Here's a little background. I am thinking about hiring a car and travelling through Nth America. I live in Australia. by through america i mean coast to coast, visiting only the major cities in canada. ofcourse there will be major zig-zaging involced but i figure most of middle america can be skiped, right or wrong? Can we go through and name 30 or so destinations which are must see/must visits. Also, has anyone had experience donig this? How much would a car cost for 6 weeks? could it be done in 6 weeks? Genreal thoughts on the subject? how much roughly do you think it would cost? would it be better to hire a van to sleep in? tehre would be two of us, both mid-twenties (brothers).
may i ask why you're sticking only to canada? i'll just name the few cities i've been to in canada, which i would highly recommend visiting. vancouver, calgary, toronto, and montreal. by my estimation, you could dive coast to coast and spend a day in each major city and be done with canada in about 2 weeks time.
It takes 4 days to drive from Coast to Coast without almost any stops and any zigzagging. I think the must see cities would have to be LA, San Francisco, and New York City and maybe Miami. Seattle and Vancouver are also very nice. If you want to see some beautiful landscape, I would add Colorado and Utah in the mix.
I would skip LA as there isn't much to see other than Hollywood stuff. Otherwise its a really crappy town, imo. Sorry LA dwellers. I agree with Vancouver. I think its in the top 4 cities in all of North America. The other three are NYC, San Fran, and Boston. Middle America has Chicago, which is also a great place. If you make it to Vancouver, you have to visit Victoria, B.C as well. That place is majestic. Personally, I like Seattle alot, but don't think there is much tourist stuff there.
If you're going this month, don't forget about the Spring Break destinations. Lots of sexy co-ed girls. I know there's South Padre here in Texas. However if you're in Texas, don't forget to catch a Rocket's game
Oh no it wont be this month, or anytime too soon. At earliest it would be August/September. Rodrick, just to clarify - i meant North America as in the continent (USA and Canada)
I guess part of it depends what your looking for. Do you want big cities with a night life, scenic drives, historic places etc.....
He has 6 weeks, why not try both. Plus the scenic places are good for pictures that you might want later on to put as your display pic on friendster, facebook, or myspace
You said "in" when I believe you meant to say, "and" Canada.......I think that is where the Rodrick was led astray. Your plan is not a bad one as most car rentals (especially if you rent and drop off at the same location) do not charge for miles). Car rental prices though can vary greatly, so I'd do some checking at a few different viable locations (ie.....it might cost you $500 more on airfare to fly into and out of a different destination, but if six weeks or so of car rentals save you more than $500, you might save money to fly in somewhere else). Anyhoo.....there is a LOT to see in North America, so in six weeks, you'd only be able to catch the highlights. My wife and I have done a lot of driving trips, so my advice would be this: plan for an average of 500 miles a day on your "driving" days. You'll have days where you drive more, but some where you'll drive less as well............500 is just an average. Five hundred may not sound like a lot, but even if you average 70 miles an hour, that is still over 7 hours a day. You have to stop and eat, make pit stops and what-not-----eight hours behind the wheel makes for a long day. Plan for an absolute bare minimum of two visiting days for each driving day. You've got to slow down and smell the flowers, or you'll end up being miserable from all of the driving. Many of the destinations you'll want to see will require more than two days just to see the highlights. If you were to minimize the zig zagging and just do a big loop hitting both costs, northern USA (and southern Canada) and southern USA, you'd have a bare minimum of 10,000 miles, so using my little guidance above, that is a bare minimum of 60 days...........probably more. In other words, you may have to cut some corners somewhere in order to fit your budgetary (time and money) constraints. Also, unless you are completely without a soul, I wouldn't relegate your trip to just cities........some of the countryside in America and Canada (especially national parks) is absolutely breathtaking. If I were doing it, it would be like this (I'm going to assume a loop starting in NYC, but you could start in any city in the loop). Be forewarned, I've travelled the states fairly well, but there's plenty to see........so plenty I've missed. I'll also put a number next to each destination as to how many full days I think you should plan to stay there and visit (bear in mind---you could spend weeks at many of these destinations, and not see everything) NYC 3 Boston 2 Portland, ME 1 Bar Harbour; Acadia National Park 1 Quebec city 1 Montreal 2 Toronto 2 Chicago 3 Badlands, Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore 2 Yellowstone, Jackson Hole and Grand Tetons 4 Glacier Nat'l Park and Waterton Nat'l Park 2 Calgary and Banff/Lake Louise 2 Vancouver 3 Victoria 2 Seattle 2 Portland and surrounding countryside (wine country if you like it, Cannon beach) 2 Northern California and Napa/Sonoma 2 San Fran 2 Pacific Coast Highway and cities between San Fran and LA 4 (much of this will be driving as well..........but much of it breathtaking). LA 2 San Diego and surrounding 2 Phoenix 1 or 2 Sedona 1 Grand Canyon 1 or 2 Vegas 2 National Parks in Southern Utah (Bryce, Zion, Canyonlands, Arches, etc.) 4 Colorado 3 (there's a lot of pretty areas here.........hard to go wrong, but you won't have time to visit every gorgeous little town in the mountains) Santa Fe 1 Dallas (a few hours here should be sufficient to hate it) Austin 2 San Antonio 1 Houston 1 New Orleans 2 Everglades 1 Miami 2 Keys 2 Orlando 2 Savannah 1 DC 4 Philly 2 back to NYC
If you do come to houston, make it a weekend so you can play with the guys from here. We have a really nice downtown area and nasa. who would wanna miss out on nasa?
Well as a Canadian, there's lots of stuff you could do up here. I'd recommend Niagara Falls (view it from the Canadian side, it's much better, and the Maid of the Mist ship is a must), the East Coast (Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia etc) are beautiful and a great location to begin or end your trip. If you zig-zag between Canada and the States, you could zig down to the the northern US states, like New Hampshire, then zag back into Canada somewhere in Quebec and check out Quebec City. IMO, Quebec City has much more of a distinct flavour than Montreal and the Quebequois culture is very unique. Ottawa is also a great city to visit. In the middle of Canada, Banff National Park is a big spot to see, but it's mostly farmland otherwise in those provinces. Then you could head over to Vancouver. I know you're going to the US too so skip over some of these places, I'd probably recommend the middle. Maybe go down to the US after Niagara and just come back up to Vancouver to end your trip?
I would recommend zig-zag between U.S. and Canada as well. Starts at Settle, then go through Vancouver, Banff, Yellow Stone, Chicago, Toronto, Quebec City, Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia. That would be quite a trip.
you were looking for a cost estimate... I don't know how much a 6 month car rental would cost you...you can try sites like travelocity or such to get a price, but I assume it would not be at all cheap. Couple that with the cost of gas and its going to be quite expensive to drive around north america for that long. Others things to consider: 1. buy a gps that works in north america, you can get a good one cheap online. I would recommend garmins. 2. make sure that you have the correct liscencing etc/ not sure but out of country liscence may also cost you a premeium when you rent a car.
