roatripusa.com classic.mapquest.com

You are trying to cover a lot of territory

In September head out through SD Devils Tower Yellowstone.com

B4 it gets too cold then turn south through the Utah parks

From Zion to Vegas Death Valley lonepinechamber.org to

Yosemite.com to SF then down the pacific coast to LA

via carmecalifornia.com bigsurnepenthe.com

Take the www.histric66.com route on the I40 back

for GC visitsedona.com Santa Fe Taos peel off stay on the 40

at Amarillo www.bigtexan.com fun FREE 72 oz steak have done

that Ozarks Smokies www.bluerideparkway.com to Front Royal Va

back up the east coast to home...

Good luck and happy planning!

That's a lot of ground to cover even for 35 days. I figured mileage will be well over 7,000 miles and that's 14 days of just driving.

You mention Utah, but don't say where in Utah you want to visit. There is SO much to see in Utah. The five National Parks alone can easily take well over 10 days to see.

If you like wildlife and scenery you will be hard pressed to find anything better than the National Parks.

From Los Angeles, I'd recommend going to Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, then drive though Page, AZ and down to the Grand Canyon. Depending on time left, you might consider Monument Valley http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/monument_valley/ on the Arizona - Utah border and a stop at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado http://www.americansouthwest.net/colorado/mesa_verde/national_park.html.

With your limited time, and you will be missing a lot of wonderful sites to see, you just have to a lot of research and narrow it down to the time you have available.

Utahtea

Wanted to add, that since you will be retired and live in the East, maybe you should save any sightseeing east of the Mississippi for a shorter trip in the future....like the two days in Ohio in Amish country

Utahtea

Utahtea makes an excellent point. 35 days sounds like a lot -- but it isn't.

Concentrate on the western states this trip and then do a more or less straight shot back home.

Then on later trips visit places like Ohio, and/or Kentucky, and/or Tennessee, etc . . .

When we went from NY to Colorado we hit some good sites. Our first night was in Ohio- did all the Indian Mound sites; Mound City, Serpent Mound etc. The Serpent Mound is quite fun. We stayed in Columbus and visited the historical center there where all the Indian artifacts are. Next stop -more mounds- Cahokia in St Louis. The Arch and musuem turned out to be quite good also. We also stopped in the Flint Hills in Kansas and hiked in the Tallgrass Prarie National preserve, and visited Cottonwood Falls. I would recommend all of those stops. We had wireless on our computer and most nights did Priceline as we started to get tired. Many of our hotel rooms coming and going were on the outskirts of cities and usually we paid $35-$40. Its a cheap way to do it. enjoy your trip.

Thank you all for your input. We think we have decided to focus our attention on South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and California. We will save the Ohio sight seeing for another time and will do Kentucky and Tennessee on our way to Florida next year. So much to see in this beautiful country, and always so little time. Thank you for all your suggestions.

If you enjoy seeing horse ranches, there are some beautiful Arabian horse breeding ranches in Arizona and California. The ones I know personally are Legacy Arabians and Lacey Arabians, both in CA, but I don't know if they are anywhere near where you want to be.