Road Trip Itinerary
 

My family is planning a road trip from Quantico, VA to Southern Colorado in March. Please help me plan my itinerary. What to do, where to stay, where to eat, etc. We will have a week. It doesn't need to be a straight shot. We are willing to go a north or south route. It will be my husband, my two boys ages 14 and 11, and myself.

Thank you!!

Your car? It will take at least 2 days to get to Colorado and 2 days to return. I would center on one place in southern Colorado instead of trying to see several for a brief time.
Why March? You may encounter snow in some of the higher elevation places. Great Sand Dunes is you closest National Park in southern Colorado.
Kansas is not my favorite state to drive from east to west.

I would probably want to stay a bit south. In any case it will be a lot of seat time and southern Colorado covers a lot of miles itself. Are you planning on hitting the southeast corner and turning around or heading over to Mesa Verde for some history?

Perhaps head to Mammoth Cave NP in Kentucky, a bit over 10 hours drive from Quantico. Visit the cave, maybe do a ranger tour. Then head to Abilene, KS and visit the Eisenhower museum another 10 hours or so. Then on to Colorado.

We live in Colorado. My husband is in Quantico. The boys and I are flying there to see his graduation and then doing a road trip back home.

Have you been to Smoky Mountains or Shenandoah before? I would first drive to Shenandoah and spend 1 day exploring. Then travel down to GSMNP via Blue Ridge Parkway and spend at least 2 days exploring the park. Drive to Nashville next day before hustling back to Colorado (you can stop midway at Kansas City). Alternatively, you can drive to Chicago instead where you can spend 3 days easily.

What do you like to do?

Answer that and you'll get responses on where to go.

We enjoy amusement parks, history, music, and sports.

Since it's covering the space of 2/3 of mainland US, there are probably an infinite number of ways to go and things to see. (And I agree that going across KS isn't my favourite area to drive either, but then neither is Nebraska or Oklahoma as far as scenery)

So just going off of areas I'm a bit more familiar with from having lived in some of the areas, I'd go:

Mountain highways, as weather allows, paralleling I-81 and then I-75 toward Knoxville or Gatlinburg. Country themed amusement and historical parks, civil war sites, pretty mountain towns that are different than small towns in the Rockies. Bluegrass music venues.

Nashville. Country music and quite a nice city.

Memphis. Not as pretty, but interesting and mostly ok. Blues music, Gibson guitar factory, Graceland, Civil Rights Museum in the Lorraine Hotel, Stax and Sun Studios. Shiloh civil war site on the way into town.

Head north to St. Louis (or through the Ozarks of Ark and MO for woodsy scenery). Along I-55 in MO is Ste. Genevieve, the first settlement west of the Mississippi. Nice little town for a leg stretch, some old buildings dating from days of French Settlement.

St. Louis has Cahokia Mounds (ancient native American site), Missouri Botanical Gardens (largest Japanese Gardens outside Japan and a very cool rainforest inside the first geodesic dome along with other gardens.), the Gateway Arch, the old courthouse (Dred Scott decision). City museum is engaging with rooms of interactive art to climb through. Six Flags on the outskirts. Town of St. Charles on the way west has a historic main street, the first capitol building of Missouri and the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

KC - Crown Center, some good jazz venues, BBQ(!) Worlds of Fun.