My sister and I are planning to drive from San Francisco to Boston in August. We%26#39;d like to see the Grand Canyon, and were thinking about heading further south from there and maybe stopping in Austin, visiting New Orleans, and then heading North from there. However, I%26#39;ve never done anything like this before and would appreciate any suggestions for routes! I%26#39;m not particularly attached to the route mentioned previously.
We are from Washington, and have seen the west coast so we won%26#39;t be spending time on our road trip here. We both love beautiful scenery and small towns but would also like to see some bigger cities that we%26#39;ve never been to before (most cities in between the two coasts qualify!) This trip is wide open at this point and I%26#39;m hoping you can help me discover some ';must-sees'; that will in turn help me make a route!
Road Trip- San Francisco to Boston!
Kind of a tough question to answer here in Boston. You%26#39;re best bet might be to go to AAA. They offer a route planning option to aid your travel itinerary. It can be done over the phone with a live customer service rep or online at www.aaa.com.
Road Trip- San Francisco to Boston!
I agree about aaa. Join if not a member, the trip tickets are the best. The costs of the maps they send is more than what they charge you for a membership.
I agree with the AAA recs. The membership will pay for itself rather quickly as most hotels give a 10% discount to AAA holders and it%26#39;s practical, when you are on a road trip you never know what you run into.
Some sites to consider on the way to see Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon in Utah, Arches National Park in Moab Utah, Denver, CO, Four Corners (UT, CO, AZ and NM), Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans, Virginia Beach, Washington DC, Amish Country in PA, NYC, pick between Newport, RI or Mystic, CT then to Boston
I have done this trip from Boston to SF (one-way many, many years ago) and from San Antonio to Boston (one way solo, 20 years ago). Sounds like fun, enjoy your trip.
Wow, what a trip this would be! But, you%26#39;ll need to begin making arrangements now, if you haven%26#39;t already.
How many places you%26#39;re looking to see will involve National Parks or Monuments? If it%26#39;s at least three, then get an annual pass. It%26#39;s about $60.00 for the year and gets you free admission to every national park. It%26#39;s based on family/vehicle so one pass for you and your sister would be fine. Your local bookstore would have a national park tour book which gives all the places in each state you might want to see.
Whatever or wherever you go, take the back roads and see the local hokey attractions-that%26#39;s what a trip like this is all about. Since some of your travels may take you along sections where Route 66 is and used to be, see it. The asphalt itself is disappearing fast but it%26#39;s a part of Americana that shouldn%26#39;t be missed.
I was just looking at slides from our cross-country trip in 1970 (Boston to Seattle to LA to home) so this topic is kind of fresh in my mind.
If you go SFO to LV you would most likely end up on the north rim of the GC. Not as nice as the south rim, I don%26#39;t think but honestly unless you have time to hike down into the canyon I think the GCNP is kind of a letdown.
It%26#39;s worth considering driving down to LA so you end up in northern Arizona. We just spent a brief vacation last month in Sedona, definitely worth a really big detour (much more beautiful than the Grand Canyon).
I%26#39;m particularly intrigued by New Mexico myself, but I have only seen Las Cruces and the missile test range (larger than half Connecticutt and Rhode Island). Personally I would try to get from SFO to Sedona to Santa Fe.
Never been to New Orleans.
You should rent ';Easy Rider'; if you%26#39;ve never seen it, to give you some itinerary ideas. :-)
Go in the Arizona forum and ask if Sedona is worth a detour.
one more thing: whatever you do get a GPS - you can get them for as little as $150 at Costco - it will ';speak'; to you and give you directions anywhere in North America. Absolutely amazing how much information they can put into those little boxes for so little money. invaluable.
AAA trip-tychs were great in 1970 but nowadays a cheap GPS does the same thing in real-time, and it does it better.
Wow. Sounds like a FUN adventure!
If I were doing it, I%26#39;d make a list of all the places/sights you%26#39;d like to see, things you%26#39;d like to do and use mapquest to get a sense of driving times. Yahoo maps is also good--that allows you to click and drag your route to adjust it...
I%26#39;ve been blessed to have seen a lot of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I can tell you that the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is AMAZING but more remotely located than the South Rim. The North side is closer to other very cool National Parks there. The South Rim is closer to Sedona, which has amazing red rock formations, but the South Rim of the Canyon is more commercialized than the North Rim. Flagstaff is a very cool college town with lots of restaurants and bars and a very loud train going thru at all hours of the day and night...every hotel in Flagstaff is within earshot of the train! :0)
Phoenix has great museums and golf resorts, but is blazingly hot during the day. Denver is a pretty neat city. Chicago has an amazing ';coastline';...
Be aware that some roads in Arizona/Utah/Colorado, etc. can be treacherous at night. If you%26#39;re not used to driving with steeeeeep precipices to one side and dramatic switchbacks, it can be scary...try to research specific routes and do driving on mountain roads during daylight if possible. (We learned this the hard way.)
I personally LOVED the Rocky Mountains but...you can%26#39;t possibly try to see everything...especially if you want to go south to New Orleans. You might try posting in the Texas forums...
Your route sounds zig-zaggy...if you have plenty of time, then go for it...just leave plenty of time to cover the ground you need to cover.
Going North from New Orleans, you can pass through Nashville, which has a personality all its own. The drive from NO to BOS is 26 hours acc%26#39;d to Mapquest, so.. I don%26#39;t know how much time you have to make stops but... Virgiinia is full of cool stuff, including caverns and hiking and DC is right there... Philly...NYC..
You might need to research different forums to find out specifics. If you know you want to see point A and point B and there%26#39;s a huge stretch between them, you can visit a forum about that area and ask the locals what%26#39;s a good stopping point in between.
Bottom line; I think you need to figure out how much time you have and maybe make three categories of sights: those you reeeeeeallly want to see, those you%26#39;d like to see if time permits and then those that are maybe best left to another trip. You might start with all of your sights in that first category but then once you work out driving times and all that, it may be that you%26#39;ll want to shorten your route so as to be able to spend more time in place a or b or you may disover that you want to extend your trip so that you can see more.
If you choose to drive up the East Coast, leave plenty of time for miserable rush hour traffic, especially in Philly, DC, and New York.
My one big caution, having been on road-heavy vacations, is to be realistic about how much time you have and want to spend in each place and how much time you%26#39;ll need to spend in the car. That way, you can be at peace doing things at the pace you need to do them. It%26#39;s very stressful to plan too ambitious a trip and find yourself wanting to spend more time than you can at each place, etc. or being unrealistic about what 10 hours in a car feels like.
Hope this helps. Be sure to file a trip report. Sounds like an adventure.
...and definitely get the GPS... you%26#39;ll save gas money with it, considering how easy it is to waste gas being lost....
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