ME to CA summer road trip

[bbulling]

Hi! I am planning on taking 2-4 weeks starting in early June after I graduate from college to drive from Portland, ME to San Francisco, CA. I will hopefully have a passenger, but it's unclear right now. I am interested in hitting as many national parks as possible, and stopping in other beautiful places that have good hiking. I'm also interested in exploring cool, funky cities along the way. Does anyone have any advice? Places I shouldn't miss? I would love any and all advice! Thank you so much.

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

Is this going to be a round trip or a one way trip? If it's going to be a round trip, then you really need to be closer to the 4 weeks than to 2 for this to be worthwhile. Just driving direct, without any significant stops, will take you about a week to drive from Maine to SF. So, to do this as a round trip, and have time to see National Parks, do some hiking, etc you'll really need about a month.

Beyond that, I think your first step is to figure out what places you want to focus on. You're talking about a trip that covers the entire country, so literally everywhere in the US is a possibility. Once you have a few personal "musts," then it will be much easier to start to fill in the gaps with other smaller, less well known ideas.

If you are going to have another person with you, you should also get that element sorted out sooner rather than later. If you go yourself, you can build the exact trip you want to do, but if you are going with someone else, you have to build the trip around what both of your interests and how you each like to travel (and there will certainly be some differences).

Either way, you should also be thinking about things like budget and logistics (where you'll eat and sleep, etc).

As you start to work through some of the details, we'll be happy to help you put everything together.