Roadtrip out of New York for about 1 week?

[Oladunk]

Hi,

I would appreciate suggestions for roadtrips out of New York City with a duration of approximately 1 week. I will be travelling with my 15 year old son.
We did a roadtrip Denver->Las Vegas->San Francisco-LA for 3 weeks last summer and enjoyed it a lot. I know this will be a quite different landscape whichever direction we choose. We will be either in an RV or rental car.
We're from Norway so most things will be "new" to us.

PS: I will also read through the tour suggestions articles on this site.

Any suggestions?

BH

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

While there are a number of different RoadTrips you could take from New York City with a week at your disposal, two really stand out in my mind. If you and your son are American history buffs or appreciate world-class museums, then a trip down through Philadelphia with its Revolutionary sites, Franklin Institute, and nearby Valley Forge; and Washington with its monuments and government buildings, and the many museums of the Smithsonian Institution would be in order. On the drives down and back you can include scenic sites on Chesapeake Bay, battlefields such as Gettysburg, and recreational areas such as the Delaware Water Gap.

The other distinct possibility is to head northeast up into New England. This area has been described in some detail in these discussions so I won't repeat all that advice again. Besides those two, there are other possibilities such as west through the Catskills and Finger Lakes Regions of New York to Niagara Falls and then back through the Thousand Islands Region and down Lake Champlain and the Hudson River back to New York. Or you could hug the coast down through New Jersey, cross over to the Delmarva Peninsula by Ferry from Cape May to Lewes and continue south to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Once you narrowed your choice(s) down to one or two, we can offer some more specific advice.

AZBuck

[Oladunk]

Thanks for the reply.

I have looked at your suggestions and evaluated what I think we would appreciate the most.

Would a circle including Niagara Falls, Gettysburg, Washington DC make sense and be doable in approximately 1 week? (Start and stop in NYC).

[AZBuck]

The basic appeal of RoadTrips is the freedom to go wherever you want to, and to see and do whatever you would like. A loop trip from New York down to Washington, up to Niagara Falls and back to New York would require just about two full days' worth of driving, but spread out over a week that's not bad at all and most of your time would be spent at sights rather than getting to them. I've already noted some possible stops on the New York to Washington leg. From Washington to Niagara Falls, you should consider Gettysburg, driving up the scenic Susquehanna River on US-11/US-15 from Harrisburg, perhaps the National Soaring Museum in Elmira, and a couple of New York state parks: Watkins Glen and Letchworth. For the drive back from Niagara to New York, there is the Erie Canal and the Hudson River Valley from Albany down to New York past Hyde Park, West Point, and the Tappan Zee.

AZBuck