Narrowing things down as well as beginning

[Aleshea1987]

Hey y'all I'm Aleshea,

I just joined the forum and so far, not only am I throughly impressed but have been inspired. My best friend and I are looking to take our first road trip sometime next summer. I mentioned on an earlier post that I have been on a few road trips when I was in Girl Scouts(think high school girl having fun without doing all the hard work to make it happen) but she has not. I find the biggest problem we are having is we want to see it ALL. While that is all fine and dandy, I know that is not reasonable nor is it feasible for two 23-24 year olds who have never done this before. Are schedule is pretty flexible since she is a teacher (has summer off) and I work flexible jobs.
Sorries, I digress a lot when I get excited about something. Anyway's, we are from TX and I was just wonder if y'all were planning your dream road trip what places/states would be on the list. We are just looking for ideas since we love it all and are not really picky for our first trip. I know they say start with your interest and work from their but we really do love EVERYTHING so it's just so hard. I think it's the whole lure of traveling around the us with a good buddy seeing cultures and places different from where we are from.

Yeah, so any ideas in must see places on a first trip would be helpful. Thank y'all.

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Really the first thing you need to understand from day one is that with 3 months, you simply will not be able to see it all. You'd need something closer to 30 years! It is a nice amount of time, however, and you should be able to see hundreds of new and amazing things.

The most important thing to remember is that this is your dream trip, and no one elses. On a trip of this size and scale, asking people to list off a handful of the millions of things you could see is really an impossible question and its one that really would be of no practical use to you.

What will be far more helpful is that you sit down with your companion, get out a great big map, and just start daydreaming and looking for places that stand out to you. Start putting dots on your map, as places that you'd like to visit as priorities. Once you've got some sort of outline and structure for places that you know you want to do, then the details of your trip can start coming together, and then the suggestions of others will be far more useful.

[Aleshea1987]

I shall have to do the above mentioned. And when I said see it all I meant visit the entire continental United States but I don't see that being realistic, nor do I see spending three full months on the road with this being our first trip (with money and all other factors being taken into consideration)
i guess it's just so hard when you want to see it all at once...

[Aleshea1987]

Also to elaborate on previous question slash statement. When starting to plan out this trip i know a whole summer would be my dream but that is a bit much. More than likely the trip would be 21 day to a month. My other question is what is a good number of states to visit. I know it depends on how much you are willing to drive, spend, what you want to see and all that but I'm asking realistically.(For example you wouldn't squeeze to states in a wee) For people who have been on a few trips, "What is a good number of states for say a 21 day trip vs a whole month, two months are even three months? Like, I don't want to feel like we squeezed to much to much in a short time period but also don't want to scrimp, if ya know what I mean. Just trying to find ways to narrow things down.

[Midwest Michael]

That too is really an impossible and not particularly useful question, because it depends upon both the pace that you want to travel at, and where you're traveling.

For example, if you were traveling in the Northeast, you could visit nearly a dozen states in a day, while it could take you more than 2 full days to go across a state like Texas or California, and that's if you're just driving. You could easily spend 3 weeks just exploring a single state, especially if you looked at an area like Utah or Colorado where there are dozens of national park possibilities.

Again, I'd really focus on the what and where to start right now. Once you get an idea of where you want to go, then you can start plotting out a plan and see what will fit into your available timeframe. That's really going to be much more useful than trying to guess a plan based on something as arbitrary as state lines.

[Utahtea]

It might help to know what you are interested in.

What I like and what you would like might be totally different but I'll go ahead and give you an idea of what I'd do with a month coming from Texas.

Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, Yellowstone & Grand Tetons National Parks in WY, then on to Utah. Moab, Utah to explore Arches and Canyonlands National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Hwy 12 to Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, Monument Valley Tribal Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico, and if I still had time, then Bandelier National Monument, Santa Fe, NM, Albuquerque, NM, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and return home.

As you can see, I love the out doors and National Parks!

Utahtea