My husband has finally retired and we are ready for our much anticipated cross country trip. We plan on being gone 30-35 days and will be staying mostly in hotels, but doing a little truck camping along the way also. We would like to see several of the National Parks along the way as we love to view wildlife and beautiful scenery. We will be leaving northern NY the beginning of September and our first major stops along the way will include the Badlands and Black Hills area of South Dakota, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, then up to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Utah, Yosemite, the Pacific Coast Hwy., (and, of course, Disneyland!) Las Vegas, and then onto Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. We have toured most of the east coast states so we would like to have the final leg of our trip include driving through the Nashville TN area, then into Lexington, Kentucky to view some horse ranches. We want to spend two days in Ohio in Amish country before heading home. Any suggestions and "must see" things along the way would be so appreciated. For example, what else should we see in Northern Colorado and what route is best from there to Yellowstone? What's the most scenic route from Utah to Yosemite? We will probably only do this once and I am afraid I am missing some important things by focusing so much on the National Parks. Thank you so much for any input!
Cross country New York to California
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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.
Sorry, it is Legendary Arabians, in Sanger, CA. I bought a colt from, Sharon Byford, one of its founders, who literally wrote the book on the Arabian horse. Really a quality operation.