Philadelphia to Seattle this summer (2013)

[danmap]

Mark, Donna, Lifey, glc thanks much for the feedback. This is an awesome forum!

We've started making calls to Springdale and Bryce canyon city and it seems like the rooms are filling up quick.

We'll plan on doing the i-70 stretch west of Denver at a suitable pace so we can appreciate the scenery.

cheers
Dinesh

[jm98]

All doing the trip,

Please be sure to take Utah Scenic byway HWY12 on the way to Bryce Canyon NP. I would highly recommend to start one end in the morning so you can reach Bryce in the late afternoon...

Cheers,

[danmap]

A quick update - we are finished with the trip and now in the Northwest. Thanks to everyone who contributed and gave us advice,

We left on the 31st of June and got to Seattle on the evening of the 9th of July. The trip was mostly uneventful and played out as we'd planned.

The only snag was a puncture on the sidewall on the first day of our trip and we ended up staying the night at Kingsport after driving about 30 miles on the donut. The next day we had to change all four tires since my car is a four wheel drive and we made it to the Smoky mountains on the evening of the 1st. We trimmed our itinerary in the park and then pretty much stuck to the schedule after that.

While we enjoyed the trip and liked all the national parks, if I had to do this again, I'd probably stick closer to the shortest route and pick attractions closer to that route (since there are several). We drove about 4000 miles as compared to the shortest distance of about 2800 miles.
That way the ratio between the time spent at attractions and the driving time would improve and from talking to folks who've been to Glacier National park I think the difference in sights/ beauty between the national parks doesn't warrant making big diversions.

[Midwest Michael]

Thanks for reporting back. The diversions you made, especially by starting in the Smokeys, were pretty big, and that did require you to go at a pretty quick pace, so I understand the idea that you'd want more time at the parks if you did it again. That said the parks along the northern tier of the US, like Glacier, Yellowstone, the Badlands, etc are very different from those in Colorado and Utah, so I wouldn't exactly call them interchangable.