Too ambitious?

Too ambitious-yes. You spend too much time in the vehicle and not enough time having fun. Figure roughly 50 mph on average, determine the number of days it's going to take for just driving, then decide if what's left is enough. Since you are talking over 2500 miles to get out there, it's a min of 5 days out and 5 days back. Put 7500 miles on a vehicle in 3 weeks, drove 4 straight days to get home and felt like I never had a vacation. Shift driving is fine but when on unfamiliar territory of nothingness it's very easy to fall asleep at the wheel, and with the shape the roads are in it will be almost impossible to sleep PLUS the most likely won't be able to be buckled in.

Supr it is amazing how we never seem to discover what we have right near us until it nolonger is! By the way tell your son Semper Fi and thanks for his service!

I agree with the others, while stationed in NC I did plenty of bonzi runs with how many miles can I cover, continued after my service when I took MC vacations. Always said I had to go back to work to rest afterwards.

One other thought are you buying a new RV? If so can you pick it up in AZ? Then you fly out or even dry what you are planning on towing out and only drive the RV home.

Do the math. How many days and how many hours just on the road.

Suprz,

You have gotten a lot of great and accurate responses, but as far as shift driving, you will find that it is difficult to rest in any MH that is underway. What you have to remember about a Class C is that it is really a cabin, plopped onto a truck or bus chassis. The ride is very much like a schoolbus. Ever ride in the back of a schoolbus?

We have a very gentle old Class A and one of us can sleep underway, and an 1100 mile day is still a real stretch and very wearing. Our realistic limit is about 550 miles (just like trucks) and that is with two drivers and at least one navigator. If you want to do more, I suggest that you lease a coach as close to what you plan to buy and do a few short runs like Providence to Bangor on Rt-202 (No blue roads allowed) or to Buffalo any way you want (the tolls will be a killer for that run). If you do either of those in a weekend, you will have a much better idea of what you are setting yourself up for.

Other idea, lease the RV for three weeks but pick it up near one of wanted locations. Drive the big circle, give it back and fly home.

My favorite quote these days is from Charles Kuralt — "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything."

Safe Travel however you do it.

Matt

It is possible but likely not a lot of fun. Tombstone, GCanyon, M Valley are in kind of a line. Tombstone can be a one day stop. Grand Canyon south rim is one day unless you are going to hike below the rim or mule trip down. Or drive to see the glass platform over the canyon. Monument valley is two days. Take the tour. See the john Wayne stuff.

Just my opinion but this would be one case when flying to Phoenix and picking up a rental RV would be more enjoyable. It would take me a minimum of two months to do this trip in our RV.

Skip Tombstone, it's just a tourist trap sort of thing. You're going past some of America's great treasures; spend time at Bryce Canyon, Arches, Zion, and of course Grand Canyon. Add in Organ Pipe and Saguaro NP's in the Tucson vicinity if you have time.

We've done the trip quite a few times, starting from Florida. We would generally be in Arizona late on day three. But we used to push hard on the first three days since the area that we wanted to spend our time in started at the end of day three.

That meant an early 7AM start and driving until 8 PM or so. 700 miles a day or more. Trading off drivers helps a lot. Once we hit our target area we slow down to 250-300 miles/day and enjoy ourselves. Now that I've retired we have given up on the 3 day push at the beginning of the trip. It just didn't make sense for us to waste all that time stopping in Big Frog PA for the night and missing a day at Bryce or GC.

You are probably a bit farther away and there aren't any direct roads, we just run down I-10. You'll have to zig-zag around going southwest diagonally. So maybe 4 days for you.

Four Corners and Grand Canyon are a day apart if you take it easy and stop at some of the places you'll pass along the way. You probably need a Navaho guide at Monument Valley and I'm not sure you'll want to drive your Class A down those roads.

Tombstone is way south of the other areas and it's just a tourist trap. Maybe 4 or 6 square blocks in a small town packed with 'tourist attractions'. We've been there a couple of times, not as a destination but just because we were in the area at Chiricahua National Monument. I'm not sure when you plan to be there but from late April on it is very hot so carry a water bottle with you.

You'll pass a lot of excellent National Monuments along the way.

I'd plan on spending a 5-7 days at GC and a day or so at the other stops. And we like the North Rim of GC a lot more than the South Rim which has 10 times more people. The sights are the same at the North Rim except there isn't that Indian reservation.

BK

It would take you around 40 hours driving time just to get to Arizona. That does not include rest stops, fuel stops, food stops, etc. So you could plan on 5 days travel each way and still be long travel days.
But with 3 weeks, that would leave you 11 days to visit the sites you want to see once you get to AZ. The 3 you mention are within a day of each other, so you could see them fairly easily once you got there with time to spare.
It would just be the getting there and back home that would be the killer.
Yes, there is a lot to see/do between your home and AZ that you would miss. But if those mentioned are your primary objectives at this time I would say go for it. But plan on the full 3 weeks.

Thanks for the replies, those three attractions are the "must see" things for now. If we live long enough to see retirement, then we can take the time and fill in the blanks. The most embarrassing thing is I lived in california for 28 years and never went to any of these places..... :(

At my RV driving pace (9 AM to 4 PM, medium speeds, 15 minutes stop every two hours) and just those three destinations, this trip (5700 miles) would be 14 days driving, so for three weeks would allow about a week's worth of sightseeing stops.

One of the problems might be that the routing will take you past other places you might want to stop: Arches and Canyonlands NP, Colorado National Monument, Rocky Mountain NP, to say nothing of all the places you could visit on the Plains and in the Midwest (e.g. the RV Museum in Elkhart, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Living History Farms, or St Louis Arch).

If you skip the Tombstone experience, you could save about 350 miles and a day of driving. If Tombstone is a "must see" I would route through Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, and El Paso but that just adds more places on the way that you really should stop and see :(

For only the particular western destinations you list, I would fly to Las Vegas, and rent, because you would not have time to enjoy anything enroute, and the fuel costs alone for moving a C from Rhode Island to Tombstone and back are going to be something like $2700 to $3000. You've then got two weeks for touring, enough the make a loop of the parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

I don't usually recommend flying over the middle of the country, because there is a lot to see, crossing it hundreds of times I still find more new and interesting places, but if you won't have the time to stop and the only things you want to see are at the far end of the trip, road tripping becomes quite tedious.