Are you still starting at the end of October? Will you be carrying tire chains for your time at Yellowstone, and maybe, depending on timing, for the Grand Canyon? I'd recommend a little research on weather en route at various places, keeping in mind that altitude and temperature are closely aligned.

Thanks very much - that was our next concern. We were thinking of leaving New York around October 15, spending around 10 days max on the road, and arriving in San Fran around October 25. We'd probably be around the Grand Canyon and Canyonlands / Arches Nat. Park, Utah around November 5-10...

If you run into bad weather - perfectly possible in the mountains in late Oct or Nov you may'

1) need to delay - watch the weather very carefully, since it can turn very bad very fast and you don;t want to be stuck on the road for days

2) probably need to allow more time - if you want to see anything as well as just driving

Also - does this car have 4WD? If not - you need snow tires and/or chains or something for the winter weather.

In South Dakota near Mount Rushmore there's also Badlands National Park, Crazy Horse (excellent), Custer State Park, Black Hills, Deadwood, Wall Drug etc. Worth a couple of days. South Dakota has a great website - http://www.travelsd.com/

Note: We went to South Dakota in early October last year and there was a blizzard. Many roads were shut down, including the freeway back to Colorado. Just be prepared! Chains are really not a bad idea.

If the road is open, definitely drive the Beartooth Highway into Yellowstone (it's on your way) - http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/2281/itinerary/70123 - that website also lists all the scenic byways in America so you might have a look to see what else fits into your itinerary.

If it were me doing that trip I would do the following:

Day One - Drive to Cleavland
Day Two - Drive to Chicago
Day Three - Drive to Souix Falls
Day Four - Drive to Rapid City, SD stopping at Badlands and Wall Drug
Day Five - South Dakota (Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park (Needles Highway), Black Hills)
Day Six - Drive to Billings, MT via Deadwood and Devil's Tower National Monument
Day Seven - Drive to Yellowstone via Beartooth Highway
Day Eight - Yellowstone
Day Nine - Drive to Bonneville Salt Flats, UT
Day Ten - Drive to San Francisco

You might also consult the National Parks Service map as they list all the national parks, monuments & historical places. http://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm

How are you getting from SF to NYC? Would you consider at least 1 leg of your trip on Amtrak? I love the idea of riding the CA Zepyr from Emeryville to SLC and renting a car to head for Moab/Arches. Continue from SLC to Denver and rent another car to see RMNP. Continue to Chicago on the Zephyr. Take the Lakeshore Limited to NYC to borrow the car. Seeing the country from the train beats flying over it.
Seeing Arches/Canyonlands and Chicago on the way to NYC would save a big backtrack on the second(third?) part of your roadtrip. Whichever way you do it there will be some backtrack. I'm sure you will see some snow on the higher elevation mountains. Whether it slows the travel on the highways requires checking the weather before heading out in the morning.
My DW and I were in Moab/Arches on Nov. 2/3 last year and the weather was perfect (60-70 degrees and sunny).

On your return trip, driving from San Antonio THEN Fort Worth THEN New Orleans doesn't make sense. FW is way out of your way. You could do Roswell, FW, then San Antonio, THEN New Orleans.

Also, if you're doing this in winter, Grand Canyon NORTH Rim closes around mid-October, and North Rim is out of the way from everything!!

Sounds like a fun trip.

Thanks everyone!

I should have mentioned that we're based in New York now, so we won't be going from San Fran to begin with. We were going to fly from NY to San Fran to begin in a rental and work our way back, but now that we can borrow a car from NY, we won't need to pay for a rental.

Speaking of the car, it's a Prius hybrid so good on fuel (which helped us make the decision to drive east to west first) but not 4wd.

We'll have to keep an eye on the weather and look into getting chains but we don't have that much experience driving in wild snowy weather, if it's real bad, we might even consider leaving certains attractions off the list, like Yellowstone. Hopefully we'll be okay though!

Hez - thanks for the advice! That's actually very close to what we were thinking, minus the detour up to Montana. As much as we'd love to check out a few more states and attractions, we're really trying to save money by keeping the northern trip short and were even hoping we could cut it down to around eight days, if we stretch out some of the shorter driving sessions. For instance, Cleveland to Chicago is only around 5.5 hours, so we were hoping to drive a bit further and stop a bit later along that stretch. But with our specific attractions we want to see, it's pretty tricky to do that!

jill_h - thanks very much for pointing that out! Not sure how we missed that one, but we've ammended it now.

Being flexible and weather-savvy is a good idea. Remember too that the daylight will be getting shorter, and you don't want to be driving in bad weather in the middle of nowhere in the dark.

I personally would write off Yellowstone from the git-go, especially since the Beartooth Highway will probably be closed by the time you get in the neighborhood. It's already closing overnight, for the reasons above. If you want to substitute it with a scenic national park that likely will be accessible, think about taking an extra day or two once you get to California to head up to Redwood National Park, about 5 hours north of SF, or even Yosemite. (I.e. the days you'd spend at Yellowstone just get re-allocated.) That way, after Rapid City/Deadwood you could roar through Montana (don't miss the Little Big Horn battlefield a little east of Billings) then south on I-15 to SLC before heading west to Bonneville and SF.

I don't want the weather thing to sound like too big a deal; you might get lucky and have a late "Indian Summer" somewhere. But it's also a case of tradeoffs; the time you spend in a less-than-satisfying visit to some high-altitude area might be more rewarding spent elsewhere where the local conditions are more amenable.

Incidentally, on the way back, be mindful of the same situation. Many of the "red rock" national parks are at very high altitude (e.g. parts of Bryce Canyon are at 9000+ feet) so you don't want to ignore freezing (and also dark-er) conditions there either.

You're very welcome! I'm a road trip junkie!!

Montana isn't really out of your way. Put in Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone in Google Maps - it takes you through Billings, MT and to the north entrance. If you go to the east entrance you're only saving about 15 minutes, and you'll still want to drive up to the north part of the park so no savings at all. Going through Deadwood adds an extra 20 minutes or so.

Chicago is a very cool city. If you had said 11 days I would have added a day there. That being said, if you're cutting out days it's probably a reasonable thing to cut (if you haven't been, you should check it out someday though).

I think the weather is going to dictate a lot of your trip. Should the weather that far north not be awesome you could always come down through the beautiful state of Colorado.

On the way back, it seems you're pretty much skipping California. I would drive Route 1 from San Fransisco down to LA (http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/road-trips/california-pacific-coast-road-trip/) and then over to Vegas. It'll add about 4 hours to your trip but oh so worth it.

Near Flagstaff we really enjoy Wupatiki national monument (http://www.nps.gov/wupa/index.htm) and Walnut Canyon (http://www.nps.gov/waca/index.htm)

Fort Worth should come between Roswell and San Antonio. Also, you didn't list Austin which is between Fort Worth and San Antonio. You might want to add it to your itinerary.

Okay, it sounds like we might be leaving Yellowstone off the list then, but now we have another idea...

What about doing the trip in reverse? ie - heading down through the south to San Fran and back to NYC via the northern states.

Our concerns are...

1. the high elevation attractions such as Mt Rushmore in South Dakota and Grand Canyon and Moab, Utah being snowed over

2. the south still being too cold to camp (which is our money saving idea)

If we went to the south first, in mid October it would still be warm enough to camp right?

I realise that this way it will be snowing in the northern states by the time we drive through in December, but driving-wise will we be okay if we stick to the main interstates? Mount Rushmore is pretty much the only thing we really want to see on this leg of the trip.


Hez - Thanks for the advice to head down to LA - what would we see on that journey? We've driven along the PCH from LA to San Diego already, would this be similar to the drive from San Fran to LA?

IMHO, the later in the year you do the northern route the bigger the chance of you having bad weather in more areas.

I would do the southern route either starting in SF or NY and fly one direction. There's plenty to see and do in 6 weeks staying in the southern states especially in the west.


Utahtea

San Fran down to Morro Bay is the classic Route 1 drive and one of the best scenic drives in America - Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey etc - check out this article - http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/road-trips/california-pacific-coast-road-trip/

IMHO, it's nothing like San Diego to LA.

The southern states should still be plenty warm for camping as long as you have relatively good camping gear.

Hez

Camping would be good in the south in October, assuming a watertight tent and decent sleeping bags.

I think the weather concerns are a bit overblown. On a roadtrip of this length, I would not start crossing places off the list because there "might" be bad weather. You can easily look ahead at the weather forecast and alter plans accordingly - you are generally not so far north that you couldn't point the car south and be out of reach of any impending storm within a half a day or so.

If the roads are bad enough to require tire chains, you shouldn't be driving on them. Late October is unlikely for such bad weather, and like I said, just look at the forecast and avoid that situation.

You can reverse the order if you want but it seems disadvantageous: you would start the southern route about 2 weeks earlier and the weather wouldn't be significantly different by getting a 2 week headstart on that portion. However, you'll hit the northern section 1.5 months later and that will have a major difference on the weather. It's far more likely for a blizzard to hit the northern plains in December than October, and at times even the interstates are shut down because of weather. It doesn't happen often but I'd say once or twice each winter there's enough of a storm to close major highways for a day or so. Highly unlikely in October though.

As far as weather being warm enough for camping, that is all dependent on your gear and tolerance for sleeping in cold(er) air. Camping can be cheap but it also depends on where you camp and how much you spend on gear. For example, if you spend $300 on tent/sleeping bags and use them for 30 days, that's $10/day on top of the campground fees. You can certainly spend less (or more) just remember to factor that into your daily costs.

Thanks a lot guys - we do have a good tent and good sleeping bags, and would be staying in cabins in the colder areas. We're just trying to avoid high snowfall roads as we're booking accomodation in advance and hope to get to all our stops safely and on the correct day!

And we're definitely going through the north first now, and back through the south.

One last question - we're thinking of heading down to Moab in Utah to see Arches National Park and Canyonlands on the way to San Fran, instead of on the way back to New York (is this a better idea, weatherwise?). If we go down from Rapid City, SD into Colorado, then east into Utah (probably staying in Cheyenne or Denver), would there be high chances of snow on this route around October 20?

Thanks!

No more than going the other direction and the I-70 through Colorado is a much more interesting road than the I-80 through Wyoming.

Why book accommodation beforehand? You're not going to find places sold out and that limits your flexibility if weather does become a problem.

I still think you would be wise to have tire chains/cables with you as relatively cheap insurance. The weather is really freaky these days and you just don't know what can happen when you're in the middle of nowhere. The last thing you'd want to happen is to get stranded if a early season snowstorn developed, and it does happen, especially out west. And weathermen have been known to blow when it comes to forecasts.