Long Island NY- San Diego CA

This summer, June 27th to be exact I will be moving from Long Island to downtown San Diego. I plan to do the trip in 2 weeks. This is my first road trip so I'm very excited! I'd like to stop and say hello to my friend in Kentucky, also I'd like to see a bit of Dallas TX. I must be in Las Vegas on the 4th of July until the 9th, so roughly a week after I leave. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! As of now all i have is whatever mapquest.com and my gps tells me, but we all know those routes aren't always the best. Thanks!

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

You're looking at a 2800 trip to Vegas, so you're looking at a good 5-6 days of driving just to make the trip. By the time you stop in Kentucky to visit your friend and spend a little time looking around Dallas, you aren't going to have a lot of extra time to work with.

The routes provided by a GPS or a computer map program will generally be a very good choice for picking the fastest/most direct route, but beyond that, its the ability to make your own choices about what what places that looking interesting to you. However, without having any idea about what those places might be for you, its hard to provide much in the way of specific ideas.

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

So, you've got 7 days to get to Las Vegas and presumably want to spend a day or so in each of Somewhere, KY and Dallas, TX. That schedule can be kept, but it means that the time spent at your intermediate destinations will be dependent on when you get there. You can't afford to be forcing your schedule to match what's convenient for either yourself or whoever/whatever you're going to be seeing there. For example, taking I-78 out of New York to I-81 near Harrisburg, I-70/I-68 across Maryland, I-79 south through West Virginia to I-64 into and through Kentucky will make the best use of your time and will have you in through Lexington area around noon on Sunday. So you can spend Sunday afternoon and Monday morning with your friend and get back on the rood to Dallas: I-64/I-55 or I-65/I-40 to Memphis, and I-40/I-30 through Little Rock to Dallas, arriving late Monday night. Spend a day in Dallas and be ready to leave Wednesday morning taking US-287 up to Amarillo and I-40/US-93 to Las Vegas, arriving Friday evening July 3rd. Las Vegas to San Diego can be as simple I-15 all the way. MapQuest and your GPS will probably give you the same routing, or near enough that it makes no difference, but the time estimates you'll get from MapWuest are ludicrous, just aim at the schedule laid out above. You will have time for, and I recommend, that you take a few half hour to hour breaks out of the car each day, so get out a good atlas and start looking at what's available along your route where you can refresh your body and mind.

AZBuck

Thanks guys very helpful! I think I'm going to leave a day early on saturday june 26th, just to have a bit of a cushion. I know there are crazy tolls here in New York, how's it look outside of NY? Also any points of intrest you'd recommend? I'm a baby in my own country, pretty much been in NY my whole life and i want to see a little bit of it haha...and are there any areas that are unsafe to stop in, I've hear rumors about the south and although I'm white the person I'm traveling with isen't.

Perhaps the two most interesting natural wonder stops near your route would be Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the Grand Canyon in Arizona. With a day added to your trip, you have time for minimal stops at both. But if possible, I highly recommend being at Mammoth Cave very early in the morning for the first tours before the lines back up.

For the most part, you should not have any problems on the major highways, at tourist attractions, or even modest sized towns. There are pockets of prejudice throughout America, but they tend to find expression mostly in smaller communities without much exposure to the larger world, and Yes, I recognize that even that is a prejudiced statement.

AZBuck

The route that Buck recommended is virtually toll-free once you get into NJ. There is a nominal toll (I think $0.75) on the I-78 bridge to PA. It accepts EZ-Pass.

If you use Mapquest, add 20% to predicted drive times to reflect reality. We recommend you limit each day's drive to no more than 600 miles, that will be about 12 hours including gas, food, and potty stops using Interstate highways.