days itll take to experience the ultimate trip

[ashlee]

Me and my boyfriend are planning a road trip from chicago to california and then back to chicago. we plan on going from chicago to st. louis through ok and then northern texas through NM passing through vegas and ending in san diego. The route home we'd like to explore would be to see northern cali then make our way to yellowstone, then see MT rushmore, drive through the badlands pass through wisconsin and end back in chicago. I was wondering if it may seem too ambitious, also how much time would you recommend we take to do this? The trip totals about 5500 miles and we plan to have about $2500, any advice?

[Robert Schaller]

Whether this is too ambitious depends on what kind of a trip you want. For two weeks, you could cover the driving alone -- at over 400 miles per day. Unless you LOVE to drive, and that is the whole POINT of your trip, then 400+ miles per day is too much. For MOST people, that's probably too much.

If you add another week or two, you could begin to SEE some of the places you drive through. Bob

[CraigClint]

My wife and I take lots of road trips and have found that about 150 miles per day (3 hours) is the absolute most we like to drive if we want to spend time in places like Yellowston, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Yosemite, and all the other wonderful places there are to see (not counting the long, all-day drives across Iowa and Nebraska. Of course, you have to prioritize so pick out the sites you can't miss (average no more than one per day) and estimate how much time you want to spend at each place, then triple it to allow for the unexpected things you'll find that you don't want to miss either. Then add up the number of hours for driving, sleeping, eating and making out at a romantic pull out along the ocean, and you'll have a rough idea how long your trip should be. With that info you should be able to calculate costs such as entry fees, gas, food, accomodations and such. It takes a lot of figuring to budget a trip, but it really pays off when you get home just a little over budget instead of alot!

[Utahtea]

It's hard to say if the $2,500 will be enough money without know some other factors. Are you staying in motels or camping? What kind of gas mileage does your vehicle get?

I plugged in your destinations and about 5500 miles is about right. You're looking at least 7 days of driving 12 hours per day. Then you have to add the siteseeing, eating, sleeping, etc. Two weeks would be the minimum that you could do this trip in. I personally would want three weeks or more. There is so much to see and do!

Utahtea