New! Possible Spring NY-Vegas trip.

Hello all! This forum is great, i've been thinking non-stop about a cross country trip with my wife lately. After reading several threads on here I'm not really sure we can pull it off. A little background, I live in upstate NY and have done a lot of traveling to the south (SC/NC/GA/FL) for work and pleasure purposes within the last few years. Now my wife and I want to give going out west a shot. The only catch is that I think my work will only allow me to take 2 weeks off at a time, so 16 days total to make this happen and be back home. Last fall for work we went to West Palm Beach FL and back home in 3 days, not saying it was fun, but we did it. We're not looking to do theme parks, or spend a lot of time in one place. The trip will be mostly to see the vast landscapes of this beautiful country and to have a great time together. The two of us aren't afraid of going for long rides, as a 3 hour trip to RI just for dinner isn't uncommon. I would mostly be staying in hotels, with the occasional family and friend stays here and there. I'm not looking to do any night time driving with the exception of the way home on the east coast as i have seen it way to much and too often. Any ideas if I can actually make this happen?? I would drive a northern route to get to Vegas, and take a Southern route home. I know its going to be expensive but cost figures would be greatly appreciated as well. I'm sure my new car will be broken in on time for this trip, so gas mileage should be over 28mpg. I really look forward to hearing from everyone! Thanks

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

It takes roughly a week to drive across country, so with 2 weeks its certainly possible. You've said you like long drives, but you do need to realise that you'll be looking at spending at least 10-12 of your 16 days spending long hours in the car. If that's something that you think you could find enjoyable, then by all means go for it.

Of course, another option would be to do fly and drive trip, were you could fly out west, and spend your 2 weeks really enjoying yourself, driving all over the mountain west and into California. With the bargains on flights these days, it could even be cheaper!

For budgeting, there are lots of articles and threads on the subject. The fuel cost calculator on the left side of your screen can help you gauge those costs. a cheap motel room will cost about 50 a night, but you'll spend a little more if you want to go with more mid-priced options. The rest is basically food and entertainment expenses, which you'll have to determine on your own.

The fly and drive option is very possible. I have thought about this a great deal and it seems like it would be a great idea. I still have to figure out which car rental company allows you to rent a car and return it to another state without a steep charge. I talked to a local enterprise rent-a-car agent and she told me that if I was to do a fly-and-drive that I would have to pay for them to go retrieve the car from where ever I left it and that could add hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Do you have any ideas on big name companies that do such a thing without steep penalties?

It would be considerably cheaper to plan a "loop" trip, where you would fly in and out of the same city - this would also probably be cheaper from an airfare standpoint. I'm not aware of any one way rentals that would not carry a dropoff charge.

2 weeks starting and ending in Las Vegas would let you see a large portion of the Southwest and Rockies.

I agree with everything said above, but we want to see the vast landscapes along our trip. I bought a new vehicle with this trip in mind and can't wait to use it as intended.

I would start working on your employer to allow you to take more than 2 weeks off if you want to head that far west and back with your car. Otherwise you are just going to be piling on miles and sightseeing through a windshield.

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Originally Posted by glc

I would start working on your employer to allow you to take more than 2 weeks off if you want to head that far west and back with your car. Otherwise you are just going to be piling on miles and sightseeing through a windshield.

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Sadly 2 weeks is going to be my max time off for a single trip. I've been discussing this with my wife and we are both ok with sightseeing through the windshield for portions of this trip. Now all i have to do really is nail down some routes that i want to take.

Well after some more consideration, it looks like we're going to make LA our destination instead of Vegas. I've also been reading into route 66 but it all seems a bit confusing, esp when trying to use my Garmin navigation to guide us along. Anyone have any info on how i could possibly download a map of RT66 onto my navigation?? thanks in advance.

You will find lots of useful info on '66 throughout the forums and roadtrip planning pages by using your search button, but your sat nav won't recognise a road that was decommissioned many years ago. The historic 66 site has lots of info where you can click on the gps link for more info about downloading the files to your Garmin.

Much of route 66 doesn't actually exist anymore, and even the original highway had several different routings in some areas over the course of its history. That's why it not as simple as putting the road into a GPS.

I will say the stretches of highway the do exist are going to be much slower going than an interstate, and when you add in your even longer distance of heading all the way to LA, you are going to have a real challenge trying to fit those kinds of detours into your already overstretched timeframe.

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Originally Posted by Southwest Dave

You will find lots of useful info on '66 throughout the forums and roadtrip planning pages by using your search button, but your sat nav won't recognise a road that was decommissioned many years ago. The historic 66 site has lots of info where you can click on the gps link for more info about downloading the files to your Garmin.

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Thank you for the info. I've been on almost every route 66 website in the past few weeks and as Midwest Michael stated I do not think that I will have enough time in this short 2 weeks to take that road. I've read that Garmin actually has a GPS with a map of route 66 already programmed into it. As great as it sounds the rest of the GPS unit doesn't have that many options and seems to be more for motorcyclists rather that autos. If I didn't already own a decently optioned GPS I would have looked into that one a little bit more. Looks like route 66 is going to have to take a backseat for this trip. Maybe I'll be fortunate enough to tackle this in a few years.

There is one considerable stretch of old 66 that is still in commission (as AZ State 66) between Seligman and Kingman AZ that you could take without delaying you very much. Without any significant stops enroute, this will add less than an hour over staying on I-40.

I would like to add my 2 cents but first of all to other readers even though I never really post here as I had never done a cross country trip before August - all the contributions and ideas here on roadtrip america were a huge help in planning and implementation.
With that said - gage - I think you can do this. My daughters (ages 17 and 21) and I (husband opted out on this one) drove from Los Angeles to New York. Left on a Thursday and arrived in NY the following Thursday. That included a full day (2 nights) in St. Louis just to have some non drive days. We sort of "shadowed" route 66 for parts - stopped at of the places that interested us. Drove no more than 9 hours in a day. We veered to Santa Fe and spent a morning checking out the annual Indian Market - we also veered off to Cleveland to spend a morning at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. We never ate fast food - sit down dinner or lunches only. The girls loved it - but in a time crunch we could of easily done it one day quicker.

With that said I think round trip in 14 days is totally possible - its clear that's what you want to do - I say go for it. If you want more details on our route since we started in LA - your destination I can elaborate more.

Hi emc, Welcome to the RTA forums !

I am pleased the forums helped with the planning of your trip, thanks for popping by to share your experience and offer help to others.

Dave.

EMC,

Sounds like you guys had a great trip! Thanks for your insight and i would definitely love to hear which routes you drove. Did you end up driving home??

Our stops on our route from LA were:
Flagstaff
Santa Fe NM
Oklahoma City
St. Louis (2 nights)
Cleveland
State College, PA
Long Island NY

Trip was for fun and to get my daughters vehicle to NY so she could use it for her last year in college there. So me and my other daughter flew the return trip. In between those cities obviously we stopped along the way - maybe just for a quick stretch of the legs and take some pictures or to have a meal. Some things we stopped specifically for were Seligman, AZ Winslow AZ Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, detour off the highway to hit a bit of Kansas' route 66, dinner with relatives in Springfield MO, too many things to mention in our full day in St. Louis, long lunch with old friends in downtown Indianapolis, Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Tour around Penn State just for the heck of it. So you can see we weren't going at a break neck speed. It was really a great time. I hope to do another route in the near future.

To everyone who has shared ideas and concerns with me i greatly appreciate it. Due to this poor economy and being in the automotive field (GM Dealership) I have lost a large portion of my vacation time amongst other things. Hopefully one day in the future this trip can happen, but for now its just another pipe dream... Again thanks to all who have shared their views with me.