HI everyone,
This is my first post on your website and I’m really happy I found it. I have learned a lot form the answers and input you give to other travelers and thought I’d benefit a lot from your ideas.
I have been planning a cross country trip since about September of last year and I have come up with what I think is a pretty feasible plan. I am 19 years old and this will be my second >4000 mile trip. My girlfriend and I will be taking my car, Volvo s40 (it’s in good shape). I’m planning on starting the trip in Boston where I live and heading south through VA into TN. Then heading west through OK and into NM. Then I plan on going to AZ, UT, CO and visit a lot of the parks in the area. Then west onto CA. From there we’ll go north up to WA and from there East to WY and then Home to Boston. The plan is for this trip to take about 37 days. We will be leaving on May 22nd and we have to be home by no later than June 28th. I’ve figured out our budget for the trip and its basically-
Gas $ = $2,173 = 12,500 miles. My car gets about 23mpg and I’m estimating Gas to cost $4.00/gal so I’m estimating .17 cents a mile.
Food$ = $1,630 = about $ 45 a day for the both of us. – We plan on buying and cooking all of our food during the whole trip and maybe going out to eat two or three times a week to cheap restaurants.
Lodging = $ 1,097 = Giving us about an average of $30 a night. Since we plan on camping most of the nights (29 nights) and I have found a lot of camping sites for less than $20 a night I think that that is a good average number. The rest of the nigh we plan on getting cheap motels/hotels in the major cities that we are stopping in.
Misc. = $ 1,078 = this will give us about $ 20 a day each to spend on just random things.
So the grand total that we’re planning on having is $ 5,978 which is about $ 2,989 per person.
I think that as long as gas stays where it is now (2.10) then we will save a lot of money on gas and that money can go toward all the extras that we might want.
This is our rough itinerary with room for adding 2 nights somewhere.
DAY DATE NIGHT STOP
1 22-May Nashville, TN
2 23-May Oklahoma City, OK
3 24-May Alamogordo, NM
5 26-May Meteor Crater Rd, AZ
6 27-May Supai, AZ(the town)
7 28-May Supai, AZ(the town)
8 29-May South Rim, AZ
9 30-May North Rim, AZ
10 31-May Mexican Hat, UT - stay there for 2 nights
11 2-Jun Natural Bridges Nat. Mon., UT
12 3-Jun Mesa Verde Nat. Park, CO
13 4-Jun Estes Park, CO
14 5-Jun Eagle, CO
15 6-Jun Arches National Park, UT - stay there for 2 nights
17 8-Jun Hanksville, UT
18 9-Jun Fruita-Capital Reef N. P. UT
19 10-Jun Bryce-Bryce Canyon N.P. UT
20 11-Jun Zion National Park, UT
21 12-Jun Las Vegas, NV
22 13-Jun Yosemite National Park, CA - stay there for 2 nights
24 15-Jun Golden Gate Bridge VP, CA
25 16-Jun Myers Flat, CA
26 17-Jun Crater Lake National Park, OR
27 18-Jun Mount St Helens, WA
28 19-Jun Seattle, WA
29 20-Jun Yellowstone National Park. WY - stay there for 2 nights
31 22-Jun Grand Teton National Park. WY
32 23-Jun Devils Tower, WY
33 24-Jun Pipestone Nat. Monument, MN
34 25-Jun Toledo, OH
35 26-Jun HOME
That’s our rough itinerary with room for adding 2 nights somewhere.
I would love to have as much input as possible into every aspect of this trip. It would be very helpful because even though I’ve driven long distances before I have never been on the road for this amount of time.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this, sorry it’s so long.
Dennis