4 month backpacking Canada and America's
 

I am looking for some help, advice, ideas, previously used itineries etc for a 4 month trip I wish to organise with my hubby and son (who will be 12 then). We will be immigrating back from the U.K. to Australia and have a wonderful gap in my son's education that we wish to take advantage of.
We want to backpack around South and North America and Canada from the end July 2010 to early/mid December 2010. Our budget will be super tight but we should have enough money not to limit sights or experiences. Any input at this stage would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure what sort of input you want but it does occur to me that working from North to South might be best - that way you would not need winter gear.

Will you be camping?
Will you be travelling by car or bus or ?
Do you like cities? the countryside? beautiful scenery?

we need more information. you are looking at a HUGE area and you will need to be flying between long distances in order to cover parts of it. are you skipping central america? as mentioned, do you want cities and if so, which ones are of interest to you? since you say back packing...i assume you will have a vehicle to get into the remote areas. you need to do a lot of research on this as importing cars between countries can be a lot of paperwork. rental cars can get very expensive. more info and we'd be more effective.

Wow, even with 4 months, that sounds like a really ambitious trip. If it were me, I think I would stick to either North or South America and maybe even one country if it was a larger one (US, Canada, Brazil). I would love to spend 6 months just seeing the parts of Canada that I haven't been to yet.

My advice on itinerary planning is to pick the top 10 places that on your must-see list. Plot them on a map and you might see a logical route from one to the other. Then investigate how much time you'd want to spend at the places and how long it would take to travel between them (and researching things to see along the way). You'll see if you have more time to fit other stuff in, or if you need to cut some stuff out etc.

And along the same lines as semiramis' advice, take the seasons/weather into consideration. For example, you may want to time being on the east coast of the US to see the fall colours, or being in S. America during the dry season etc.

My daughter did a four month backpacking trip through South America last year and visited Peru, Chile and Argentina. She would have liked to stay for longer, but ran out of money. (My point being that four months is a short time for either one of North or South America, much less both.)

If I were you, I'd pick one of the two continents. With a tight budget and a timeline that is mostly autumn & early winter in northern latitudes, I'd pick South America. If you prefer North America & not having to deal with a different language, I'd start in the more northerly areas while it's still summer/fall weather, then move south.