Early October road trip Arizona to Denver
 

My wife and I are in our late 60’s and are planning our trip out west. 2 mile walk is about our limit.
We are going to visit her RVing brother and his wife wintering in Williams AZ for 2 days and take Grand Canyon Railroad to see the Grand Canyon with them while there.
The plan is to fly into Las Vegas from Tampa on October 8 and rent a car and drive 3 hours to Williams.
We don’t plan on seeing anything in Las Vegas, been there and the Hoover Dam.
Leave Williams on October 10 then the plan is:
Zion National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Little Big Horn battlefield
Mount Rushmore
Crazy Horse Memorial
Fly home from Denver (nearest airport I found with good flights to Tampa)
We are leaving to return date open to see how the trip goes.

We have hotel reservations in Williams, but I would like to make room reservations for the rest of the trip along the way. We have had good luck doing this on many other car vacations.
Will this be possible for this trip?
Any suggestions on what to see along the way would be appreciated.

Sounds like a fun trip. When in the Black Hills be sure to go to Custer State Park which features big horn sheep and Sylvan Lake, the Jewell of the Black Hills. Also, drive on Iron Mt. Road (16-A) which is an incredible 17-mile experience with 14 switchbacks, three pigtails and three tunnels. It starts at Hwy 16 and goes south to Hwy 30.

Maybe when you are in Yellowstone you can go to Grand Teton National Park which features the most scenic and majestic mts. in the Lower 48.

Accommodations inside Yellowstone start to shut down in October so your options inside the park will be limited https://www.yellowstonenationalparkl...summer-lodges/ The majority of the park roads will close on November 1st and there can be intermittent weather closures in the weeks leading up to the hard closure so be prepared to be flexible https://nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkroads.htm We've encountered some big snow storms at that time of year.

Bryce and Zion book up pretty quickly. I would probably book in advance.

Several years ago I was in Yellowstone in late September. It snowed here & there with roads closed briefly. The good news was after camping the first night we were able to snag cancelled room reservations all over the park for a week. We’d check in the morning to see where we might stay & moved around accordingly. We stayed in cabins at 3 locations & it worked out perfectly.

I don’t know how well that might work in your time frame a bit later & closer to the closing date. We seemed to be in a sweet spot, the weather still obliging & visitor numbers much reduced. But it’s certainly worth a try given your preference for winging it. If you go for it just be sure to check with the desks in person at the various locations so you’ll be ready to grab the accommodations that become available that morning.

Thanks for the replies, but we dont have to stay in the Parks, just somewhere near by.

If you want a fun stay try Under Canvas Zion. We enjoyed our 2 night stay there

At Bryce we stayed at the Best Western Plus. Another nice stay.

We got reservations for 2 nights at Old Faithful Snow Lodge in the hotel.