I'll qualify some of my comments, both the serious and tongue in cheek ones, with, NO, it's not paradise spending 12-18 hours in the car, but 16 days is a good long vacation to make a destination trip like this IMO. This year is the first time I've had the luxury of More than a 2 week vacation, but our end destination before turning back around was a week long in the same area visiting family, friends, a wedding, etc so the sightseeing part was really done within 2 weeks, with a 900 mi each way detour for the visiting portion.
To each their own, but our end goal wasn't 300 mi a day, hit the KOA, let the kids swim in a pool and repeat. It jsit works for us to grind out a drive and spend extra time at the destinations.
Would I loved to have spent another week at least or 2? He!! Yeah! But then that experience would've never happened.
Also note that most of those long days were straight up flat freeway driving with a rig that I was comfortable running a 75mph avg on those stretches.
Side note, after going to Yellowstone as a kid and just driving around for a couple days, couple banzai winter trips through the park on our sleds (before they clamped down on that) and a quick trip before kids, there is ALOT more to do than drive to the next sulphur cauldron or stop n see a bear.
The hiking and fishing wuz awesome! Getting up and pounding out the tourist route while all the tourists are getting up and eating breakfast....highly reccomended. We hiked back to a lake to fish one morning, 3 mi in, was some people camping back there said we just missed 3 wolves chasing a bull elk into the lake! Wished I'd got up an hour earlier!
