I need some advice for someone who has never done a road trip before

[chacal]

Hello all

I am looking into organising a road trip January 2008 to Las Vegas. It's in very early stages at the moment but am looking for some advice.

So far I have printed out some maps of the states and am looking at maybe Tampa to Las Vegas. I have read it is about 2,500 miles. How many days/nights travelling would you pencil in for such a trp?

I think as we would be so close we would want to see the Grand Canyon and am open for ideas for a route to take to take in some of the tourist attractions.

I have looked at cruiseamerica.com for RV rental prices and it seems to be the best one I have found. They have branches in both Tampa and LV but I am not sure yet if a one way trip between the 2 can be arranged - I told you this is early stages!!

I realise this is a very open ended question and am still looking into many details but just wanted to get the ball rolling ;-)

[uclid]

Welcome Chacal,
You found the right place to do research on your road trip. Explore the forum and do lots of reading there is plenty of great info in here.

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Generally speaking, 500 miles a day is a nice round number for planning. That distance requires a full 9 hours on the road, but still leaves enough time to do a little sightseeing. You can certainly do less, but if you start pushing much farther -say beyond 600 miles a day- you start to run into some serious fatigue issues, and the extra miles can become counter-productive because of the time you need to recover.

So using that guideline, you'll need about 5 days to cover the distatance, plus an extra day if you want to really explore the canyon.

There is lots of other advice, including about specific routes, RV rentals, and general planning advice both on the forum and in the Roadtrip Planning section of RTA

[chacal]

Thanks for the replies.

I will carry on looking around the site and be back if I have questions :-)

[Mark Sedenquist]

I have looked at cruiseamerica.com for RV rental prices and it seems to be the best one I have found. They have branches in both Tampa and LV but I am not sure yet if a one way trip between the 2 can be arranged -

One-way rentals are pretty common. Here are a couple of articles that you ought to look at.
An overview of renting a RV
A check list to take with you when you pick up the rental
An overview about RV campgrounds
Considerations about visiting National Parks & Monuments
Here is an excellent overview about boondocking in a RV.

Mark

[pypher]

Me and three friends drove to California from Oklahoma and on the way back 2 of them wanted to watch the sun come up over the Grand Canyon and 2 of us didn't.... (I didn't...lol) Anyway, we ended up doing it and woke up at the "grand" crack of dawn (in March...freezing) and drove there all sleepy in the dark. It was amazing. If you have the chance to sleep over in Flagstaff AZ on your way there or back.....and get up extra extra early to drive to the Canyon and watch the sun come over it you will never forget it. Good Luck!