Louisiana to Seattle, with a definite stop in Zion Nat'l Park

[Cpt Formaggio]

My fiance and I are going on a road trip this summer from Louisiana to Seattle to visit my family. We've set aside a week (give or take 2 days) to get there and a week (give or take 2 days) to get back, with 2 weeks in the middle for visiting and downtime in Seattle.

I was hoping to get any input, advice, or suggestions from anyone who's nice enough to help out! I've got a good bit of road trip experience, but he doesn't, so we're trying to get him exposed to more of the country before the two of us move overseas to teach English next year.

The only mandatory stop is in Zion National Park for two nights, because we're planning on hitting up some of the trails there. We also want to see the Grand Canyon, but besides that we're open for suggestions. Any cities to absolutely go to or absolutely skip, landmarks, anything is helpful. The longest we want to be on the road on any given day is about 13 - 14 hours, and any places where we can swim would be wonderful, because he's a big fan.

Our route has us planning on going through Santa Rosa, NM, Sedona, AZ, Zion, Vegas, and onwards, but we can change the route to accommodate places we think are worth going to or seeing. We would prefer to avoid Death Valley, as we're going through there this winter with some friends.

Anything is helpful,
Thanks so much!