Washington DC to Vegas, advice

[danstenson]

Hi all!

2 mates and I are planning on traveling america in summer. There is a bit of debate as to what is realistic. We are travelling during the whole of august, about 30 days.

This is the first suggested Route (DC to Las Vegas): https://roadtrippers.com/map?a2=t!17...93483149155047

Is this feasible in the time frame ? We don't want to be driving constantly and want time to appreciate places and have a bit of flexibility if we want to stop places longer etc.

This was kind of a rough plan:

Capture1.JPG


The second suggestion was to limit it to a coast. For example to south, Florida to Las Vegas. Is that more appropriate, I've had a look around a few of the threads with similar trips. Any that jump out at you guys as being the best for 30 day trip ?

Thanks for all the help :)

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

With 30 days it's certainly possible to do a trip from DC to Vegas in 30 days. You only need about 5 days to make the drive directly, so it would even be possible to make this a round trip with a month available. Doing this trip one way is likely going to make things quite more expensive, because of car rental fees.

It would be helpful if you would post what you hope to see and do along the way - asking people to see your itinerary by clicking a link to another site, especially one that is very hard to read, before they can really help you is a bit too much.

Once we have a better idea of what you are hoping to see and do, we'll be in a better position to help you figure out what will work well, and what things you might want to change.

[danstenson]

Hi!

Thanks for such a quick reply! Sorry the link was just a link to the map so people could see all the timings and mileage etc. We don't have a strict itinerary at the moment. The states / cities we would like to see / visit are as follows:

Philadelphia
Washington DC
Pittsburgh
Chicago
Kentucky
Georgia
Alabama
New Orleans
Houston
Austin
El Paso
Grand Canyon
Yosemite
San Fransisco
Santa Barbara
Los Angeles
Las Vegas

This is just taken from the image before but hopefully it's more readable! The main thing is, is that we want the driving to be kept reasonably low (Some exceptions are fine).

Let me know if I need to post anything else, this is my first time on the site :)

[DonnaR57]

Thank you for posting the list. I, too, had trouble reading the linked list in the original post. That said...

This trip screams for a loop, because you have a lot of zig-zagging which eats up miles. Another issue that I see involves the last section -- San Francisco, Santa Barbara to be exact. A major bridge is out on the Pacific Coast Highway (CA-1) at Big Sur, rendering that section of the trip closed for all practical purposes. They hope to have a new bridge installed by September, but as a long-time California resident, I will believe that when I see it. When it's open, that's a 2 day drive because the PCH is slow-going and you do a lot of scenic stops.

One thing to keep in mind when you "want the driving to be kept reasonably low": a maximum amount of miles is 500-550, which will keep you on the road for 10 hours. So "reasonably low" will look different to each of us.

Do you have a road atlas or paper maps of the US? There is so much to be seen besides the many cities you have mentioned. To me, all cities start to look alike except for a few attractions that intrigue me. You may have different thoughts, but nature's beauty is different everywhere. You have the Grand Canyon and Yosemite on your list, but you could see the plantations and antebellum of the Southeast, Carlsbad Caverns National Park just northwest of El Paso, Saguaro National Park near Tucson, to name just a few. If you have an atlas or paper map, you'll find these things. Unfortunately, electronic mapping programs do not always show these on their maps.


Donna

[Southwest Dave]

I also agree that with the time you have available a loop trip could be more beneficial. You have time, presumably you will be renting a vehicle so you would avoid a big one way drop off fee and quite possibly (depending on where home is) you would save on air fares. The thing is you have thousands of possibilities and if you have done a lot of research and what you have on your list is your 'stand out' places that's fine. What I see is a lot of City's which to me all start to look the same and to be honest I prefer Natural wonders, you may not, but another thing to keep in mind is that it will be very hot in the desert areas of south/southwest during August. If you done a loop or you have not yet fully decided, it may be worth taking a peak at the natural beauty and mountain towns of the Colorado Rockies and then head into the many natural and wonders in Southern Utah and Arizona. Just a thought.