All america roadtrip

Hi. I am trying to plan a year long road trip. I am saving money right now. But it will take a few years for that. I want to start planing it now. I would like to spend one week in each state. any ideas or sugestions would be great

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

A trip like this is going to cost a ton of money. You really will need to save up enough money to live on for an entire year, which certainly isn't going to be cheap. I'd think $20k would have to be your starting point, and that's for a very very bare bones trip.

As far as the rest of the planning, you're at the fun part: the daydreaming stage. Really you just need to keep thinking of and looking for places that are of interest to you that you might want to visit. Even with a year, you'll never be able to get to everything, but the more you know, the more options you'll have once you are on the road.

Hey thanks $20k is what I had in mind..... in my dream world I would do the trip in a VW camper bus. Are there any books or web sites I should search. Like you said there is just so much it is overwelming at this point but if I can make it happen it will be the event of a lifetime!!

If you don't have a vehicle, you'll definitely have to add that initial purchase, licensing, and registration, as well as insurance fees, to the overall cost.

Roadtrip America can provide you with information on anywhere you want to go in the country. Once you have a better idea of what you want your route to look like, search our forums and resources and that will help you refine your trip. Right now you're at a very high level with a bare-bones description of what it is you want to do: "Visit each state for a week". As you learn more about each state, you may find that there are some you want to spend more time in, and perhaps some that you'll want to spend less time.

Add to this seasonal factors - do you want to be in North Dakota in January? Or would you prefer to be in Florida? - and you'll be able to further refine this trip.

Some important questions at this time are - have you been on any extended road trips before? What's the longest you've stayed on the road for at a stretch?

Add to that the reality that you're planning to save for a few years, and the fact that life often can and does change over the course of years, and I'd wager that the trip that you ultimately end up taking will be quite a bit different than what you are thinking of now.

With a few years to wait it is a great motivation to "knuckle down", work hard and save up but it is also plenty of time to research and really discover what you want from this trip on all levels.

Although while you are working towards that dream I would certainly "invest" some of that hard earned savings into exploratory trips on a much smaller scale in the meantime, they will ultimately teach you more about life on the road than any book or forum can ever do, making it money well spent and your dream trip a lot easier to handle.

Good luck