Cross-country road trips

[tozmervo]

So I've been thinking about doing a road trip this summer, and if I'm going to do a road trip, why not make it one hell of a road trip? I'm thinking Atlantic waters to Pacific waters. The problem is that there are about a gazillion routes to take, and I don't even know how to start narrowing them down. From Interstates to Auto Trails. Savannah to San Diego? Wilmington to LA? DC to San Francisco? Boston to Seattle? Lubec to Imperial Beach?

Does anybody have any experience? Suggestions? Uh... warnings? Let's just assume a week to two weeks of travel.

[Neo]

I had a couple of friends do this a couple of years ago. They actually purchased a small camper to pull behind their truck and stayed at camp sites. This was a super cheap way to go so it may be something to consider. I'm not much for camping, particularly for two weeks straight, but if you're into that sort of thing it may be an option as it could definitely save quite a bit of $$$.

[sean]

i lived out of my truck one summer and made a journey to many western states. i-70 will run you from missouri to utah with lots of cool stuff to visit along the way. one thing i really like about i-70 is the approach to the front range of the rockies; you will drive across the pan flat plains of kansas and eastern colorado until the rockies come in to view... its abrupt and very dramatic.

is your avatar tom servo!? very cool!

[tozmervo]

Yes it is! Unfortunately I can't make it to the RiffTrax Christmas showing to see the real Servo, but mst3k recently showed up on Hulu to satiate the need.

Of all the Interstate routes, I-70 is one that I was definitely leaning toward. It seems like it has the potential for the most variety, and it goes through several cities I'd like to visit. Once it ends in Utah, I'd switch to I-15 and head down to LA.

[Gard]

When I was younger, my family took a Mississippi River trip so to say. We headed to New Orleans and from there, we drove north, more or less following the Mississippi River all the way north, then coming down the other side of the river. It was a pretty neat trip and certainly saw many different faces of America, from very rural, to very urban!

[tozmervo]

I've found my preference drifting further north. Following the route of The Oregon Trail has a lot of promise (sans dysentery). Start out in Independence, Missouri and head northwest through Kansas and Nebraska (passing Chimney Rock). I would break off the trail to cut up into South Dakota, hitting up Rushmore and the Badlands, then across Wyoming to Yellowstone & Grand Teton. The trail would get picked back up in southern Idaho, seeing Snake Canyon, Craters of the Moon and Boise. From there I'd head toward the Colombia River Gorge in Oregon and follow it alongside Mt Hood to Portland. I could either end the trip in Portland or head north a ways to Seattle.

Alternatively I could go even further north and drive across from Minneapolis, hit up Badlands/Yellowstone/Tetons, go North to Glacier NP, swing into the Canadian Rockies and west to Vancouver/Seattle.

Generally, the southern routes (70 and below) seem to have too much "dead space." I would rather fly into Vegas or Albuquerque and drive around the Southwest to see what I want to see without dealing with TX/OK/AR. That's the thought right now, anyway.

[tozmervo]

Well, neither west trip won. We decided those trips really demanded much more time than we could give them (unless I get laid off...)

What we can do, though, is a New England trip. We've got a route that goes from DC to Philly to NY, through Conneticut to Providence, up to Boston, then up to Acadia National Park in Maine by way of New Hampshire. From there we'll go north to Montreal, back down to Burlington, across the Adirondacks to Niagara, then back south toward DC.

It's a route that let's us hit every NE state and then some, and we can do it in a reasonable amount of time-off. Right now I'm speculating 10-11 days.