Maine to AZ

[msmith1977]

I'm planning on driving to AZ from Maine in December. Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome. I've never done a real road trip before. I'm driving across country in my car with my two dogs (around 4,500 to 5,000 miles I think). What might be a good route for the winter trip? What are the most important things to bring with me? Advise me please!

[AZBuck]

The shortest route is I-95 to Boston, I-90 to Cleveland, I-71 and I-70 to St. Louis, I-44 to Tulsa and I-40 to Phoenix. It's about 2800 miles one way. There may be slight variations depending on your departure and destination points. However, if I were doing this in December, and had a little more than the absolute minimum of time available, I might opt for something a little different. From Albany take I-88 to I-81 and follow this down the eastern side of the Appalachians to Tennessee where you pick up I-40 west to Phoenix. This is a little more scenic, and gets you farther south faster.

In all seriousness, the most important things to bring with you are one sense of adventure and another of humor. There was a thread a while back where people were listing road trip 'essentials'. I'll see if I can track it down for you. By all means bring food and water for the dogs and some warm blankets just in case. But you're hardly going to be travelling through the outback on this trip - there will be plenty of shopping malls along the way.

If you let everybody know how much time you have and what your interests are, you will, I'm sure you'll get plenty of ideas for things to see and do along the way. I'd suggest for starters that once you decide on a basic route, you look for state parks near it so that the dogs can get some exercise a couple of times a day at least.

AZBuck

[AZBuck]

OK - the thread I referred to in my last post wherein people list stuff they always bring along on road trips can be found here. And my alternate suggestion for routing is about 3000 miles one way, so not that much longer than the shortest possible route.

AZBuck