Adobe has a lot of online tutorials on how how to use LR & PS if you go the CC route. Also check amazon. I have several books that I purchased that helped get me started in LR and I now use them to as reference books to look up features that I am not familiar with or need to find out how to address a specific photo editing issue. No matter what photo editing route you decide to take, the only way to really learn how to use the product is to jump in and use it. I really like LR and one of the good things about the CC subscription is that you can cancel it at any time. A couple of months with CC would cost you $20 and would provide you enough time to determine if CC works for you.
The truth is that the major photographic brands (Canon, Nikon) pretty much control the prices of their products. As a result the prices are pretty much the same no matter where you purchase the product. You can purchase gray market products cheaper but the warranty will not be honored in the US. Some vendor will sweeten the deal by offering free accessories and apparently this is okay with the manufacturer as long as the product is sold at the price set by the manufacturer.
The bottom line is that you will find no price breaks for quality photographic gear purchased from ethical retail outlets. Stick to outlets like B&H Photo and Adorama. I have even purchased cameras & lenses from Best Buy but lately the local stores no longer seem to keep the lenses I want in stock and you have to wait a week to pick them up or have them delivered. I no longer bother trying to find a place where I can get something cheaper and just try to find some place that is reliable and can quickly get the item to me.
I use SanDisk Extreme PRO cards. The transfer rate for these cards is 95 MB/s. The brand is probably unimportant as long as it is a major brand. What is important is the transfer speed. Get cards that have the highest transfer rate. Unfortunately these cards are premium SD cards and cost a lot more than the standard SD cards. If you are taking pictures one by one and are not concerned about how many shots per second you can take, a slower card might suffice. So the speed of the card largely depends on your shooting style. Once in a while I take several pictures in rapid succession and I have not noticed any lags with the cards I use.
I shoot both - raw to get as must picture detail as possible and jpeg so I can quickly sort through all the pictures. But for you the decision depends on how demanding you are in getting the highest quality picture possible and how you intend to use the pictures. If all you plan to do is post them to facebook then jpegs should suffice. But if you plan to make large prints like I do, then you should plan on shooting raw. The raw images on my Nikon D7100 take up about 32kb and the jpegs take up about 5kb, so including jpegs does not add that much overhead.
What I would suggest is that you take your camera out and take some pictures locally that might be similar to what you will be seeing in the Great Smoky Mountains. Then process them with your standard photo editor (Lightroom, Elements, etc) and see the differences between shooting raw and jpegs. If you are happy with the jpegs, then shoot jpegs only. But if you are as demanding as I am, you will likely realize that raw is the only way to go. This way you can be confident that whatever you decide is best for you.