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What's the best route to take?
We want to go see the White House, go to Lancaster, PA , Atlantic City and then NY will be our final destination.
It's gonna be an 8-9day vacation. If you have other places to suggest, i will appreciate it! :) (and also, where to dine best!)
Any suggestions on which one to go first? we can always leave one spot on the way back from NY to Orlando...
Thanks in advance!! :)
Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!
I note that, even though you are going to be covering around a thousand miles of ground, your 'To Do' places are at the northern end of that journey. That coupled with the fact that you'll need a minimum of four days of transit time (two northbound and two southbound) probably means that you should concentrate your stops in that area, around the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and just boogie up/down I-95 to get to your area of interest. With that as a general plan, you will have 4-5 days at a more relaxed pace, so let's lay out a basic plan.
Using Emporia VA start/end of a loop at the northern end of your trip, and describing the loop in a clockwise direction, you could do something like the following. Make your first stop in Washington and enjoy all the sights along the National Mall as well as the White House, then leave town using I-270 west to US-15 north up through Gettysburg to US-30 east through Lancaster. If Amish country is your goal at Lancaster, I would strongly recommend that you get off the main highways which are chock-a-block with "Authentic Amish Experiences" which are nothing of the sort and instead travel some of the back roads such as PA-741, PA-340, PA-896, etc. and just enjoy the countryside. Then head up through Reading to Allentown and I-78 into NYC unless Philadelphia is also in your plans.
After New York use the Garden State Parkway down to Atlantic City, then continue all the way to the southern tip of New Jersey and take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry across the mouth of the Delaware Bay to Lewes DE. Use DE-1 down to Ocean City MD, then US-50 to US-113/US-13 down the Delmarva Peninsula. Along the way enjoy Assateague Island National Seashore, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and finish up by crossing the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel into the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area. If history is an interest, take the time to visit the Historic Triangle - Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown in the Colonial National Historical Park. From here, US-58 will take you back to Emporia and the return home on I-95.
AZBuck
Hello humblebee,
Such splendid advice from AZBuck leaves me with only a couple suggestions:
1) the South Island of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT) is open for long-term parking and features a rest area with restrooms, a cafe, a gift shop, and a long concrete pier jutting out into the Bay. Either commercial or Navy shipping passes within a few hundred yards of the artificial island/pier on average once or twice an hour or thereabouts. It's pretty cool to see ships up to 1,000' long up close like that, so you may want to plan on spending an hour or so there as you cross. It will be in your interest, however, to plan to get to the south shore by, say, 3pm, as from around 3:30 pm to 7:00 pm is rush hour in Norfolk, and getting from the CBBT to Williamsburg requires crossing another bridge-tunnel, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT). The HRBT is a big bottleneck and rush hour backups can mean an hour or more of stop-and-roll to get through to the Hampton-Newport News-Williamsburg side.
2) When you're ready to leave the Williamsburg area, check out the free Jamestown-Scotland ferry (www.virginiadot.org/travel/ferry) crossing the James River from Jamestown to Scotland. From Scotland it's an easy connection to VA 40 and on that to I-95 just north of Emporia. The crossing only takes 15 minutes.
If you were to choose to get back to US 58 to reach Emporia, you'd have to go back to at least Hampton and would want to cross the James on yet another bridge-tunnel, this one being the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel which carries I-664 across and under the river to Bowers Hill, VA. There you'd connect to US 58 east of Suffolk. Once again, rush hour travel across the MMBT to and through Suffolk can be trying, so an earlier departure and a short ferry ride may be a rather more enjoyable experience.
Foy