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Road trip: Boston to San Diego

We once did a road trip from Santa Clara to Southern. IL. It was fun, but we drove Nevada -> AZ -> NM -> TX -> OK -> MS -> IL

I have to say though.. your drive looks more exciting. Also, the stretch of I -57s is boring as hell. Anyway.. have a nice trip.
 
lol, first thing I made sure was that you had Deals Gap/Dragon on there. Looks good unless you want to do a quick drive on the million dollar highway in Colorado or can rent a Raptor and drive the Austin F1 track.
 
Revised route

I have a really short drive from Denver to Grand Junction (don't want to rush through CO), so another stop is definitely possible - the Million Dollar Highway would add 5 hours of driving to the trip, though; not sure if I want to put that in there, or spend more time relaxing. 😛
 
Definetely spend some time on the Blue Ridge Parkway on your way down., even if it's just 50 miles. I'd also stop in Ashville, NC and cut through the national park instead of going straight into Knoxville.

Also depending on the time of day, you might want to take the Tapanzee bridge instead of the GWB to cross the Hudson. The Major Deagan gets pretty bad.

If you're looking for a place to crash outside NYC PM me.
 
Only suggestion are these, if you have time on the drive stop by Arches and Bryce Canyon NPs. Quite beautiful.
I would also check the weather in Colorado before you start your trip, it is supposed to be another bitterly cold winter and driving over the Rockies in it could get dicey.
 
I can bring these tires, so no worries about snow.

Revision 2.0

I looked at the wiki for Blue Ridge and it gives a whole lot of site info but no road names, which is aggravating. I'll have to check the official Blue Ridge Parkway site and see if it makes any more sense.
 
if you're not going to see the scenery that's missing the point IMO so I would recommend you do.

While you're in CO drive the san juan skyline loop (google it), and stop by Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Better than Grand Canyon IMO but YMMV. It's completely not busy so you have the whole park to yourself which is great. Better stop by the Grand Canyon, it's worth it but it's so large it looks like a 2d image because your brain doesn't have enough depth information to grasp the 3d nature of it...it's too large.

Monument Valley State Park is great, love it:
Monument_Valley.jpg

photos don't do it justice those things are about a quarter mile high, much more impressive in person

if there's ANY way you can make it to Southern Texas, Big Bend National Park (not the state one, though I'm sure it's good too) is definitely worth visiting, probably my fav. The green things on the bottom of the wall that look like bushes, those are trees, the pebble ledge is deceptive, it drops off a lot there so anything past the brown pebble ledge you see is trees/very large [10'] bushes:
33954088131696170912813.jpg

that's half a mile high and extends for about 5-10 miles to your left/right:
extrasmallerimg3652img3.png

feels like I imagine it would be if you were standing in front of Mordor, if it were real

also a favorite and out of the way from your route but hey you're doing a roadtrip, badlands in South Dakota
extrasmallerimg5105img5.png


If you return by driving up through California, the trip back across is much much shorter than if you take the same route there and back--because the earth is round, not flat like that map. E.g. I drove out through Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana to the bottom of Texas, then over to Arizona and up to Wyoming. From Wyoming it was a shorter route to drive due east through Chicago and then south, than it was to drive diagonal back to Atlanta. So if you went to the parks in California (there are a ton worth going to) and drove state route 101 to North California, you could hit up the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone like I did, then drive due east to Chicago, and probably not spend all that much more time on the road doing so.

Also, take a month to 6 weeks to do this, not a two and a half weeks like I did. Once you get out there you'll want to hit up every state park and having a deadline on when to get back is a bitch. Take unpaid leave if you have to. If you don't want to spend that money, just unroll your sleeping bag in the back of your car. It's nerve racking the first night or two but way more fun to wake up out in the middle of nowhere.
If you do this, bring a can of 99% alcohol Lysol to spray any place that ends up smelling, that'll kill all the bacteria and you can go for ~4 days before you want a shower. It's so dry out west that most sweat just evaporates, so most of you never smells
 
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Nice, thanks! I'll look into those.

I'm moving, so my return trip is via airline so I can get the moving truck and do it again, but the quick version. 😛

I could re-do the entire route, but I was planning on spending a few days in CA with some friends, and I have to be back to work on 9/19 (moving in early October).

I can leave NH on 9/5, and I have to be back on 9/18 (with the car in Phoenix). Is there a different overall route I should take? I'm avoiding Texas for now because I'll be stopping by Denton, TX with the moving truck / MR2 for a tune from ATS Racing. In 2 months I'll be living in AZ, so the Grand Canyon/etc can wait 'till later. 😉
 
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hm, any reason you going down to Tennessee? If not, I would go west ASAP e.g. through Chicago (lots of good food places to eat at there if you want), then north and take I-90 west. That would let you stop at Badlands and will be much faster since you're farther north. Then either west for Grand Teton national park (definitely worth it) and Yellowstone (meh) or south to Denver then west and to whatever parks or drives you want to do there.

this is san juan skyline pretty simple very nice being with the mtns:
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=U...FZ7xRQIdaBmU-Q&vpsrc=6&mra=mi&mrsp=3&sz=9&z=9

I recommend against booking hotels ahead of time, that makes the whole thing way too difficult imo, easiest is no hotels and just sleeping in car. Almost all places will have vacancy so no need to set deadlines like "I have to be here by such and such a date for my motel".
 
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soccerballtux said:
hm, any reason you going down to Tennessee? If not, I would go west ASAP e.g. through Chicago (lots of good food places to eat at there if you want), then north and take I-90 west. That would let you stop at Badlands and will be much faster since you're farther north. Then either west for Grand Teton national park (definitely worth it) and Yellowstone (meh) or south to Denver then west and to whatever parks or drives you want to do there.

this is san juan skyline pretty simple very nice being with the mtns:
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=U...FZ7xRQIdaBmU-Q&vpsrc=6&mra=mi&mrsp=3&sz=9&z=9

I recommend against booking hotels ahead of time, that makes the whole thing way too difficult imo, easiest is no hotels and just sleeping in car. Almost all places will have vacancy so no need to set deadlines like "I have to be here by such and such a date for my motel".
Click to expand...

I have a hookup on hotels, and to use it I have to book ahead of time. I'm going to TN so I can hit the Tail of the Dragon before I'm living on the other side of the country. 🙂
 
jlee said:
I'm moving, so my return trip is via airline so I can get the moving truck and do it again, but the quick version. 😛

I could re-do the entire route, but I was planning on spending a few days in CA with some friends, and I have to be back to work on 9/19 (moving in early October).

I can leave NH on 9/5, and I have to be back on 9/18 (with the car in Phoenix). Is there a different overall route I should take? I'm avoiding Texas for now because I'll be stopping by Denton, TX with the moving truck / MR2 for a tune from ATS Racing.
Click to expand...

I was going to say, I don't think this is a meander on your own time vacation so I didn't think you'd have time to go and see everything. Also, and sorry, but there's nothing in Texas worth sightseeing for (and yes I have seen that stuff) that would make the long ass drives to get to them worth it (i.e. they wouldn't be bad if you didn't have to drive a long time to get anywhere). Hell, if there was a way for you to skip, well pretty much all of Kansas I'd say go for it, but really the only better route would be Oklahoma and its not that much better.

There's definitely stuff in other places along your route worth spending the extra time that you would in Texas on.

I was going to recommend going the south part of Missouri, but you'll have already spent quite a bit of time in nice scenic areas like that (and might even be tired, as a lot of driving time through there can wear you out with all the turns and everything). Plus since you want to hit Denver your route would be quicker and you'd still have to hit the western part of OK, KS, or TX to get up there. Kansas should go by pretty fast for ya, but its still going to be several hours of boredom.
 
Holy crap, that's one helluva road trip. How many people are actually drivers? What kind of vehicle are you using? Make sure to stock up on your emergency supplies and a full size spare tire if you can.
 
jlee said:
Revised route

I have a really short drive from Denver to Grand Junction (don't want to rush through CO), so another stop is definitely possible - the Million Dollar Highway would add 5 hours of driving to the trip, though; not sure if I want to put that in there, or spend more time relaxing. 😛
Click to expand...

Hah.. 🙂

Now you are going to drive right through the middle of my city and within 1 mile of my apartment.
 
I think you have the best general route already, I wouldn't do the more northern route through Chicago. The Blue Ridge Parkway is just called the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs parallelish to I-81 in NC and VA. Depending on your schedule you probably won't want to drive the whole length.
 
PeeluckyDuckee said:
Holy crap, that's one helluva road trip. How many people are actually drivers? What kind of vehicle are you using? Make sure to stock up on your emergency supplies and a full size spare tire if you can.
Click to expand...

I'm taking my '04 Forester XT and driving solo. I'm considering bringing my spare set of wheels/tires in case of catastrophe; that'll give me snows in case mountains have silly weather, and plenty of spares just in case.

As for emergency stuff, I'm thinking a couple quarts of oil, two gallons of water, some food, and a small selection of tools. I usually already have a scissor jack, jumper cables, emergency blanket, tow and recovery straps, shop towels and a fire extinguisher. There are a couple of nights where I won't make it to a hotel, so I'll bring a sleeping bag and maybe a tent as well (though I think I could sleep in the back with the seats laid down).
 
I drove much of that route earlier in the summer going from the bay area to Michigan, and i'll be making the return trip beginning on the tenth. Return will be going through Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana, I think. Would like to hit up Yellowstone.

I didn't see a single cop on the road until I hit Kansas, then I saw around 20 over the course of driving through the state. I now hold the belief that since nobody ever stops there, all their state revenue comes from tickets. Some of the fun things that I did along the way was going to see the arch in St. Louis, and driving up the highest paved road in the country, Mount Evans, in Colorado.
 
I recently moved from Boston to STL. I took 4 days to drive because i avoided the interstates as much as humanly possible. Take the back roads and see the country, its really pretty awesome.
 
Final update - my friends are going to LA, not SD, so I had to tweak it a little. I'll still stop by SD on the way back to AZ (also added AZ to the map).
 
if you werent going so far south I would offer up a spare bed

looks like a hell of a trip.

I did IL to Boston in a day last summer, it was 'fun'
 
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