Planning Summer 2010 Road Trip

[billy bob]

Most of these people have been giving good advice. My advice would be to cut back on how far you will go & contrate on what you want to see, 3 weeks or 21 days is long enought to have a nice trip but if you traveled 300 milles a day you could cover 6300 miles but wouldn't have much time to see the sights or enjoy them. Pick out what Nat Parks you want to visit then decide how long you will need to enjoy them. Take Yellowstone which you talked about to really see & enjoy I would plan at least 3-4 days maybe 5 if you wanted to tour Grand Teton N P which is just south of Yellowstone. You know what you want to do just remember take your time don't try to cover too much ground. When you get that far along in your planing let us know where you-all will be going and maybe we can point out things in that Park or area

billy bob

[rebeccajanet]

Thank you all for the advice! We will work on narrowing our trip down so that we can not be so rushed and we can enjoy it more. I'll let you know what we decide :)

[rebeccajanet]

At the end of June, my husband and I are setting out on a 21-day road trip from Eugene, Oregon, through CA, AZ, NM, TX, CO, WY, MT, ID, WA, and back to OR.

We have a budget of roughly $3,000 and we are driving a '00 Chevy Malibu. We plan to camp out, stay with friends, or stay in motels/hotels. I will list our basic itinerary below, but first here is a list of some of the fun/random things I would like to do while on our trip, if you know of any good locations for these things within our route, please let me know!!

-horseback riding/trail ride
-roller skating rinks
-drive-in movie
-cool museums
-awesome 50s diner
-hot air ballooning??

We are planning on going to mostly national parks, a few theme parks, and interesting cities....

Here is what I have come up with so far!

Day 1: leave Eugene heading south on 1-5 to Highway 101, stop in Bandon, OR. Get back on the 101 to Redwood N.P., camp for the night
Day 2: drive to San Fran, see Golden Gate Bridge/Fisherman's Wharf/etc for the day. Drive to Santa Cruz, stay the night
Day 3: spend the morning/afternoon at the beach boardwalk/amusement park, and then drive to LA to stay with a friend
Day 4: have our friend show us around LA, drive to Anaheim in the pm to stay the night
Day 5: Disneyland all day, then drive to Vegas, stay the night
Day 6: Vegas for morning/afternoon, then drive to Grand Canyon, camp for the night
Day 7: Grand Canyon all day, drive to Phoenix to stay the night
Day 8: drive to El Paso, TX to stay with friends
Day 9: drive to Carlsbad, NM for Carlsbad Caverns. drive to San Antonio to stay the night
Day 10: drive to Austin, spend the day. stay the night there
Day 11: drive to Amarillo (or somewhere near there), stay the night
Day 12: drive to Canon City, CO to see the Royal Gorge Bridge, camp for the night
Day 13: drive to Rocky Mountain N.P., spend the day, maybe horseback riding? camp for the night
Day 14: drive to Fossil Butte N.P, camp for the night
Day 15: drive to Jackson Hole, and then maybe go to Grand Teton N.P.
Day 16: drive to Yellowstone, spend the day, camp
Day 17: Yellowstone all day, camp
Day 18: Yellowstone in AM, then drive to Coure D'alene, ID, stay the night
Day 19: drive to Lynnwood, Wa to stay with family
Day 20: drive to Orting, WA to stay with family
Day 21: arrive back to Eugene, OR

Let me know what you think about this. There are some days that have quite a bit of driving (7, 8, or 9 hours) which seems like a lot to me but I suppose that is normal for a road trip? I was trying to keep it to around 5 or 6 hours of driving a day but that didn't quite work out for all the days. I don't want to feel super rushed during the trip and I'd really like to be able to enjoy things instead of feeling like we have to keep on the move constantly.

If you know of any great places/sights that I have skipped over please let me know, this is just a rough draft and is open to changes and what not.

Thanks so much!

[glc]

Day 1: OK - that's about a 7 hour drive.
Day 2 - No way. That's about a 7 hour drive on 101, a lot longer if you take CA-1 - and you also want to sightsee around SF after you get there AND drive another couple of hours to Santa Cruz?
Day 3 - what??? It's a good 7 hours to LA from Santa Cruz if you do NOT take the scenic way - and you are going to do this after playing all day? You will also miss the spectacular coast road scenery.
Day 4 - OK, but don't underestimate LA rush hour traffic.
Day 5 - All day in Disneyland then drive 5 hours to LV?
Day 6 - drive 6+ hours to the GC after playing in LV all day?

I'm not even going to go any farther - I feel you are way overextending yourselves. You are going to be so exhausted by the time you get this far you won't enjoy the rest of your trip at all!

[Terri]

While in SF, take a boat ride to Alcatraz Island and take a tour of the island. After leaving SF, I'd, highly, recommend driving down the Coast to Carmel and Monterey.

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

I have to agree with glc that your trip on the whole is at too fast a pace to enjoy things, another couple of examples are driving from Amarillo and then see the Royal gorge bridge which is in the region of a 7 hour drive and you could spend hours looking around and enjoying the attractions and then next day "drive to Rocky Mountain NP and spend the day horse riding" but you have a 4 hour plus drive and need to set up camp as well.

I think that you might be better off scaling back some and take the time to enjoy the places that you do get to.

[Midwest Michael]

There are some days that have quite a bit of driving (7, 8, or 9 hours) which seems like a lot to me but I suppose that is normal for a road trip?

There's nothing wrong with having a few days where you spend a lot of time on the road, but then expect those to be days where you are mostly just driving. The problem with your plans as you've laid them out, is that you on many instances are trying to do both full day activities and do nearly a full day of driving.

Others have laid out several instances of this, but the biggest offenders are clearly Redwood to Santa Cruz - which would be a very very long day, that that's before you even try to see SF; Disneyland and then a 5 hour drive? That's not insane, that's suicidal, before you think about "seeing vegas" then following day before another 5 hour drive to the Grand Canyon. El Paso to San Antonio is a good 9 hours, before your detour to Carlsbad, so now you're looking at 12+ hours of driving and you hope to see the caverns on top of that.

You've scaled things back from your originial goals, but not all that much. When you consider the fact that instead of going to the east coast, which is 3000 miles away from your home, you're now shooting for San Antonio, which is still 2500 miles from home, you're still looking at a very ambious distance, and still trying to do more than what time will actually allow.

[mariannebreathes]

I have to agree with everyone else. And I know by experience.
Last summer me and my 6 yr old left Baltimore and traveled to
Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands , Yellowstone and Mt. Glacier.
It was 31 days and 3000 dollars with us sleeping at campsites most of the time.
The biggest things was making reservations in March for our June trip = the National
Parks book up fast and at Yellowstone when we were in a tent under the freezing rain
and snow there was not a hotel room to be found for 100 miles so we just 'roughed' it
at our campsite. Also we budgeted 600 for emergencies and we did end up using it
for losing our keys in the Dakotas and needing 4 new tires in Montana (don't ask)
I have to say we DID see alot of wonderful places that we NEVER could of planned
or known of but we also visited about 85 percent of what we planned. 3 days was just
not enough to See Yellowstone but 4 days at Glacier National Park worked for us.
I can tell you this--- we were CERTAINLY glad to get home!
This year we will keep it to 3 weeks, as well.
I wish you well on your journey and hope you travel plans work out for you!

[rebeccajanet]

Hmm ok, thanks everyone for the feedback. When I did it on Google maps, there were really only like 5-6 days that had around 7 hours of driving, if I remember correctly. But maybe I shouldn't be basing this off of google maps. It seemed do-able to me, but now I can see that we would be on the go constantly and that's not what I want. The way that I saw it, though, is that if we left at 7am in the morning (or 8) we'd still arrive at our destination at around 2, even with 7 hours of driving. To me that still seems like plenty of time to see a destination, but it obviously depends where. The one thing I am not really down for is driving at night, and there are a few days in there where we'd be driving at night, so I'm hoping to find some way to spread that out. My husband has laid his foot down, and we cannot extend the length of the trip at all. I've already had to cut a ton of stuff out and cutting out more seems hard... but I'm sure I can do it. If you guys could give me some specific ideas of things to cut out that would be awesome, or alternatives for certain ideas. I really really appreciate all your help!

[glc]

Google doesn't have to get fuel, eat, go to the bathroom, stop and look at attractions, and is never delayed by traffic or construction. Always add 20% to Google drive times. Does this give you a better perspective? You also need to look at rush hours in and around major cities.

The first thing I'd do is cut out Texas. You can go see your friends in El Paso, but continue to NM and CO from there.