Excellent post!! You brought back a lot of good memories when I was a kid and years later did the same as you with 4 kids (9, 11, 14, 15) mostly around Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. I'm like you when it comes to planes, but we did take one flight to Disneyland (took 3 years paying that bill off) and another flight to NY.
I had to compromise and split it up between actual camping & hotels with a pool. My youngest later became my brutal hiking trooper hitting places all over Oregon to Idaho, all over Nevada down to Death Valley and Route 66 on over to Grand Canyon and literally all over southern Utah. BTW, my son at age 16 also did the 72 oz steak challenge...and devoured it all! An hour later wanted ice cream. smh. Fun times and they all remember the road trips!
I had to compromise and split it up between actual camping & hotels with a pool. My youngest later became my brutal hiking trooper hitting places all over Oregon to Idaho, all over Nevada down to Death Valley and Route 66 on over to Grand Canyon and literally all over southern Utah. BTW, my son at age 16 also did the 72 oz steak challenge...and devoured it all! An hour later wanted ice cream. smh. Fun times and they all remember the road trips!
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." – Thomas Sowell