SFO - NY Honeymoon, 60-90 days - budget advice appreciated

[rachledez]

Hi there,

I've spent all day browsing the forum but I haven't found an answer to my question on existing posts so thought I'd start a new thread... sorry if you've all answered this question a thousand times before!

I spent a lot of time on a South East Asia forum before our big trip there a few years ago so I know that these 'how much will it cost?' questions can be both difficult to answer and annoying but I would really really appreciate some help!

We're hoping to embark on an American road trip adventure next year for our honeymoon. The rough itinerary would be as follows:

San Francisco > Carmel > Los Angeles > Palm Springs > Las Vegas > Grand Canyon > Monument Valley > Dallas, TX > New Orleans > Memphis, Tennessee > Nashville > Miami > Orlando > Washington DC > Charleston > Philadelphia > New York

Please forgive us if we've got any of the places mixed up! We're in the very early stages of planning and unfortunately our knowledge of the geography of the USA isn't up to scratch! I would imagine we would stop off at places in between but those are the key places we want to hit.

We don't want to camp but we don't want to stay in luxury hotels either. We are more than happy with motels or other budget accommodation as long as it's clean!

We're not sure what works out cheapest in terms of eating, but we're happy to buy food from grocery stores or eat at cheap buffet places most of the time if that's what you would recommend.

We do want to be able to visit some attractions like aquariums or zoos, visit the occasional theme park, national parks, museums etc.

We have also considered dropping the car off in Miami then taking the train the rest of the way up the east coast to NY... but we're not sure how that works either :/

Basically, the costs that need to be taken into account are car hire (and maybe train), accommodation, food and then an activities budget on top... depending on the costs, we would do this trip over 60 or 90 days. We would obviously rather do 60 days and be able to do lots of fun things than 90 days and barely have enough to eat - but at the same time we'd love to stay longer if we can.

Oh, forgot to mention we don't smoke or drink at all so we don't need to factor that in!

Any help you can give would be so very much appreciated and I promise when we get back we'll use all our knowledge to help other newbies like ourselves!