Planning a RT from MN to CA

[raeve]

Hey everyone, I'm new here and I'm still in the "dreaming" phase of my Road Trip idea. I probably won't be able to do it until 2008, but nevertheless it would be great if you guys could give me advice - when to go, where to stay, how to save money, how to buy and sell an old car, how long it should take.... I'd preferably do it with 4 people, or if I can't find 4, then at least 3 or 2 people.

I have a route planned out, which you can see here.
It starts in Minneapolis, over Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, NY, DC, Tennessee, Florida, New Orleans, Texas, Arizona and then San Diego, LA, San Francisco. Of course google only gives you interstate, which we probably won't take all the time. And who knows where the roads will lead us once we're on them...

Edit: When to do it? Since MN is cold, I thought the best might be to start in Summer, but I guess the south is very hot in summer? May/June/July or August/September/October or something like that?

According to google it's 5 days and 16 hours - I made 6 days of that and converted it to an average of 9 hours of driving per day, which is 16 days. I added 2-3 days of stay in every bigger city, which is around 80 days, or 3 months. I also tried to calculate food and motels and gas and all such things, and ended up with something like 6550$ per person..... What do you think about that? How can 2-4 people save money on the road?

Thanks in advance :)

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Three months should give you time to spend touring the country. Just keep in mind, Google's travel time estimates tend to be on the low side.

Buying a car and Budgeting are very popular topics on the forum.

Here is one thread talking about what it takes to buy a car as a non-resident of the US.

The Art of the Cheap Road Trip is one of the articles in the Roadtrip Planning section that has ideas about saving money.

[raeve]

Thanks a lot for the links. I'm actually American, though I've never officially lived in the US and I don't have a social security number (not yet, anyway).

[Midwest Michael]

In this case, being a resident and being a citzen are really quite different.

For the sake of purchasing a car, being a resident is actually more important. That means you'd have an established address that you could use for the sake of licensing, registering, and insuring a car.

Of course, being a US Citizen could make some of that process easier. It should be much easier for you to get a drivers license, which should make the rest of the process easier.

However, I suspect you'll want to get that Social Security thing taken care of. Since there is no national ID, the Social Security system really become the next best thing and comes up remarkably often.