10 day National Park Blitz

You better like driving, because that's what you'll be doing ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Seriously, not spending at least a few days in each of those parks is a total waste.

If there is no other reason to fly into one coast and out of the other coast like making a delivery, Americans wouldn't at all plan a cross country trip. Never. Pick different airports to go in/out and see something more meaningful than hours of highway of nothing.
The right way to see the US is dividing the US into about 8 regions and only exploring one, maybe two, of them, usually restricted to one coast. The Southwest is a highlight for you, and you can see a lot of good things in that region from CA to NV, AZ, UT and maybe CO. If you want to squeeze in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier, on top of the Southwest maybe you should focus on the pacific northwest with Pacific Coast highway

Well, I think it's good you are thinking about this a year in advance.
The major theme parks can require 1-2 years of planning if you intend to go in the height of summer due to crowds that fill up every hotel room. Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier, this is how it will be. Families are booking rooms right now, especially for the inside-the-park lodges which are wonders. You can see half of Grand Canyon lodges are sold out in July. Why would you stay there inside a park? Well, it might be lots of driving to get close to the center of nature, the waterfalls, views and sights that the park is known for, so outside of camping, you lose time in lines at gates and getting down the congested roads to the highlights. Some of what you want to see in the SW are single day adventures, but most people want 3-5 days in each of those big parks.

You could dump your car and fly to a different city at any time, too.

>>1284139
>You better like driving, because that's what you'll be doing ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Seriously, not spending at least a few days in each of those parks is a total waste

Honestly I don't think I'd want to stay in these places if there are as many tourists as people say. Yellowstone seems to offer authentic wilderness experience like Rome offers authentic Italian experience. There better places to go for that. But I think Yellowstone does have things awesome enough to be worth going to see even if it's just for a couple hours, same as with Rome and the Coloseum or Sistine Chapel.

>>1284240
The parks you've identified as too crowded are busy for a reason...the same reason you want to go there.

If you are only trying to stop in for a couple hours, you will end up hitting what's next to the road (etc.) and that's going to be the busiest thing in the busy park. Even in some of the busy parks you can get away from the crowds...I was in Yosemite during high season a few years ago and while the Valley was very busy, the northern sections were absolutely not.

If you're looking to check boxes on a list, this will help. If you want to drive through a lot of the country and see it from a window, this will also do it. But if you want to really enjoy some of these parks, plan to spend a couple-three days.

>>1284240
I've been to Yellowstone once, in June. That was in 2014. It was still very easy-going. No traffic jams, no parking problems and other than Old Faithful no large crowds. Had an amazing time there. We spent 3 full days there and we could've easily spent more.

In that same trip we also visited Glacier. Also very calm, but sadly the center of the park was inaccessible due to large snowfall. But still, easy to spend at least a day or two there.

But still, if you don't want to spend a lot of time there you're just driving through and that's pretty much a waste of time. It won't be half as awesome as it should be.

At a minimum, choose one side of the country: east or west. If you're going to get a rental car, fly into LA, get the car, and fly out of Denver. And there's still a good chance you would not leave your fucking car hardly at all. You're wasting an entire day just driving for nothing on days 1 to 3. Though you could do Smokey Mountains in 1 day, and they are worth it, it's a lot of wasted driving time. I drove Idaho to Nebraska in one day on the interstate and it was fucking awful (KC to Montana WITH Badlands and Black Hills in there? Impossibly awful). You really need to skip the East Coast. Plus, if it takes several hours to get into the heart of a park (the lines and wait aren't a joke sometimes), and then a single hour trail hike here or there, plus eating, shitting, sleeping, and stop here and here and here, and it really takes up a larger part of your day than you realize. Even if you're just hitting the lookout points and stuff right off the main road. Rethink some of this and let us know what is more doable for you.

>>1284240
I think you're underestimating the amount of space that is often vast, empty, and not interesting between the parks. There are some cool drives and mountain ranges, but they won't be the quickest route from A to B, and half of them will be desolate wastelands while the others will be gorgeous mountain ranges and rivers, but if you're not on the slower scenic route, it will be far less interesting. You'll be sick of "fast" driving by day 5 if you don't build in some time to enjoy things.

>>1284134
That seems like a bit much and I'm a guy who drove over 1000mi in one day and constantly cuts my visits short because I want to be 'ahead of schedule'