There’s a pretty solid chance that in about 6 months I will be selling almost all of my possessions, packing what little remains into my Toyota and moving with my wife cross-country from Western New York to the San Francisco Bay Area.


It's one heck of a trip – 2,700 miles of open road. A pretty major life-changing event, but also a chance to scratch the travel itch domestically. I’ll have approximately 6 weeks from the time I leave my current job to the time I’ll want to be settled in CA, say July 1 until Mid-August 2008.

Does anyone have any suggestions or resources for putting something like this together? We’d like to stay on the cheap in campgrounds and the like and hit as many national parks as we can. I’m pretty sure that a major detour to Yellowstone will be involved as well as a good portion of Colorado and scenic Utah. (Although that looks like an intimidatingly huge loop on the map and may need to be cut down.) Obviously I have some time to burn – and that’s the point, so I can meander around and hit most of what I want to see – but obviously I don’t want to get TOO far off track (not going to Arizona or the like).

Now that I’m examining the map more closely, I think that I have two choices: either aim to swing south into southern Utah or swing north into Wyoming/Idaho before heading into Nevada and towards the West Coast.

How would you rearrange that google maps link into an ideal multi-week cross-country bonanza? Do you have any top 5 must-sees from a previous road-trip? Any suggestions for sleeping and eating cheaply on the road? I’ve been to a few of these places before but my wife has never been to the “real” West at all. What can I do to wow her?

P.S. - I know I usually hate answering people with huge, undisciplined itinerary suggestions and now I’m posting one of these myself...I apologize up-front!

You're right -- this is a huge wide open area ripe for zillions of suggestions!



You will be traveling during a great time -- the weather will be fantastic for camping, which can save you big bucks. I like to camp in State Parks, though with the purchase of a National Parks Pass, you can also use those facilities. They'll be a little more expensive, but worth it since they don't turn just any old patch of grass into a National Park. A camp stove and a well packed food box can save you money on meals as well as create some highly memorable moments -- who knows the romance that spaghetti can take on while watching the sun set?

Travel, for me, means exploring my interests in other places. Perhaps if you consider those things about which you and your wife are most passionate and plan to see attractions and sites accordingly, this will help you to organize your trip.

When I take a road trip, I like to check out old cemeteries, places where they serve killer pie, folk art style road side attractions and sculpture. I then look at the possible route that I am going to take and see if there are things of this vein along that road. Rand McNally does a really great US atlas with lots of little red highlighted points of interest. Many times, while planning a trip, I'll look there first, just to see if there is something that those guys think that I might like. Often, I have found some tremendous gems -- only a few times was I disappointed. It might sound like obvious advice, but it is often overlooked.

Summer is high season for festivals -- you could incorporate some of those into your trip. A great way to meet people, be entertained for little to no cost, and a 'wow' experience if you just happen to pull into any place Illinois and voila, attend a food festival. Look here to find music festivals and here to find general festivals and here
for even more!

If you like silly things, check out this interactive map of roadside attractions. This always helps me to find a special place to visit -- I never would have found the Outhouse Museum of Gregory, SD, without it.

I envy you -- a road trip of that proportion will make for fantastic fun and memories!

Ahh, this brings back good memories! After my husband graduated from Harvard we took 6 months off and drove ( in a small red fiat!) and camped from Boston to SF. We left in the winter so headed to Key West first and took the southern route and then up the coast from San Diego.

You will have a wonderful time and be very glad that you did this! Two memories that stand out is making friends who had a Chinese Junk near Key West and boating with them and meeting some Mexicans in Big Ben State park who took us via horseback to some hidden natural hot springs and invited to their home ( dirt floor). We spent very little on our trip and the people we met was as much a highlight as the gorgeous things we saw.

I am not that familiar with your route, but there have been lots of people who have done such a trip ( across the U.S.) so I would just google it to pick up the blogs and get ideas from BTDT people. Lots of Brits & Europeans love to travel the US like this too.

Friends of ours did a cross country with kids last year and they seemed to have a wonderful trip. Maybe there is something on their blog that interests you:

http://donnercruz.com/

Good luck!

In our time off we spent one summer drivng from Missouri to California to Maine and the next summer drove from Missouri to Alaska and back. On each one we stopped at as many parks/scenic areas, etc. as we could.
We had a small RV but the same ideas should apply, State and National Parks offer great camping but if you are willing to forgo some facilities National Forest Areas have camping that is usually cheaper (sometimes free), but often more rustic.
Definitely buy a good camp stove and take cooking equipment. Not eating in restaurants saved us so much money. We also had fun shopping in different stores in each area and learning how to make pie in a frying pan!
I think your wife will be wowed with any of the Western National Parks. If you choose north Yellowstone and Grand Teton, if you choose south Zion, Bryce Canyon, etc. Of course you can hit Rocky Mountain National Park either way.
Have a great trip!

Oh, you might have to go a few levels back to find our road trips but you can check out
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/theisen

-Look under categories 'Summer in the States' and 'North, to Alaska'

quote:

Travel, for me, means exploring my interests in other places. Perhaps if you consider those things about which you and your wife are most passionate and plan to see attractions and sites accordingly, this will help you to organize your trip.

Mostly I think we'd like to see as much as possible of the grandeur of the West. This makes things difficult because I'm deeply torn between seeing the Badlands, Yellowstone, etc. and venturing down to Canyonlands, Mesa Verde and the like. (The Rockies will be in their either way!) Given my time I don't think I can really do both as much as I'd like to.

Any thoughts on which route is better? (Probably a hopeless question but I'd like to hear what anyone has to say!)

Also, thank you for the festival links - that's a cool idea as well.

quote:

We had a small RV but the same ideas should apply, State and National Parks offer great camping but if you are willing to forgo some facilities National Forest Areas have camping that is usually cheaper (sometimes free), but often more rustic.

Most of my camping experience has been of the hiking/national forest rustic variety. This trip will require a different mode obviously. Do RV and car accessible campgrounds like this usually have shower facilities? I don't mind pitching a tent or roughing it in a sleeping bag as long as I can rinse the grim off every couple days.

If you were of a mind to zip through to Chicago quickly upon your departure, you could hit the Taste of Chicago at the beginning of July, as well as Summerfest in Milwaukee. From there, you could connect to I-90 and take that across to South Dakota, seeing The Corn Palace, the Badlands, Wall Drug, and Custer State Park. Continue on to Spearfish Canyon but turn off I-90 at HWY 14 in Wyoming and head toward Yellowstone.

See the Tetons and then head south through Idaho to connect to I-15 to the Great Salt Lake, and then cut back east across HWY 40 into Colorado -- which would take you right into the Rocky Mountains. You could make a loop back and end up in Cortez, CO, which would put you right at Mesa Verde. The great thing about this loop is that you could see some of the best of Colorado, especially if you took I-70 west into Vail and then went south on HWY 24 to the 50 (the Arkansas River is great fun!) and then south on the 550, which ends in Durango. All of this would be fantastic camping, with side trips to ghost towns and soaks in hot springs. *That* is the route that I would take.

From Mesa Verde, the route is easy into Utah to see some 4 Corners, Hovenweep, Grand Staircase, Zion, Antelope Canyon, etc. The Grand Canyon isn't that far from Zion -- and you can't really do western things without seeing it -- I think it is about 130 miles from Zion to the North Rim -- which in summer, is the more spectacular of the two viewpoints.

The great thing about each state park system is that, online, you can see which places have what amenities, from showers to hiking trails. Also handy is that as you pass from state to state, you can pick up free accommodation guides from the tourist information centers for the entire state that lists campgrounds along with their featured amenities. This is fabulous to have on hand, since it means that you will know what you have available to you along the entire route, which gives you much more flexibility in sightseeing every day.

I like to consider this when plotting routes, too.

State and National Parks almost always have shower facilities, although at the more popular National Parks (ie, Grand Canyon) they may be of the coin-operated variety. There are specifics about each park online.
Many National Forest campgrounds have pit-toilets only but you can also check online at http://www.fs.fed.us and go to 'find a forest' for details on many of their drive up style campgrounds.