Touring East Coast Megalopolis?

I've driven in NYC before, but i would rather take public transportation or do a tour. By the time you pay to park down there, you could of paid for the public transportation or it would be a third of the price of a tour for one. Plus when you are driving down there, you don't get to see the sites as well. To me it will be worth the $300 for me, my wife and my daughter to take the tour and not have to worry about the hassle.

We didn't take the tour.. For the first couple of nights, we left the trailer at Black Bear while we stayed the night at a friends house in Brooklyn.. My wife drove our tow vehicle in Manhattan.. That was an experience! She drove like a NYC taxi.. lol. After a couple days exploring Manhattan, I hung out with my youngest at the campground while my family took the train back to Manhattan for school shopping. Lots of fun.

Report back and tell us how it goes!

Just looked at that black bear campground and looks great. I like the tour idea and they are only 46 miles from Times Square. Orange County choppers are less than 20 miles away, which would be fun to go see as well. Thanks for mentioning this place.

Thanks again for all of the great replies! Black Bear, the Newburgh KOA, and Timberlane all sound great. I really like the idea of the tourbus picking you up and delivering back to camp.

I may be wishing for the impossible here, but does anyone know of a place sort of between Philly & NY that is similar, so we could park the trailer and go either direction?

+1 on Timberlane campground in NJ, near Philly. They were very accommodating.. We had no place to ditch the trailer after checkout time, and they let us park the trailer in a field in the campground while we visited Philly. The poor planning was due to us losing a day due to trailer repair. They didn't even charge us the night we reserved and missed. Traffic wasn't that bad.. There's a nice walking tour of Independence Hall.

For NYC, we stayed at Black Bear Campground.. There's a nearby train to take you to Mahattan.. The campground also has a tour.

ps.. also check for tours in each city. Ask the campground for assistance. Most larger touristy cities have the little guided bus tours that are great!

Newburgh NY KOA is awesome x2!! You can either take the train in Beacon NY into the city or you can take a tour bus right from the campground. Pricey but so worth it. The tour was 12 hours long! I would not drive in NYC!!

EcoBullet, you might try the Newburgh (NY) KOA for NYC. It's about 90 minutes outside NYC in some very pretty and historic countryside along the Hudson River. They sell a bus tour to the city from the CG. Very nice CG too - some of the pull-thru sites are spacious and very shaded (but no problem with slideouts or overhead clearance.) We really enjoyed it there. Pool and other things for kids to do in the CG as well.

Tatest, didn't you used to live in IL? I didn't remember you were from OK. :)

I like to visit big cities, have lived in a couple (Chicago, Beijing). My idea of visiting a city does not include a daily commute from a suburb, seeing the city only during commuter hours. I want to be in the middle of things from when I get up (which might be dawn) until I am ready to go to bed (which might be dawn).

That means driving in or flying in, getting a hotel in the middle of where I want to be in the evening, with mass transit or pedestrian access to where I want to be during the day, while transit is running. You don't drive around in a big city, RV or car, because there is usually no place to park where you want to go. If you have to drive in, you park the car for your stay, the get around the way the citizens do. The people who actually live in the city don't drive either, most of those private cars are folks from the suburbs coming in for the day.

It is the way I've handled big cities and small cities: London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, DC, Chicago, Rome, Kunming, Nashville, Detroit. Well OK, in Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Detroit I do drive, because mass transit doesn't work well there, but they are not really cities either, more like overgrown suburbs lacking a geographic focus.

When I was in Chicago again last month, stayed on North Michigan within walking distance of the Blues Festival and the night life of Navy Pier and the near north side. I have a trip scheduled for New York, about a week at a hotel just off of Times Square. I am going to fly in. I have to see New York because it is simply a shame that I've been to Lisbon and Rome three times each, London at least six times for extended stays, and have not yet visited the only equivalent city in the U.S.

I've done some of the bus tours, it is sort of a way to see "yes, looks like a city there" but not really experience it. It is also a way to get started, but even then a "hop on, hop off" is usually more useful than seen the city only through the window of a motorcoach. The bus tour may not be bad, if you really don't like cities, or are afraid of them, and want to say you've been there, seen the, but don't want to experience anything city.

For Philadelphia visits, we stay at the Timberlane Campground in Clarksboro, NJ, and take the PATCO train into Philly from Ashland. Independence Hall is an easy walk from the 8th & Market St station.