What is the better path?

I say just apply to a bunch of schools for the BSN. That's what I'm doing.

Going for your BSN would be alot quicker to get it over with. There's nothing wrong with getting your RN and then bridging. One good thing with RN to BSN is it's super easy to get accepted into a BSN program as an RN b/c it's all online. All your clinicals are basically done in RN school, so BSN is all online except community and assessment (something like that). The rest is theory, papers, research, leadership, etc, so colleges except tons of RN's into BSN b/c it makes money for the college and it's probably cheaper. And I think even the GPA requirement is lower. BSN programs need a 3.0 or higher and people apply with 4.0's. RN to BSN (I think) is like a 2.5 or something.

The downside of RN to BSN is time. RN school is basically 2 years, but really 3 including pre-req and then waiting to sit for your exams. Then you have to get hired. Then you do on the job training. And then to go back, you have apply to BSN and it's 2 more years from there. Throw in a marriage or even kids to put going back on hold...it can be time consuming. Or, you choose to work for a year, which ends up really being 4 years (speaking from experience). In my opinion, go straight into BSN. It's so much quicker. I got my RN first b/c I needed job sonner than later. Two years of school was better than 4 and I went back when I got more settled.

Good Luck!