You've started in the right place, TopoToRaster will do what you've asked (create a seamless elevation model from contours). There are a lot of options and it can be a bear to get right, as the length of the overview implies. I found it helpful to read the documents for the source tool, ANUDEM, so I could understand more of the theory.

Before that though, I'd start by

• picking a small area that has a representative sample of the all the terrain types in your region -- hills, valleys, streams, waterbodies -- and
• run T2R with a coarse cell size and fiddle with the options until you start getting what you're looking for. Pick a cell size large enough that it takes no more than a minute or two to return results. This will let you rapidly cycle through the options and narrow in what isn't working.
• Add only one data layer at a time, start with contours only, and then add streams, waterbodies, etc. Make sure you select the right [field] and [type] for each feature class (field is "which attribute holds the elevation value?").
• After doing a few runs of this go back to the docs, and they'll start to make more sense.

You've started in the right place, TopoToRaster will do what you've asked (create a seamless elevation model from contours). There are a lot of options and it can be a bear to get right, as the length of the overview implies. I found it helpful to read the documents for the source tool, ANUDEM, so I could understand more of the theory.

Before that though, I'd start by

• picking a small area that has a representative sample of the all the terrain types in your region -- hills, valleys, streams, waterbodies -- and
• run T2R with a coarse cell size and fiddle with the options until you start getting what you're looking for. Pick a cell size large enough that it takes no more than a minute or two to return results. This will let you rapidly cycle through the options and narrow in what isn't working.
• Add only one data layer at a time, start with contours only, and then add streams, waterbodies, etc. Make sure you select the right [field] and [type] for each feature class (field is "which attribute holds the elevation value?").
• After doing a few runs of this go back to the docs, and they'll start to make more sense.