Montreal to Miami for New Year's Eve

[docmtl]

Hi, folks

My wife and I are planning to go South on our first East Coast Road Trip.

Date: Dec 26th to Jan 6th

Car: Volks Tiguan

Interest: Cities, museums, some shopping

Places we'd like to see: Pittsburgh (day stop only, to avoid NYC area), Washington, then anyplace south of it is new for us.

New Year Eve's location for the fun of it: Anywhere from Atlanta to Miami, fireworks and people outside (winter is cold and long in Montreal)

Type of trip: relaxed, enjoying the sightseeing

Housing: Clean, not fancy, could be a motel, hotel, AirBnB

Eating: We don't eat red meat anymore, fish and seafood OK

I hope you can help us plan our trip !

Cheers

docmtl

[AZBuck]

Bienvenue sur les forums de RoadTrip Amérique. Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Under the best of conditions, it would take roughly four full days of driving to get from Montréal to Miami. Since you'll be making this drive in the dead of winter, you'll need to keep at least one day in your pocket (each way) just in case you need it for weather related delays. That leaves you just one day reliably available for sight-seeing on each leg. You likely will wind up being able to actually use one of your 'weather' days, but you can't count on it until you're south of the Mason-Dixon line southbound, or have a reliable forecast for the last couple of days northbound. That's not to discourage you. Just letting you plan ahead so that your trip is enjoyable no matter what Mother Nature throws at you. Basically, plan on short, one-to-two hour stops each day rather than a single big 'destination' stop.

As for routes and sights, I'd suggest for starters that you look at these ideas for two completely separate routes up/down the east coast of the US. I'd probably suggest that you use the more inland route southbound when you have the most time to deal with any weather delays, and the coastal route on the way back home. Catfish and seafood should be plentiful throughout your journey. Wherever you are for New Year's, I'd look around for small town celebrations where the fireworks will be more accessible, the parking cheaper, and the people friendlier.

I'm sorry, but my wife handles all our lodging arrangements, but she too enjoys mixing airbnb's with decent motels depending on how long we're going to be in a given area and what's available.

AZBuck