From Michigan to Colorado to California and back

[Sherman]

Hello everyone, I'm planning on going on a road trip (that's a given) with my friends this summer. We are college students and we decided not to take summer classes so we are going to go on a road trip instead. I would really like to drive to California because the West is a great part of the country. The problem is, I don't have any idea on where to start for planning or what to do or anything. I know that it's going to cost a good amount of money. Gas will cost each of us around $400. There are three people going so we'll be able to split the cost pretty well I would think. The problem is, I just have no idea where to start. We are camping a majority of the time, but as far as attractions go, all I can think to do is just look at scenery, and that could probably get old. Anyone have any advice?

Edit: We have two weeks to do this. In theory it takes roughly a day and a half to get to California, so I was thinking if we just drove through the night with one person sleeping, one person driving and the other keeping company that we could make it through pretty well. We are going to stop in Colorado for a few days then do the same thing until we get to California and then go straight back to Michigan. Everyone I've talked to said that all we will see is road, but I tend to not listen to people very well until there's a larger majority of people telling me the same thing.

[Mass Tim]

Welcome to the RoadTrip America Forum!

In theory it takes roughly a day and a half to get to California

Okay, I'll bite - I'm figuring this to be approximately 2350 miles. Since you will be averaging roughly 57mph factoring in stops for food, leg stretching, and fuel, that turns out the be 41 hours. Not a day and a half. That makes the round-trip almost 5000 miles, before figuring in side trips. That averages to almost 360 miles/ day, which is certainly doable, but you will find that you may indeed be seeing nothing but road. I would recommend going out as far as Colorado or Utah and enjoying the fine roads and country out there.

Since you don't know what kind of trip to expect, we recommend our Compatibility Quiz. You and your friends should take this quiz so you are all in agreement about what type of trip you will be taking.

You don't just have to look at the scenery. There are plenty of places where you can get involved, such as taking hikes in a National Park, or a day swimming at the beach, etc. What are your interests? What are your friends' interests?

[Sherman]

Well, what we want out of the trip is to enjoy scenery but we also want to party a bit. We were planning on heading to California because I figured that's where the beach is, there might be something going on there. We wanted to stop by Colorado to enjoy the scenery and to go hiking and then party in Colorado. I am obviously far too optimistic and I haven't had any experience like this before. I don't know of any party locations in the West besides California, really. Can anyone enlighten me?