Hi!

Me and two friends (20 yo, swedish) are currently planning a roadtrip from New York C over to Los Angeles this winter.
We are leaving NYC the 15th Nov and we're looking to hit LA probably the 15th of January or something like that, which gives us plenty of time on the road.

We've made a rough outline of the trip, which covers most of the places we wanna go: http://goo.gl/maps/NZiSG.
We might take a different route on the west coast, maybe cutting south west through the rockies and hitting Grand Canyon and Vegas before going up to San Fran.
We've never done a trip like this before so any input on the route would be greatly appreciated. And if you have any recommendations of towns or attractions in proximity of this route we would love to hear some.

We're also wondering about the weather conditions during this time of year. Will there be snow storms or dangerous conditions or should we be ok?

Also, how much do you think we will have to spend on motels. We've checked some of the larger chains and it looks like we could get a room for three persons for as low as 50 -80 dollars. We're not too concerned about the quality, just a bed to sleep in and we're OK. Do you think an average of 80 dollars per night is a reasonable estimation for our budget? Any chains you could recommend?

Thanks very much in advance!

Jakob