JerryofWV said:
Thanks for the replies.
In response from questions from AStravelers.
How much experience do you have traveling in your RV? 12 years
Do you need RV parks? Yes we prefer to stay in RV Parks and do not boondock unless we have to.
Do you prefer cities and museums or do you prefer national forests, national parks, etc, etc. Our "to see list" includes the Grand Canyon, Mt Rushmore and other big tourist places. We are not much into museums.
We just want to drive a short distance on the Pacific Coast Highway before we start heading back East. We want to do the entire trip in about 3 months.
For visiting national parks, I strongly recommend that you practice dry camping. Staying in the campgrounds inside of the national parks is so much more enjoyable than staying outside the park and commuting into the park. Staying inside the park make makes it easy to attend the ranger programs in the evening. Also joining the ranger lead walks or hikes inside the park is much easier. Staying inside the park allows you to experience more of the outdoor experience.
Every national park has extensive info on the national park website. Be sure to download the park newspaper such as the Grand Canyon newspaper:
https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/upload/trip-planner-grca.pdf
Usually you can find the above referenced newspapers by going to any of the NP website, hovering your mouse over "Learning about the park", hovering on "news" and clicking on "newspaper"
For a Pacific coast experience, follow US-101 from the redwoods in northern CA up to the Olympic NP in Washington. Allow a good 3 weeks for this section. 4 weeks would be better. However that may require more than 3 months for your trip.
A possible route would be to go to Yellowstone, Glacier NP's Head over to Washington on US-2 to US-97 on the Columbia river, then up to SR-20 which takes you through some great country though the North Cascades NP. Then over to Seattle and Olympic NP. From there follow US-101 along the WA & OR coast to as far down into CA as you want. Then Yosemite NP. Sequoia and Kings Grand Canyon NP's are not to far south. Then head over to Zion & Bryce NP's, down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon then the South Rim. If you still have time go up to Moab, UT for the Canyonlands and Arches NP. Zion, Grand Canyon and around Moab is better in September than July. July is pretty warm (hot). Not so much at the Grand Canyon Rim, but the SW USA is hot in July August.
To stay in the campgrounds inside the NP's make your reservations now if you can. The CG's fill up early. Some NP CG reservations only open 6 months or so before your arrival date. Yosemite for example opens on a certain date for reservations for a month, 5-6 months in the future and all reservations are snapped up in the first 5-30 minutes.
Personally the above trip is more like a 6 month trip for us and in reality, two different years each with a 4-6 months of travel. There is so much more to see than just what I listed.