Help! (: Road trip from Houston Texas to Yellowstone

[Jadiereu]

Hello (:
My fiancé and I are looking into taking a road trip to Yellowstone national park from Houston Texas. This is going to be our first big road trip and we want to make a few stops. I want to travel more west and visit the four corners and whatever else is around the area and then head up north to Yellowstone for a day or two and then to mount Rushmore. After that we plan on heading home but going a different route... Hopefully visiting some other states. Has anyone on this forum done this road trip or know any good stops? Or how long this should take? We were hoping about eight or nine but a few days longer won't hurt. We will probably drive around six hours a day ... Three hours for each of us. Also is it easier to book the hotels/motels beforehand or just to play by ear? Thanks!

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Here's the basic problem. The trip you have laid out is nearly 3,700 miles long, a minimum of seven days of driving even with no significant stops and spending ten to eleven hours a day on the road (75 hours total driving hours). It simply cannot be done in nine days of only six driving hours (54 in total). So before anything else, you're going to have to either cut back significantly on the scope of, or add significantly to the time you take for, this trip. You would need about eleven days to complete the drive you've laid out if you take it at the pace you've indicated.

AZBuck