Planning week long summer road trip. Looking for advice.

Not sure if this is the proper place to post this as it involves some different topics. Please move if necessary.

Alright guys. So my family and I normally drive up north and take a fishing trip to Canada every year in the summer, but circumstance may prevent that from happening this year (brother just had a baby, woo!). I want to take that opportunity to go on a week-long road trip instead. The goal would be to see a different place every day and camp out every night. I would prefer to keep any off-roading or trails at absolute beginner level. Unless I can get any friends or family to join, it will just be myself, the girlfriend and our 2 small dogs (15 lbs. each). The main emphasis would be sight seeing and landscape photography during sunrise/sunset.

Departure point would be Omaha, NE. I definitely want a good bit of Colorado to be on the road trip since it is probably the closest place with the best scenery. 8 hours gets me to the northwestern corner of Nebraska, or to the Denver area if I head straight into Colorado. I was thinking we could start the first day/evening at Toadstool Geologic Park, then head to somewhere in Wyoming, then eventually make our way down to Colorado. Or we could just head straight into Colorado and branch out from there. I really have no idea the plan would be at this point. I am just kind of researching all the parks/forests in the area trying to get a feel of what we would like to see.

Current truck/camp gear:

My Tacoma (2018 OR) is pure stock aside from a bed mat. I plan on getting a bed rack with a tent for camping. Probably the CVT Mt. Bachelor. As far as camping equipment itself goes, I basically have nothing except for 2 Helinox backpacking chairs and a Helinox camp table. I don't necessarily have a specific budget, but I don't want to go crazy buying a bunch of fancy camping gear. With that being said though, anything I purchase I do plan on using for future photography/camping trips, so I want it to be good quality.

Basically I am a total newbie at camping, so I am looking for some advice on how to build up a basic kit. We will probably set up camp at official campgrounds at parks/forests, so I am sure we won't be too far away from basic services. I probably don't need a full-blown backpacking kit, but I expect that we will have to do some hiking in order to get to certain photography spots that I might want to see.

Travel knowledge:

As far as sight-seeing goes, or photography spots, I am sad to say that I really haven't been anywhere so I don't really know where to start. I've been to Estes Park in CO once, but aside from that we just go to a designated spot in Canada each year, so this would be my first year where I really explored any of the parks in the states. I have no idea what we should put on our list of places to visit, so I am also looking for some advice in this area as well.

So that probably covers it. Any and all advice is welcome. I know this is going to take a really long time to plan out so I am prepared to do a lot of research. We spent a few hours recently at the book store reading some travel books, but that's about it so far.