Glad to hear you’ve trimmed down the scope of your trip. I think adding the southwest would have required a LOT of driving/time, so you’d have less time to actually enjoy the parks themselves.
Given your new itinerary, I don’t know when your reunion is, but on your way north from Yellowstone, you might try to swing by Butte for the Montana Folk Festival (https://montanafolkfestival.com/). I don’t think they have dates for 2023, but this is usually held the week after 4th of July. It is a great festival, with quite the variety of music (the year we went there was Chicago blues, Venezuelan folk, and Mongolian throat singing).
We took a trip (July 2017) to the area and heard they closed Yosemite to more cars entering because the traffic was that bad.
We went to Bodie. If you like ghost towns, it doesn’t get much better. Getting to it required driving across a fair amount of washboard road as I recall, but we loved it.
Understood; I think I wasn’t clear: I want to budget for staying in the national parks when possible, so for all other lodging I’m hoping to find cheap motels since we’ll just need a play to stay for a night as we make our way to / from the parks.
We like to camp and considered that as a possibility but we’ll be traveling somewhat light and really don’t want to take the extra gear needed to camp somewhat comfortably: a couple of tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses, etc.
Although, as I sit here and think about it we could have a roof rack installed on the car and take the camping gear in one of those clamshell rooftop carriers. That might be cheaper (almost assuredly would be cheaper) than a string of motel stays. Definitely a possibility.
You could also consider renting a teardrop trailer; it simplifies the loadout (just pack all of your necessaries in the trailer and then unpack them when you stop to camp), allows you to set up and break camp within half an hour, and should be within the tow rating of your vehicle. Roof racks are an option but it becomes even more tedious to pull gear and pack it away every day when you are having to lift it overhead.
My ex and I moved cross-country in a small car. We got rid of most of our stuff, obviously, but were able to take a surprising volume of personal possessions with the help of a roof rack. Trailers are susceptible to theft, but we had no issues pulling our bags off the roof and either bringing them into our motel room or tossing them in the front seat every night.
