the PNW are of particular interest to her.

I have just started making reservations because I don't feel like I have everything quite settled enough to lock it all in yet. I do have a reservation on a state park on the Sound for our last night to make sure we have a short drive before the drop off, which is rather early, and at La Wis Wis on the night before our full day at Mount Rainier. The rest is still up in the air.

A surprising number of the campgrounds around ONP are still operating on a first come, first served basis this year so there are some parts that will be hard to pin down in advance unless I look at RV "resorts". In the other places we're going this summer, most places that are normally FCFS are taking reservations to help keep traffic down during the pandemic. I don't love not having reservations, but we're flexible enough when travelling by campervan that we don't mind improvising with the occasional night of dispersed camping or boondocking if need be.

while in Seattle its pretty easy to find Curt Cobains old house and stop by Lakeview Cemetery to see Bruce Lees Grave. Let me know and I can direct you.

I should probably add that while I'm renting campervans for this trip, we do own one and are relatively experienced at traveling this way. We spent 6 weeks on the road in 2019 when I first did the conversion and have taken maybe a half dozen shorter trips with it since then. The time to get ours all the way to the west coast and the ferry cost to take it up to Alaska and back with the border closed tipped the scales in favor of renting this time, but the method of travel isn't new to us like it is for a lot of people just getting into road tripping/camping now that it is the hot pandemic travel trend.

Your daughter may enjoy having tea or coffee at the Panama Hotel in Seattle for its living memorial to those forced out of Seattle. It is the inspiration for the novel "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet"

Sorry unable to link to it directly.

I hope it has survived covid.

Oh, thank you so much for that Nan! I can't believe I didn't think about stopping there. My daughter would love it, both for the history and for the book connection. We read the book "together", 2600 miles apart, in a sort of mother-daughter bookclub over messenger when she first went off to college, but I didn't even think about it as a stop while we're in Seattle.

And it does look like it survived covid. The most recent review for the tea room on Yelp is just a couple weeks old and has the most tempting photo of a sakura wagashi candy. So we will definitely make time to go over there.

To me it looks like a super ambitious itinerary!! With one day stops everywhere, and not accounting for driving time between them.

Do you have a Seattle hotel yet? Seeing the Pike Place Market, the Fremont Troll, Chihuly Glass Garden, and MoPOP is a lot for a day. Doable certainly. And only the Troll (not sure why people are so fascinated with this street art) is outside downtown.