Summer Road Trip

[eriksbarry]

I am looking to do a road trip that goes through the following locations over the course of a month to a month and a half this summer.

Madison WI (Home)
Saint Louis
Memphis
Austin TX
Albuquerque
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Seattle
Big Sky MT
Denver / Colorado Springs
Rapid City
Minneapolis
Madison WI

Looking for advice on :

1. Is this too much and too ambitious for a single traveler. Will it get old?
2. Recommendations along the way.

Any Other Thoughts are welcomed!

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

As a bunch of road trip enthusiasts, it's hard to imagine the road ever getting 'old', but of course everyone is different. It will not only depend on your state of mind but making sure that you are keeping your personal interests alive in your choices. At the moment you have a long list of City's and nothing else. If these are the places you want to go for something that appeals to you, that's fine. If at this point this is just a list then you need to see what other options are available to you along the way and then decide whether or not to cut back on the miles to have quality time at other places, perhaps National/State Parks and taking the time to enjoy smaller towns and Highways and Byways.

For example you are adding many miles going down to Austin, all the way up to Seattle and then dropping down to Denver on the way home where in my opinion you could trim miles and explore more natural beauty, in the Four Corners region for example, where there are a high concentration of some of the best National Parks, [RMNP, Mesa Verde, Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce canyon, Grand canyon] great driving roads and mountain towns with amazing and diverse scenery. Like I say, it's your interests that matter so I would suggest you continue to research [searching around RTA for ideas] with a good map to hand and keep working on the thousands of options available. As new questions crop up, just keep asking.

With your current plan I would say that by the time you add detours to your route you will have about 2 weeks of driving days, with a month that would be half your time leaving you some time from the car for adventure. The thing to remember is that if you want multiple day stops in any of the places, that soon eats into your 'free' time.

Enjoy the planning, it's part of the fun !!