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My friends and I would like to go on a roadtrip to the US and we were wondering if you guys could give some pointers. Context: We'd be 3 people in total and we'd like to visit several places in the US by driving around. Not necessarily the entire country, for example, a bigger visit in just two states would be an option, or the entire east coast or anything in between. We'd like to go for 2 (me) to 3 (one of the friends) weeks in July this year. We're from Belgium and 22-23 years old. The others have little travel experience outside of Europe but I've been to New York and Chicago before. Any advice is welcome. Specifically, travel resources, planners, handy websites, etc etc etc would be very handy. I've googled somewhat but its hard to separate the muck from the good. In addition, any advice you can personally give would be welcome. For example, budget. One of my friends cites 3000 euroes as the max. Is that feasible? Anyway, I'd hugely appreciate any and all advice or pointers to good websites to help out in this endeavour!
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Apr 18, 2015 13:27
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 19:23 |
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Kalenden posted:My friends and I would like to go on a roadtrip to the US and we were wondering if you guys could give some pointers. Well, what do you want to see? Is this a camping roadtrip? Are you looking to see the more cities, or more of the national parks and natural beauty? Just wanting to pass through? Two weeks isn't a lot of time but do-able. The US is vast, and honestly wide swaths of it are irredeemable poo poo-boring-- you could easily ignore: Kansas, Okhlahoma, Arksans, Missippi, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, South/North Dakota, Alabama, Tennesse, Kentucky, North/South Carolinas, Alabama, and smattering of other really lovely states. There are some cool places like New Orleans, Atlanta, or parts of Florida if you're interested but again that's fairly far and few between. For example, Utah/Arizona/Colorado/California/Wyoming has some of the coolest natural scenery in the country and amazing national parks and I whole heartedly recommend you do some kind of Az-Utah-Co loop if you roadtrip. Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands/others, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, etc in that area. Arizona/Utah loop for all the national parks/monuments could take you 5 days. Really some fantastic stuff. And of course Glacier NP and Yellowstone is cool if you've never been before as well as other parts around the Grand Tetons but that's another state up and could take you another 3+ days to finish. California has a mix of both: Highway 1(01), Yosemite, Kings Canyon are all awesome scenery, but also a lot of great cities to check out too (SF, LA, SD). But you could easily blow 10 days in this state. Oregon and Washington are amazing as well, but again you can blow a whole day just driving from California to Oregon. I'd definitely recommend doing some sort of coastal drive from San Diego, California up to Seattle, Washington (visa versa) as some way to finish off the trip and fly out of one of those cities If you do the camping gear route, you'll save a lot of money but have to rent a bigger car. I'd recommend that so you can get to enjoy a lot of the national parks, which is honestly mostly the only thing unique about USA. You could definitely do a road-trip under 3k if you all buy some used camping gear and such. Most of it will just go to gas/food/rental. Anyways without figuring out what you're hoping to do, I can't give you too much advice. e: I suppose if I had to plan something for 3 weeks that focused on stuff like that, I'd go with: - Start in Salt Lake Center, get your rental hit up some camping supply place or try to buy a bunch of used gear. It's a fairly outdoorsy oriented place so I'm sure theres bound to be a lot. - Head up to Grand Tetons/Yellowstone (5 hr dr). Camp someplace near the Teton area. Visit Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, Tetons, etc (2 nights, 3 days). - Drive up to Glacier National Park. (1 day) - Drive over to Seattle. Visit Olympia National Park and Mt Rainer while here (3 days) - Head down to Portland. Spend a day in Portland - Drive over to the coast and take 101 Sotuh all the way till you get to San Francisco. SF sucks for driving and pricy hotel accommodations. (Spend 1 night ~2 days in SF). - Drive down 101 South along California coast: Stop in Monterey, Carmel, Santa Barbara, and other coastal towns that sound fun. (Plan 2 days for a nice relaxing coastal drive, especially if you visit the aquarium in Monterey and such) - Finish taking 101 down to Los Angeles (You'll be tired as hell by now. Rest for the night, spend a day here. Maybe another day for Disneyland if you want to ). - Cut over Hw 15 to Las Vegas (rest during the day, visit around Las Vegas at night as it's american excess at it's finest and drat cool) - Continue on 15 to St George: Camp/Visit around Zion, Bryce, and North Rim of Grand Canyon. Plan about 3 days for this. - Go fly back out of Las Vegas, or if there's more time then visit some of the other parks in Utah (Arches, Canyonlands)] This plan would be too rushed for anything less than three weeks. I'd have to give it more thought but for a more relaxed vacation to be done in 2-weeks, I'd say start at the same point, probably skip the whole Yellowstone thing (though its only 5 hr drive), and do that in plan in reverse. Except probably stop your trip in Portland instead of going all the way up to Seattle. You may want to even fly out of SF if you've ran out of time but your friend could keep going and finish the rest of that in the last week. I'll draw some pictures later. Sans air fare, a 3k budget would be no problem with this and more likely would be like <$1k a person. I haven't done that kind of trip for a long time, so I'm really rusty on how long things take to get to and visit once you're there. e: As far as websites go: https://www.yelp.com for restraunts/accomodation reviews. Best tool for a lot of these places if you don't know whats good to eat and where to stay. Aso its OK for points of interest but not great. For destinations and points of interest: I'd probably say lonelyplanet or tripadvisor (I havent used them in the US but they seem goodish) https://www.airbnb.com for other local accomodations that aren't big chains and can be a lot cheaper and nicer. I think that's all you need. It's not complicated to rent a car and start driving 
Xaris fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Apr 19, 2015 |
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Apr 19, 2015 10:34
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Xaris posted:The US is vast, and honestly wide swaths of it are irredeemable poo poo-boring-- you could easily ignore: Kansas, Okhlahoma, Arksans, Missippi, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, South/North Dakota, Alabama, Tennesse, Kentucky, North/South Carolinas, Alabama, and smattering of other really lovely states. There are some cool places like New Orleans, Atlanta, or parts of Florida if you're interested but again that's fairly far and few between. Not to get too derailed from the thread's initial intent but speaking for the Carolinas (as a resident of NC for the past 5 years) there are worse places that a person could visit. Asheville and the surrounding portions of the Appalachians/Smokeys and their trails, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Outer Banks, and Charleston are all solid options for domestic/international travelers. Therefore I feel it is unfair to claim them as "irredeemable poo poo-boring".
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Apr 20, 2015 23:30
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Sorry. I'm sure that's true. There is a lot of cool appalachian trails-- just when I think of "American Road Tripping"--especially for having time for only a couple of states, from my limited experience there I immediately jump to discounting most of the mid-east unless there's family/other important reasons for wanting to go. I didn't mean to offend people that lived there, though I did  To me, the quintessential American Roadtrip is a South-West / North-West road trip (i.e. everything to the west of Central Time Zone line). Others may disagree with that and they should definitely speak up
Xaris fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 00:36
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What are you interested in? Nature/Scenery/mountain type stuff? I'd do the pacific coast highway and explore the pacific north west (San francisoco > seattle). OR travel around the rocky mountains (Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana) Flying in/out of Denver could work for that. You could also get some mountain time (Colorado) and south west desert stuff (Moab, Canyonlands, Zion, Grand Canyon in Utah/Arizona) but the desert will be hot as gently caress in July. If you are more into cities, I'd prob create some sort of loop around the north east.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:18
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Thanks for the replies guys, I'll take it into consideration with my friends!
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Apr 29, 2015 20:47
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 19:23 |
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Xaris posted:Sorry. I'm sure that's true. There is a lot of cool appalachian trails-- just when I think of "American Road Tripping"--especially for having time for only a couple of states, from my limited experience there I immediately jump to discounting most of the mid-east unless there's family/other important reasons for wanting to go. I didn't mean to offend people that lived there, though I did South Dakota also has some pretty great off-the-totally-beaten-to-the-ground-path roadtripping options, like the badlands and the black hills. That said, I definitely wouldn't recommend any of those places as a first roadtrip. The Southwest, West, Northwest, or whatever part of the country with Yellowstone/Grand Tetons is considered as ("Wyoming"?), are definitely the places to start. The OP never responded as to what he's interested in, but for scenery I'd second the Utah/AZ/NM/CO trip, maybe something like the Grand Canyon, Zion, Monument Valley, Las Vegas (Death Valley/Red Rock Canyon). With the caveat that for someone from Belgium, going to this part of the country in July is going to be poo poo-as-balls unbelievably hot. Still nice and totally doable though in July (I spent two weeks in that area in July as a roadtrip a view years ago), and perfect if you want to do camping. YMMV. I grew up in an area with 40° summer heat and 110% humidity, so going to 45° desert heat never felt as oppressive. You could do the Pacific Northwest too which temperature-wise will be more palatable in July, but IMO if you're going to go all the way to the States, you might as well see a part of the country that you couldn't see by instead taking a two hour flight to Norway. Yellowstone/Grand Tetons would be nice, maybe? I've never been there so can't personally recommend it one way or the other. Saladman fucked around with this message at 21:30 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 21:24
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