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Hello! My husband and I will be travelling from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Huntington Beach, CA the first week of November for a conference. We want to make the most of our road trip since I have never been past Houston. We know we want to detour to see the Grande Canyon really quick and then to Vegas for a night. We are looking for any suggestions for must see's along our way. Thanks!
Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!
In the suggestions that follow, I'm assuming that you are going to be driving round-trip, to Huntington Beach and back, and that you have at least five days for both drives. That would be the minimum required to have a safe and relaxing drive while taking just a few hours to see a sight or two. If you can take a week each way, then you'll have time to add more time or more sites from those listed below.
The first recommendation would be to take two completely different routes westbound and then home. For your westbound leg. you should first head up to Jackson MS, then use I-20 to Dallas, US-287 to Amarillo, I-40 to Flagstaff AZ, US-89/AZ-64 to and through Grand Canyon National Park and back to I-40 at Williams, US-93 from Kingman to Las Vegas, and finally I-15 to the Los Angeles area. Visiting the Grand Canyon on this leg has the advantage that the canyon itself will be on 'your' side of the road as you drive through, making stopping at various pull-offs and parking lots that much easier. Other possible sites en route, depending on how much time you can devote to this leg are: Vicksburg National Military Park, the Sixth Floor Museum, Cadillac Ranch, Petroglyph National Monument, Petrified Forest National Park, Hoover Dam, and Mojave National Preserve. There are also several smaller national monuments and museums in the Flagstaff area if you can spend an additional day visiting the 'Grand Canyon'.
For your return drive, I-10 all the way makes it very easy. Venues worth considering on this route include: Joshua Tree National Park, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the Alamo, Space Center Houston, and the Creole Nature Trail.
Now clearly you won't be able to visit every site listed above, and there are many smaller places to stop that offer the chance to take welcome short breaks from driving, but at least now you have a fair idea of how much time you'll need at a minimum and how much more you'll need to add depending on how relaxed and explorative you want your RoadTrip to be.
AZBuck