Spare month - any advice?

[Andrew873]

Hi folks,

My girlfriend and I are heading into the States in September, we're driving from Calgary to Vancouver and down the West Coast before heading to Vegas and Monument Valley. After that we've basically got the majority of October and a bit of November to work our way back up to Calgary - does anyone have any advice on the best route to take back north?

Is there anything, place, road or site we should definitely take the time to see or stay in?

Any advice at all would be great - cheers,
Andrew

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

With a month, you could pretty much wander all over the inter mountain west, but as a backbone, you could also do a lot worse than US-89. Besides the sights on that routs, places easily accessible by 'short' side trips include Zion, Bryce Canyon and/or Arches National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Glacier National Park, and a host of smaller venues.

AZBuck

[Andrew873]

Hi Folks,

Planning to travel from Port Angeles to San Francisco in early September. Unfortunately our travel plans haven't left us a ton of time to spend on the journey - we're leaving Port Angeles on September 8 and hope to be in San Francisco on September 11. I've found some excellent info here already but wondered if anyone could give me a some trip-specific advice.

I thought our stopping points could be around Portland, Medford and Sacramento - any advice on better options?

Also, we would like to see and do some things on the trip - are there any 'must sees' and places that we can spend some time without increasing our travel time by too much?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Mark Sedenquist]

I thought our stopping points could be around Portland, Medford and Sacramento - any advice on better options?

Sacramento wouldn't be on my short-list of places to stop if San Francisco was the destination. Since it looks like you are planning on traveling on I-5, I would cut westward at Williams, California on CA-20 and either stay overnight at Clearlake or Calistoga -- much more scenic.

Here are some more threads full of places to consider, (you can't do them all, but you can do some of them....)

Crater Lake and Mt St. Helens
Some of this thread applies (in reverse direction)
Some more ideas

Mark