Appreciate all the replies! Will negotiate pans with the kid.
The road trip is something the kid has wanted to do for awhile. Haven’t had the chance. Between 2016-2019, the family did travel quite a bit by car for sporting competitions. So we have a bit of driving practice. This is the last time we will be able to do something like this, crossing so many states, until who knows when.
The moving back to the family home from the out-of-state apartment is the catalyst for the “why not road trip back home since moving stuff and flights will be at least X amount of dollars anyway?”
We will have the advantage of dropping the load off at home (before dropping off the rental at an airport, as @tsbna44 alluded to in post 32). And then driving the kid to college a few days later mid-August. The kid has a week of pre-school year events to get acclimated.
The college is close enough to drive home for a weekend if need be. I anticipate there being some back-and-forth initially (mostly to make my spouse more at ease with the transition! the kid and I are a bit more excited for the next step).
The good news from all this is that I will be sleeping off the first couple of weeks of school due to all of this physical/mental workload now. Won’t have much time to be sad when I’m zonked out.