Hi

I am hopefully going to come to the USA for one month next June (from the UK)

We have no itinerary plans at the moment, and I wondered if anyone had experience of doing this and where the best places to visit would be?

Thanks

You're missing a few key bits of information that help folks give you a helpful answer:

1. Budget?
2. Are you an urban or nature type person?
3. Are you going to rent a car or will you be at the mercy of public transportation?
4. Any special interests or things that you absolutely must see?
5. Do you gamble?
6. How old are you?
7. Do you want beaches or cities or history or culture or fresh air or some combination thereof?
8. Are you planning on staying in hotels, hostels, camping, couchsurfing, etc.?
9. What do you want to avoid?
10. Would you be interested in music festivals or the like?
11. How do you feel about hot and humid weather? Hot and dry? Pleasant?

You have to understand that the U.S. is HUGE. The state of Wisconsin is about the same size as the UK. Asking what to see and do without specifying boundaries is going to go nowhere fast.

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I will answer some of your questions to narrow it down

1. Budget? We haven't set a budget

2. Are you an urban or nature type person? Probably more urban, but enjoy both.

3. Are you going to rent a car or will you be at the mercy of public transportation? We are happy to rent a car

4. Any special interests or things that you absolutely must see? No

5. Do you gamble? Not really

6. How old are you? 28

7. Do you want beaches or cities or history or culture or fresh air or some combination thereof? Combination would be great

8. Are you planning on staying in hotels, hostels, camping, couchsurfing, etc.? Hotels

9. What do you want to avoid? Nothing that I can think of.

10. Would you be interested in music festivals or the like? Yes definitely - my other half is a big music fan so if we could incorporate this that would be great.

11. How do you feel about hot and humid weather? Hot and dry? Pleasant? Happy to deal with any weather, we don't mind the heat.


We have spent vacations in Florida and Southern California, and love both states.

Thanks again for your help.

Do you want to revisit Florida and SoCal?

We would visit it again, but also happy for suggestions for other places that we haven't seen? Northern Cali is of interest

Thanks

OK, my initial thoughts:

If you enjoy good beer and good coffee, I recommend Seattle and Portland, plus the rest of the Pacific Northwest. Both cities have lots to see and do and outside the cities are some of the best hiking trails around. Seattle has Pike Place Market and Chinatown, and Portland has some great craft beer and hip restaurants. Between Seattle and Portland is Mount St. Helens which is worth seeing. The Oregon Coast is drop dead beautiful. Both cities have a good local music scene. For Portland, check out the McMenamins properties for places to stay. http://www.mcmenamins.com/

You could easily spend a month driving from Southern California to Seattle, stopping for 3-4 days in each major city along the way. I've always wanted to drive up the Pacific Coast.

If you have any interest in seeing the Grand Canyon, that can be bundled with a Las Vegas trip.

If you have never been to New York City, then that should be a must...lots to see and do along the East Coast to combine it with.

Agreed. Boston to NYC to Philadelphia to Baltimore to D.C. could be fun too.

taking sparkchaser's initial thoughts and going forward. You haven't supplied much info so this will be like one of the stories that one person starts and others continue....

Day 1 - Fly UK - Chicago, take "L" into city
Day 2 - 4 - Chicago - jazz, blues, parks, pizza, museums, architecture boat cruise, go to Wrigley Field to see Cubs play baseball and take in a live band afterwards at local bars
Day 5 - 9 Fly Chicago to San Francisco, explore San Francisco and visit Napa - wine, culture, great food, interesting neighborhoods, daytrip to Muir woods for a hike, or ferry to Sausilito and visit galleries, shop
Day 10 - 13 Drive up coast to Oregon with 3 overnight stops along the way - small towns, hikes, great views of woods and oceans, visit Tillamook, make way over to Portland
Days 14 - 16 Portland - Pearl Street, Japanese Rose garden, great food and microbrews, visit wine country or go to the falls as a day trip
Days 17 - 20 Seattle - coffee, museums, Pike Place, music experience, day trip to Mt. Rainier
Day 21 Fly to Vegas
Day 22 Vegas, see a show, relax, enjoy the pools, gamble if you like
Day 23 - 24 Grand Canyon side trip, overnight, back to Vegas
Day 25 - Fly to New Orleans
Day 26 - 29 New Orleans - music, food (yum beignets and cajun and creole specialties like gumbo, shrimp), great walks, take a cooking class
Day 30 - Fly back to Chicago, overnight, see some live music, and last call for pizza
Day 31 - Fly to UK

or you can move the Chicago days to the end of trip and try to time to hit 4th of July celebrations, parties in Grant Park and fireworks over the lake.

just a few thoughts to get things going....

Thanks for all your advice, really appreciate it!

We have never used internal flights in America before, what are they prices like? We thought about hiring a car, but I guess we could see a lot more by flying!

I like that plan, POlson. It doesn't try to do too much. Well done.

And yes, New York would be great as we have never been!

Four hours north of San Francisco = Yosemite! Beautiful scenery! Stay at: http://www.nationalparkreservations....mite_lodge.php

Would it be impossible to fit in the following:

Chicago
New York
New Orleans
Houston
Vegas
San Francisco
Portland
Seattle

Also, if we used internal flights who would you book through and how far in advance?

What are trains like? Are they easily accessible?

Thanks

Trains are not great -- except on the Eastern corridor (between New York-Philadelphia-Washington -- they don't have a reputation for timeliness, plus of course, it takes a lot of time to go by train.

If I had a month, I'd probably spend about 12 days doing the northeast Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Washington and environs, then fly to Chicago for a few days, then to the west coast, and spend the rest of the time driving from Seattle-Portland-San Francisco-Big Sur, with side trips to Yosemite, Napa, etc.

I'd skip Houston because I've been there and see no reason to go out of your way to go there. I love New Orleans but it's an outlier (if you could come in early May instead I'd definitely recommend it for the JazzFest, which is a great, and not only jazz but all types of music, music festival).

If you were to fly, stopping for a few days in Chicago would be great.

Houston is hot and crazy humid with nothing really there that you can't see somewhere else.

Book your flights about 9 months out.

Would you suggest leaving New Orleans too, and just going from coast to coast?

My suggestion: Boston (2-3 days), New York (4-5 days), Philadelphia (1-2 days) and Washington D.C. (2-3 days) by train...Then fly to Chicago for a few days. Maybe then Denver and do a driving trip to some of the National Parks (7-10 days)....End up flying to San Francisco...Of course, you need to have a day between each of my suggestions for travel time and checking in and out of hotels.

OK - US travel is centered around cars and planes. Trains are few and far between (except fot he NE corridor from Boston down to DC).

Of the list of cities you asked about:

Houston (nothing really to see and do and the weather is hellish)

New Orleans (cute, interesting food, good for a couple of days - weather hellish)

Vegas (really boring unless you want to gamble - in the middle of a desert and really hellishy hot)

All of the others are fine and have from quite a bit to a huge amount (NYC - and DC which you are missing) to see and do.

If you want outdoors you can do GC and similar - or you can see some of the east coast - which is incredible in the summer - and would be very different from what yuo have seen before in the US.