We had good results with basically limiting ourselves to 4-6 hours of driving a day, with no more than 3 at a stretch (there were a few parts of our road trip that required long drives (eastern Wyoming, for example).
Whether that was driving 8-1, and then spending the afternoon at the destination, or driving 8-10, doing something for an hour or two, and then driving 2-5, depended on where we were and what there was along the way.
One thing that would be characteristic of the Southwest and found in only a few other places in the world is ancient pueblo dwellings, my most-recommended of which are all near your line of travel. There are dozens of ones large enough worth seeing, but of the 8 I’ve seen I’d recommend:
The only downside is that you often cannot get inside them, but seeing them from afar, or from a few feet away, is nonetheless mind-blowing. And the terrain of sandstone cliffs adds to the beauty. Another sort-of downside is that it takes a couple hours of just driving in the car to see everything, but that’s because there’s so much to see.
2), Wupatki National Monument. Still has quite spacious former dwellings, although not as large or as many as Mesa Verde. I like it because it is closer to the main road and doesn’t involve as much driving as Mesa Verde, and you can walk into a lot of the dwellings. The downside is that the terrain is just ugly, IMO: Flat and ashy.
*Speaking of which, if you are going to several “National Parks” (which are different from State Parks and National Forests) that require an entrance fee to get in, buying an Annual Pass is probably worth it for $80 a head. The website implies that they are available to everyone and not just US citizens, although I can’t find any confirmation about that. They also let you in to a confusing array of other places that aren’t National Parks, I think including the monuments I just listed, but the National Parks and the most famous and expensive.
Also consider the Lifetime Senior Pass. It used to be a real bargain at just $10 but recently went up to $80, which is still a bargain. According to that website, it is for US citizens or permanent residents 62 years of age or older.
I did this with a friend about 20 yrs ago in a rented Taurus, unlimited miles. The original plan was from DC to LA via Memphis, New Orleans, get on I10 to Houston, Austin, Painted Desert, Grand Canyon, Vegas, LA , Frisco and PNW, and back up through but could not make the pacNW in time so left and went back east. We made it through Yosemite, Tahoe, Salt Lake, Mt Rushmore/black hills, Yellowstone. I think we had about a month or so to do it. I would double the amount of time you plan. The drive through Texas alone was gruelling-- like 14 hrs in shifts and I think that was from Austin to Albuquerque. And get the natl parks annual pass. Wonderful trip absolutely worth it, I might consider again in an RV when I retire.
This is another snippet of gold dust and I have looked further into the matter.
The answer seems to be a clear Yes.
Can international visitors purchase a pass? – US Park Pass Help Center
International visitors can purchase the pass without restrictions and the pass can be shipped to locations outside the U.S. prior to your trip.
Excellent!
Kind regards, PT
Yeah, it’s maybe good for a couple of hours at most, including Borglum’s studio. But the general Black Hills / Rapid City area is pretty cool. Custer State Park is fantastic- even if you don’t spend the night there, the wildlife loop and the State Game Lodge are great. Custer itself is a nice little town- Skogen Kitchen in Custer is amazing, and I’ve eaten at plenty of posh, expensive restaurants. Just get reservations. Deadwood is maybe an hour away, and Devil’s Tower is relatively close as well (~ 2 hours drive).
If you end up in Cheyenne, the Frontier Days Old West Museum was surprisingly cool and well worth a visit.
On the southern east-west leg, I’d say San Antonio is a must-see, as is New Orleans. Even having grown up in Houston, and having spent a lot of time in Austin, neither is really worth seeing as a tourist, and probably worth bypassing them for traffic purposes. Great food if you end up there for some reason though.
If you are going to be in Rapid City, then a trip to the Reptile Gardens is a must. I agree that the entire area is cool and should be on everyone’s bucket list. Maybe not at the top, but somewhere on it.
Thank you all, just being a sponge here soaking it up! 
Have done the first timing on the circuit as barest bones with nowt but the most essential of the “must sees” and it’s 28 days which includes a couple of very solid consecutive days travelling. This is good cause I’m not going to do that and I can add maybe another 28 days to the itinerary.
Question on the Pacific coast leg.
The routing software takes me straight down I5 the whole way, which is fine for first draft.
“Forcing” the route to take the coast road(s) is not a problem but I assume they will be windy and significantly slower, albeit more scenic. Are any segments more "must see"s and others a pain and best avoided so I run a hybrid route?
Kind regards, PT
The 5 is quite possibly the most boring highway in the country in parts. Headed South from Seattle, I’d cut over to the coast at Tillamook, OR. Take the coast road at least as far as Salinas, then cut over to the 101. This is mainly because Route 1 south of there tends to be absent at times. Then back over to the 1 at Oxnard. That gets you Malibu and the coast through LA and Orange County. Pick up the 5 again at Dana Point and it’s smooth sailing into San Diego.
Regarding Mount Rushmore, and the Rapid City area: trust me when I tell you to not plan to be in that area during Sturgis Week, unless you really enjoy traffic jams full of motorcycles. 
Wacko-the-diddlio, I might well be in that general area about that time so will avoid like the veritable plague. Thank you!
You are welcome!
My wife and I did a similar (but shorter) driving tour for our 10th wedding anniversary, in July/August 2002; we went to the Grand Canyon, Vegas, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. We’d also planned to go to Mount Rushmore on our way back towards home (Chicago), and stay overnight in Rapid City, but when I was making hotel reservations (months ahead), rates in Rapid City were crazy-expensive, and we wound up having to make reservations at a hotel an hour east. I had wondered, “jeez, what’s going on in Rapid City?”
As we were leaving Yosemite, we started seeing a large number of motorcycles on the highway, all heading north/east, and with many of the riders wearing Sturgis shirts. The light dawned…
We never did get to see Mount Rushmore; the road leading into the park was a veritable parking lot, full of motorcyclists, and after waiting in that line for an hour or so, without moving, we gave up.
Unfortunately, there’s no one good answer about the best way through California (from Oregon) but I’d say that the big options are:
This is probably the most efficient route to hit the most stuff. Note: Could be impacted by fire.
If the squiggle doesn’t bother you, this lets you drive the coast with the best weather.
If you don’t care so much about the ocean but just love mountain-top views, don’t mind windy roads, and want a gambling stop that’s sufficiently depressing to make your kids ever think of getting the habit, then this would be the option. Note: Could be impacted by snow and fire.
I realize now that “head” may imply per person. One Annual Pass can be good for one carload or up to 4 individual people, according to the website. I debated on not posting this since it may have been obvious, but now I remember that it actually burnt me once, when my mom and I parked outside Zion National Park and took the shuttle. (A shuttle is actually mandatory for certain very crowded places in Zion!) We stood in line and I paid my fee, and then she showed her pass, only for us to realize later that her pass would have covered me. So if you take shuttles into a park, see if the Annual Pass can provide for the rest of the party as well. (The reason I almost didn’t mention this is because the logistics of checking everyone in a car for an annual pass makes it seem it obvious that a pass covers a car, but less obvious when people are queueing in a line on foot.)
You certainly can find parking in NYC, though it’ll be quite spendy, I imagine. When we were in Los Angeles in May, my husband got a free hotel room (from frequent-traveller points) - but we had to pay 50 dollars a day for the car. Whatever hotel you plan to stay it, contact them and find out about the parking situation.
If driving looks likely, reserve a vehicle now. I don’t know what the rental car situation is right now, but a few months back it was pretty grim - people paying a fortune. When we took our big train trip this past May, I reserved it 6 months in advance. The guy at the rental agency said he had someone who reserved a car, cancelled it, then tried to rebook - and the price had doubled.
New England: Well, anywhere you’ll go, you’ll find pretty scenery. You’ll find a lot of older buildings etc, that you won’t find in other parts of the country, because, well, NE was one of the first parts of the country settled by Europeans. Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, is interesting - highest point on the east coast, and FREEZING COLD even in high summer. If you visit, take the cog railway, which is worth it just for the experience - you can drive, but frankly I’d be white-knuckling it the whole way. I’ve been twice: the first time, I was wearing a light jacket, and birkenstocks, and nearly froze; my hair was blowing around so much I had trouble taking photos of the kids. The second time, we were driving from Vermont to Maine, and stopped almost-on-the-way as my husband had never been there. It was rainy and foggy and basically no view at all.
If you were interested, you could piggyback a jaunt into Canada from a New England leg - there are quite a few border crossings into Quebec from northeastern NY thorough Maine, and from north central NY on west into Ontario.
Ocean: The Atlantic coast is pretty. Might be too cold to swim in the ocean that time of year - when we used to go to the beach in Maryland, the water wasn’t really comfy until late July / early August. Further south, it’s swimmable earlier, so if that’s an interest, you could visit the coast in South Carolina. Further north, it really isn’t EVER good for swimming - when we went to Acadia National Park in July, the water was something like 60 degrees. We dipped our feet in just to say we had, and that was all. The Pacific will be too cold for swimming, per my own experience, anywhere you’re likely to be - not sure how far south you’d need to go to find water warm enough to swim in without freezing off anything important, but it was too cold for us near Los Angeles.
Glacier National Park will be fine in the summer - maybe a bit crowded though. If you want to stay IN the park, make reservations as soon as possible as they tend to book up. Kalispell, MT is a good alternative - near the western end. When we visited, in 1986, we stayed in the park, but the last night we stayed in Kalispell as we had to drive to Seattle the next day. Similar advice if you want to visit Yellowstone, Grand Teton, or either side of the Grand Canyon. There is not much near the North Rim, accommodation-wise (I think there’s a lodge in the park and it might be easier to book a place there, as it’s much less crowded).
We did a trip in 2010, where we flew into Las Vegas, drove the next day to Kanab, Utah, and made day trips to several of the parks (Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the North Rim) as they were all just about 2 hours away. This was on the advice of some Dopers, when I posted about the trip back in 2009 or 2010. As noted, the more popular part of Zion REQUIRES a shuttle (if you’re staying in the park, that may not be true). If it’s a warm day, one of the outermost shuttle stops lets you off at an area where the river is quite shallow, and lots of people were splashing around in the water - I wished that we’d brought swimsuits! Water shoes would be nice for wading there, to protect your feet from the rocks.
Depending on your route: there are rafting trips that put in at the bottom of the Glen Canyon Dam, in Page, Arizona, that take about a half day: you float a few miles down the Colorado, then get bussed back to your starting point. We did that in 2010 and really enjoyed it.
As far as driving time per day: There will be a number of parts of the trip where there’s nothing of any real interest and you just want to go nonstop. Be careful of getting fatigued and drowsy - caffeine can only do so much. I’ve done 700 miles in a day solo, but do not enjoy it (and in my case, it requires pharmaceuticals). My husband and I did a few 700-mile days on our trip (back when the speed limit was 55 mph, so that was a minimum of 14 hours), and at least once on that trip, we had no damn business being on the road: both of us were dangerously drowsy during the last 100 mile stretch. We should have stopped sooner - or at least pulled over and stretched our legs - but we had in mind that we had to get to such-and-such town. We were damn fools and lucky to have come away with nothing but memories of that leg of the trip. Anyway - even on the “nothing of interest” days, consider limiting yourself to 6 to 8 driving hours if you can.
Especially in the western parts, make sure you have snacks and beverages in the car so you can pull over for refreshments. Plus, on the off chance the car breaks down, you’ll be very grateful to have drinking water. One of your first stops, once you hit the US, should be a store where you can purchase a good ice chest, and lay in a small case of bottled water (even if you generally use refillable bottles; this would be for emergencies). Getting stuff like sandwich fixings can be a huge cost savings - that was how we did breakfast and lunch on our driving trip. Towns are fairly sparse in places.
Anywhere west of the Mississippi, if your car’s gas tank is below half full, make sure to top it off at your next stop. Consider making a stop at that point even if your stomach is full, your bladder is empty, and you’re feeling quite alert. If it gets down to a quarter full, actively look for a place to refuel. Gas Buddy (smartphone app) is pretty good at finding gasoline (and shows prices). If you see a “last gas for xx miles” sign, check your fuel gauge carefully - I sailed past such a sign on our trip, blithely saying we had enough, without glancing at the gauge - then shortly after, saw we only had a quarter tank. We made it to our destination, but on fumes. That was another STOOPID moment on that trip.
Well, for those folks who’ve had a passing interest in this long thunk about project
… IT’s ON!
When informed of the duration I’d be away the boss went a deathly shade of pale but he has acquiesced. The flights are booked and the car is booked. I guess there is a remote possibility that the US State department might deny my visa in taking a dim view of my social media profile, there being any number of dodgy characters on the SDMB.
Fly into LAX mid June, fly out of LAX mid August, in between taking 60 days doing a lap of the Lower 48.
I’m going to take a left turn at Albuquerque. If the GPS works I’ll drive down Copperhead Road. I’m driving the Pacific coast. I’m not going to Vegas or Rushmore. Even making the Niagara-Detroit leg down the polite side of Lake Erie. Plenty of cruising to a plan, but there is still some flexibility.
So if there is anybody in Doper world who’d like to spruik some things to entertain an Aussie as they pass through, I’m all ears. As a colleague remarked, there’s a non-zero chance I could get shot for a parking violation, so advice on things not to do would be appreciated as well. And the whole tipping economy thing 'cause I have just the barest clue.
I guess if the planets aligned this could devolve into the longest and most self-indulgent dopefest in history. Elsewise I’ll just beetle around on my Todd Malone and have a ball doing it.
Looks like an epic trip!
I really hope you’ll do a travel journal of sorts here, I’d love to hear ( er… read) what you think of our insane country! Being an Aussie the size shouldn’t intimidate you, at least, and I hope the people you meet are kind and welcoming.
Have a ball!
DC-area Dopers - DOPEFEST PLANNING TIME!!!
Depending on how long you’ll be around, we could perhaps plan something at a local park - rent a shelter, etc.
I see that #10 is directly over my house. What’s your goal for your tenth stop?
Too late now, but for future reference, that’s a great trip. I’d skip Minneapolis and visit Voyageurs, or take time to visit both.