14 Day road trip from Orlando

Hi everyone,

My partner & I are from Australia & will be in the U.S for 11 weeks (Jan to March 2019).

We hope to do 2 road trips during this time, each for 14 days. I’m after advice for the first road trip to begin with.

We have 2 weeks in New York followed by 2 weeks in Florida, this takes us up to 29 Jan. We then have plans in Las Vegas from 12 Feb. We have a 14 day period between Orlando & Las Vegas, we are looking at hiring a car & doing either of the following:


-A return road trip starting & ending in Orlando, covering places such as Memphis, Nashville, San Antonio, New Orleans. We will then fly to Las Vegas from Orlando on 12 Feb. This rough itinerary has us covering about 3000 miles in 14 days.

-A road trip from Orlando to Las Vegas. This rough itinerary has us covering about 3200 miles in 14 days.

Some things to note:

-The one way car hire fee is similar to 2 x airfares from Orlando to Las Vegas so cost isn’t really a consideration for us in deciding between these 2 options.

-We enjoy hiking, national parks, experiencing the small towns we drive through (avoiding major highways if possible)

-We’re from Australia, so the tacky diners, small towns, tourist spots like Nashville etc are of interest to us

-We know this may seem like a lot of driving for 14 days but this is quite normal for Aussies, when road tripping in our country we’d usually drive about 5 hours / 300-400 miles per day. For us the drive is part of the journey.

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Well, if there's little or no difference in the cost of getting from Orlando to Las Vegas by car vs. getting there by plane, why strap yourself into the aluminum sausage? Why not continue to use the car you've gotten used to? Why not see a bit of what's in between (roughly) the Mississippi and Colorado Rivers? And why double back to Orlando, a place you'll have already seen? So for me, and admittedly this is a RoadTrip website, the answer is obvious: RoadTrip!

Very generally, I'd suggest a big figure "S" from Orlando, first heading up along the Atlantic coast (Kennedy Space Center, Cumberland Island National Seashore), into the mid-South (Savannah River, Great Smoky Mountains), then into Tennessee (Nashville and Memphis music cultures), back down through Texas (Houston and more space stuff, San Antonio and historic Spanish missions), west along the border (Tex-Mex culture and cuisine, cacti), and finally up through some stunning landscapes (Oak Creek and Grand Canyons) before heading into Vegas (Grand Staircase Escalante). That's very roughly 3,500 miles worth of driving, but over two weeks that's only about 250 miles/day leaving plenty of time for visiting sites along the way.

So, before we can offer more specific intriguing places you might want to visit, you'll have to make that first decision, whether to drive or fly to Las Vegas. I would (and I just did) suggest driving. You will have to give up a bit of the Southeast, but what you gain in the Southwest and in between more than makes up for it. Let us know what YOU decide and we can offer more help on that basis.

AZBuck