First Road Trip(Flying from NJ to SF, road from SF back to NJ)

Hello Folks.

Honestly i have no idea what I am doing as this is our first family trip like that.

It's 5 of us. 2 Adults and 3 kids(17,16, 12)
We have booked a flight to San Francisco from Newark, NJ for July 30th. Arriving July 30th and we have until August 13 to be back home.
We have booked a minivan car rental till August 13 in San Rafael and the hotel in San Rafael for July 30th. After all this we have no clue where to go and what to see and how book the hotels. We have an idea that we wanted to see San Francisco, some of LA area, like Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, after that some Utah, Colorado, from there to Chicago and then from there drive back home to NJ. Is it feasible? And what's reasonably possible to see in 14 days for this road trip? Or it's not enough time?
I would appreciate any suggestions. We have never been to California before, the farthest we drove from NJ was New Orleans.
Thank you in advance.

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

As always, look at the bottom line first. You'll need to cover around 3,500 miles (depending on side trips to attractions) in roughly 12 days (NOT 14) to do it (depending on how long you spend in San Francisco. That means you have to average right around 290 miles per day. That is going to be a grind. No particular day will be too much if you plan it right, but a string of 12 such days back-to-back-to-back-...to-back is going to take its toll on your family, especially the kids even though they're teenagers. Indeed, you should plan to take a day off somewhere in the middle of this trip so everyone can just relax around a pool or at a lake - just to recharge. But then that reduces your days a available for covering ground to 11 meaning that you'd have to average about 320 miles per day. Again, doable but a grind.

With a knowledge of how many miles you have to cover and how little time you really have, I would urge you to keep your expectation of what you can accomplish in the way of sight-seeing to a minimum. You can't, for example, plan on sending a day at the Grand Canyon and a day at Arches, and a day in Chicago. You simply don't have time. So what I'd ask you to do first is to sit down with everyone involved and prioritize the half dozen or so things you really want to see, knowing that you might only be able to spend three or four hours at each of them. Then we can set to work on finding the best scenic routes and a few excellent places to take shorter stops along those routes. While your plan is 'reasonable', you have to approach it with a realistic knowledge of the limitations involved in covering that many miles in that little time.

AZBuck

Thank you.
Would it make much more sense to fly back from San Francisco instead of driving to NJ but still get to see Colorado and Utah?

I have to ask, is there a reason you're driving back to NJ?

Based on what you've said you want to see - most of which is is California and the west, which makes perfect since being that you've never been to the west - I think you'd be far better off just spending 2 weeks doing a loop around California and the other nearby states. That would give you time to actually see and explore San Francisco, LA, the Grand Canyon, and parts of Utah. Rather than, as Buck pointed out, really having to pick and choose just a couple of things out west, before having to focus on cover miles to get back home.

Doing a loop trip also would likely significantly reduce your car rental costs - renting round trip is usually far cheaper than one way, especially with a specialty vehicle like a minivan - that cost savings might even make up for the extra airfare costs.

Honestly, now that I think about it, we don't really have any strong reason to drive back to NJ.
We wanted to see Chicago a bit, but that can be done in a different trip. We definitely wanted to drive to Colorado Springs as we have friends there to see, but other than that we are just interested in California mostly, Grand Canyon and some of Las Vegas.

A loop RoadTrip that included all your stated stops would still need you to drive at least 2,900 miles. Now you could drive that comfortably in six days devoted mainly, but not exclusively, to driving. That in turn means that you could (accounting for a travel day on either end) spend six days worth of time in several different spots.

The other good thing is that car reservations are easy to change, and you don't have to cancel your already-bought west-bound plane tickets, just buy a set of east-bound ones. These days, there really isn't much, if any, penalty for buying two separate one-way tickets rather than a round-trip.

AZBuck

It doesn't really have to be a loop if we don't drive back to NJ, ultimately we could fly back to NJ from Denver.

If CO Springs is a must, then flying home from Denver would probably be your best. While you could do that as a loop from SF, it would be tough to get in all the things you mentioned in under 2 weeks.

Really the only downside is cost, as you're now going to look at both one way drop fees and return airfare.

I think you are going to have to narrow things down according to your priorities for the trip. Certainly a loop trip in and out of the same city would be the most effective and you could concentrate your energy around that area and enjoy time to 'smell the roses'. If you want to visit the areas of LA (and San Diego) you mention and the Grand canyon and Southern Utah parks you really aren't going to have any time to 'see' friends in Colorado Springs other than a 'Hello, goodbye' moment, even if you did end up there. For this trip I would head from SF > LA>SD>Grand canyon>Bryce canyon>Zion>LV>Yosemite (via a drive through Death valley) and back to San Fran. Honestly speaking, even this would be quite a hectic trip and I would consider heading as far as Santa Barbara down the coast and then head inland towards Grand canyon and avoid LA and San Diego altogether, purely based on time.

If your car rental and hotel in SF can be cancelled and you really want to visit your friends this trip, you could fly into Denver and drive through Colorado into Southern Utah and the Grand canyon and loop back to Colorado Springs, again with so much on offer you will be limited for time and have to decide between attractions. As a family trip you really want to be able to get out the car and enjoy the places you visit rather than watching them flash by through the windscreen as you rush from place to place.

There is so much to see and do! When I first started road trps they were fly and drive. The plans started big, but as I played out time and distance, and time for actually doing things, it worked out to be regional loop trips.

That being said, a loop beginning in Denver or Salt Lake City would meet many of tour objectives. Or a Calif trip. The two area are virtually exclusive, too much.

I think it's probably worth pausing to understand just how far apart things are in the American West, as it can be a bit hard to grasp when you've never been in the west.

This is probably the best bit of perspective I can give:
The distance from San Francisco to Colorado Springs is about 1325 miles.
The distance from Newark to Kansas City is only 1175 miles.

So while its easy to think about looping in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Colorado, what you're talking about isn't all that different than including Kansas City or New Orleans in with a trip to New York and Boston.

Which isn't to say that couldn't be done within 2 weeks, but it's a lot of miles - and time to cover those miles - that you need to take into account.

Beside logistical time and distance planning & programming, what do the kids want to do? Just California alone is a full enchilada, from north coast (north of San Francisco), central coastal, and the greater metro area of LA to San Diego (LA basically begins around Ventura these days; summertime I-5 can become a crawl zone, coastal roads are slower but more interesting). To the east are Yosemite, Sequoia, and a lot more).

Back to the kids: beaches, amusements, sports, hiking, nature,,,).

Thank you very much, I have talked to the family and we decided not to go to Utah and/or Colorado and limit this trip strictly to California, LV and Grand Canyon. I will post a plan what we would want to cover in those areas for 12 days we are there.
Thank you again all.

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A loop trip out of SFO, LAX, or LAS would probably be the best way to do that. Compare round trip airfares and car rental costs.

Also how would this trip different if we rent RV instead of car + hotels? And how is it difficult to operate/maintain RV? Also is it even possible to book one in a month time advance? Thank you.

Its most likely still an option to book one, you could check out the Cruise America site where you can get an instant on-line quote and availability without having to call anyone. Obviously an RV is slower and bigger to manoeuvre and there may be a problem finding available sites in any of the National parks at short notice. You could check that out at nps.gov. If you plan on spending time around LA then campgrounds are scarce and usually expensive. By the time you add on fuel costs, mileage charges and campground fees etc an RV will likely cost more than a car and family room in a hotel but they can be fun purely for the 'Lifestyle'. It's our preferred mode of transport, but it's certainly not for everyone.

Thank you. I was calculating the fuel cost, also RV thing being first time for us and this being a first California trip, it's probably car + hotels, I just have a hard time planning where exactly to book the hotels and if we will get on time to the booked hotels, it seem that if choose the hotels route, one has to precisely calculate the timings and places.

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Thank you. The problem i see with car + hotels it seem so hard to calculate hotels bookings in advance of exact places and precise timings.

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What I would do if this were me:

Calculate the cost of the rental of the RV *first*. Don't forget to include such things as the linen and kitchen packages, which don't necessarily come with the rig rental. Get a cost-per-mile over and above the rental rate, that they usually give you. They may also give you an approximate mile per gallon that the rig would possibly get. Figure on $20-50 per night in the rig, which will sleep all 5 of you.

Then get some basic rates for motel rooms. Are you all planning to cram into one room every night, or will you be getting suite hotels (if available) or two rooms? Figure on restaurant costs. I usually just type in approximate dates for a motel room and go from there, seeing the range of a given area, and I do this either from this website or TripAdvisor.

Usually, the car+hotel+restaurants still make sense financially. Maybe not, though, if you're needing two hotel rooms every night. Also, as Dave pointed out, and RV is pretty much a lifestyle choice. With an RV, you choose to carry your bedroom along the road with you, make the bed/s every morning, dump the tanks (not a pretty job) when necessary. With a motel, somebody else makes the bed, you do wonder who slept in that bed the night before and if it is clean, and you carry suitcases in, instead of dumping tanks.

Everything's a trade off.

Donna

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Originally Posted by dendazen

Thank you. The problem i see with car + hotels it seem so hard to calculate hotels bookings in advance of exact places and precise timings.

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It's not a lot different to an RV and having to be at a particular campground, you can't just park an RV and go to sleep when you decide to stop for the night. And it's not that bad once you start breaking your trip down into daily segments of what you want to achieve. From the first draft it's likely to change many times as you find new things along the way and and juggle things around. Instead of thinking of the trip as a whole, start breaking it down into parts and then join it back up again. If you lay out a basic itinerary of what you hope to achieve and post it up we can make suggestions, offer advice and answer any questions you may have about particular areas of the trip you are not sure.