From Mass to Cali and back
Anyone ever make this trip? I am going to do it in the summer of 2016. That gives me a little over a year to plan it. Looking for tips, best routs, stuff to see, places to stop and general advise. ...
Forum Discussion
A coast to coast trip like this offers almost infinite routing possibilities and opportunities to visit places when handled as a loop. One recently posted here at least twice as the "optimum road trip" got into every state in the lower 48.
The trip California is at least 6000 miles, back and forth on the shortest route to San Francisco. A loop across the midwest to San Francisco, down to LA, across the southern part of the U.S. going up through the middle South could be 7500 miles, depending on how much you want to stretch it out. Come back via the Atlantic states, maybe 9000 miles. This is a lot to cover in three weeks, you may not have time to stop to see anything, not even in California.
Find a list of "must see" places in the U.S., figure out which ones are of interest to you, start making connections between them, figuring out times and distances. You may not find any one route that works for you, but you'll get a feel for what it is that you are trying to take on.
Our RV trips have been 2-5 weeks, which has limited to a loop diameter of 1200-2000 miles, but being in the middle of the country that has let us visit almost anywhere between the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada, but not all the way to the Pacific Coast. That's usually 200 to 800 miles a day, touring mode vs making time mode.
With 2-3 weeks max, I would go to Europe again. But I'm big on international travel, going to Europe almost every year since retiring in 2004, except the years when family deaths got in the way. For a cross country road trip loop, I think I would want at least two months, because no matter how many times I've been through certain parts of the country there are more things to see that I've not yet seen and can't treat any part of the U.S. (not even Iowa or Kansas) as "flyover" or "drive through in the night."
The trip California is at least 6000 miles, back and forth on the shortest route to San Francisco. A loop across the midwest to San Francisco, down to LA, across the southern part of the U.S. going up through the middle South could be 7500 miles, depending on how much you want to stretch it out. Come back via the Atlantic states, maybe 9000 miles. This is a lot to cover in three weeks, you may not have time to stop to see anything, not even in California.
Find a list of "must see" places in the U.S., figure out which ones are of interest to you, start making connections between them, figuring out times and distances. You may not find any one route that works for you, but you'll get a feel for what it is that you are trying to take on.
Our RV trips have been 2-5 weeks, which has limited to a loop diameter of 1200-2000 miles, but being in the middle of the country that has let us visit almost anywhere between the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada, but not all the way to the Pacific Coast. That's usually 200 to 800 miles a day, touring mode vs making time mode.
With 2-3 weeks max, I would go to Europe again. But I'm big on international travel, going to Europe almost every year since retiring in 2004, except the years when family deaths got in the way. For a cross country road trip loop, I think I would want at least two months, because no matter how many times I've been through certain parts of the country there are more things to see that I've not yet seen and can't treat any part of the U.S. (not even Iowa or Kansas) as "flyover" or "drive through in the night."
