Hi everyone, I don't post here often but you all have lots of useful and entertaining threads including this one. My wife and I live in NC and we're thinking of doing a trip to the southwest this year. I've been to California but never to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, or Utah and we really want to visit some of the national parks. I've never seen a desert or the Grand Canyon either so I think it will be pretty amazing. We'll have about 10 days total and we're trying to find that balance between seeing everything we want to see and not totally exhausting ourselves from driving so much.
We're working on a light framework for our trip, but right now we're thinking of flying into Denver, renting a car and driving to Rocky Mountain National Park and staying at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. We were then thinking about staying at the hot springs in Glenwood Springs CO and from there we would drive to Moab UT to see Arches, then drive to Bryce Canyon and Zion the next day. We'd hit the Grand Canyon after for two days, then drive to the Four Corners Monument and Mesa Verde. We'd head to Santa Fe for a day or two, then drive back through Colorado to fly out of Denver.
Right now it's a ton of driving basically every day but there is a ton we want to see. Any ideas or suggestions of places to stay would definitely be appreciated. Not sure if we can pull all this off in 10 days so we might have to cut a few more places out. As it is my wife really wanted to go to Yellowstone but that would be way out of the way for the circuit we want to take.
Thanks!