Ideas? 3-week summer roadtrip with a one-year old starting from Virginia

[oconee]

Hi all!
It's roadtrip planning time again! I used Roadtrip America back in 2011 when I planned my trip through the West Coast and you guys helped me a lot. It was the trip of my lifetime and saw amazing things!

Now, we are planning to go back to the US in July 2015 with our baby (one-year old by then). The thing is that we need to be in Fairfax, Virginia for a couple of days at the start of our trip and then have 3 weeks to spend travelling.
I don't want to include the Southwest (California, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Monument Valley, etc.) as we have already been there. Also I have been a couple of times to New York so no need to include that either

The thing is that we like to see natural beauty and landscapes over cities and want to travel at a quiet pace this time (drive 2-3 hours/day). As far as accommodation is concerned, we like to combine campsites and motels.

Could you help me with some ideas to start planning my trip? Yellowstone is definitely in our bucket list but I'm not sure how to include it from Fairfax, Virginia. We're also open to take some flights if needed.

Thanks a lot for your help.
Greetings from Barcelona!

[Lifemagician]

If you wanted to limit your travelling to two or three hours a day, then Yellowstone is out of the question..... unless you take a flight out west.

However, there is much to see on the east coast. If this were me I would plan the trip round the little one. Search for cities which have a children's museum. The only ones I have been to are NYC and Boston. The cghildren's musea are fantastic, and all are different. They have activities for all age groups. I know my preschool grandchildren loved them.


The other attraction I would focus on are zoos. These are fairly plentiful east of the Mississippi, and some are free.

Lifey

[Midwest Michael]

Based on your goal of limiting your drives to just a few hours a day, I think a trip that sticks to the eastern US could work very well for you.

Starting from the Fairfax/DC area, you could spend some time heading down the coast, hitting places like Virginia Beach, North Carolina's Outer Banks, and the southern coastal towns of Charleston and Savannah. From there, you could loop back up to Great Smokey Mountain National Park, and follow the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way up to Shenandoah National Park. Certainly from there, there are plenty of other great natural features of the east you could include, places like West Virginia's New River Gorge, the Amish Country of Pennsylvania, even on up into Niagara Falls.

Yellowstone is a fantastic place too, of course, but it would certainly require a flight, and the distances of the west make it a bit tougher to limit yourself to 2-3 hours of driving. Still, it would be possible to fly to some place like Salt Lake City, and then drive up into the Tetons and Yellowstone. You really could easily spend a week or more just exploring that area, and you also expand your trip by heading over to the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota, or up to Glacier National Park. Those could be great trips too, but they wouldn't be quite as easy as sticking to the east coast.