Ok guys I need some help/ideas/tips on an upcoming road trip... My roomate and I are driving out to Red Rocks to see DMB play there- I am going to the concert she isn't. Right now we're planning on taking 3 days to drive out there. It takes 27 hours at least to get there, and we're going to plan on driving 8-10 hours a day and split the driving so we drive 4-5 hours each and only during the day, so if we see somewhere along the way that we want to stop we won't have to feel guilty, and also so we won't drive through the night. We plan on camping along the way, maybe staying in a hotel one night in Denver or some other city. I have a friend that lives in Cleveland and we might stay at his place and she has some family in Indiana and we might also stop there. Right now this is our tentative plan:

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Wednesday Sep 7: Drive to somewhere 8-10 hours away (between cleveland and chicago) (if we are taking the northern route) Hang out in Cleveland at my friends place downtown and then maybe keep going or just stay at his place. Anything fun to do along the way/places to check out?
Thursday: Drive somewhere 8-10 hours. Probably end up somewhere in Iowa or Kansas. What is there to do along the way here and where is a good place to end up for the night?
Friday: Drive to Denver/Golden area. Camp out in Golden Canyon. Hang out.
Sat: Check out the Coors Plant. Tour takes about 90 min. Check out Denver. Possibly go hiking/biking
Sunday: Check out Red Rocks. There is a park there we can hike and take pictures. I want to get to the amphitheatre kinda early like maybe 4-5ish. So we can do stuff in the morning. She however is not going to the concert so she is probably gonna go hang out in Denver or something...any suggestions for her?
Monday: Drive to garden of the gods hangout during the day, it's about an hour from there. Then drive out to somewhere in the evening. We had also planned on hitting up Mt. Rushmore, but I don't know if we can go there. That will be at least an 8 hour drive and we wouldn't be leaving in the morning if we did this. So I'm thinkin we drive to somewhere just to stay for the evening either heading back east, OR heading up to Mt. Rushmore and check it out on Tuesday.
Tuesday: ???
Wednesday:???
Thursday: ???
Friday: Driving 6-10 hours to B-more depending on where we coming from
or
Saturday: Driving 8-10 hours to B-more depending on where we coming from


We don't, if possible, want to just drive out there from point to point and then hang out in denver for 2-3 days and then drive home. We'd like to have some nice scenic drives in CO and along the way and hit up some fun places, hopefully nice places to take photographs. So we need suggestions on nice drives through states in between MD and CO (PA, WV, OH, Indiana, Iowa, WI, Illinois, Kansas, maybe Wyoming and South Dakota)

Also how is the weather in CO in early sept? I read another post that snow is a possibility in late sept-oct. Are the highways in Colorado scenic or should we try and find some 2-lane or county roads to drive on?

Ok sorry for the long post. I appreciate your help! THANKS!