Worthy of note is rental car rates in the US do not include any kind of liablity insurance of collision damage waiver. You can double the rental cost if you want or need all the add-ons.
40?!
On the road from Ely to Tonopah (US route 6), the sign says (and is accurate)… Next Services 160 Miles.
Up in Northern Nevada there is one saying over 200 miles.
LA - Death Valley - Vegas - Grand Canyon - 4 Corners - Los Alomos - Santa Fe - Alburquerqe - Roswell - White Sands - El Paso - Las Cruces - Tuscon - Casa Grande - Mexicali -San Diego - LA.
A lot of driving but doable in four weeks. Very unlike anything in NZ, I’d imagine. I’d recommend mid Fall (N hemisphere) - days still longish, not as hot as Summer, past Summer tourist season but before Winter tourist season, so not as crowded.
Personally I love the Arizona Metor Crater.
Maybe after the Grand Canyon you can drive east on I-40 in the morning out to it and take a look and then head back to Vegas. The Grand Canyon took millions of years to be cut out by a river. This took at about 3 seconds.
Point Lobos State Reserve is a spectacularly beautiful park just south of Monterey. This would be a good place to visit on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Monterey Bay Aquarium is another great place to visit. It takes at least a few hours to see the whole thing.
Yes. Hearst Castle and the town of Solvang are also good stops along that drive. Santa Cruz is a fun inexpensive town friendly to tourists. At the S.F. end, continuing in almost any direction leads to interesting options. (I disliked the suggestion that the trip should be spent, instead, driving back and forth across the Great Southwest Desert. :smack: )
BTW, I’ve heard that the truly marvelous Monterey Bay Aquarium was David Packard’s response when his daughter Julie asked him for an aquarium for her 16th birthday. 
If you are in Northern California and interested in the town that build San Fransico TWICE go on I80 E to Reno then swing off to Virginia City. Then you could take in Tahoe, pretty Glacier lake…but you have those in Kiwi Land:)
This looks like a wonderful trip to me. I’ve been to all those places and loved it. The drive between them, in spite of some of the posters opinions, is as much of the pleasure of the trip as the destination areas.
Enjoy.
If you mean September, that’s a good time to visit San Francisco. The city has lots of fog in summer proper, but in September it clears up and the weather is usually pretty nice. It can cool off at the end of the month, though.
Two National Parks should be part of any trip to that area: Bryce and Arches. There’s nothing else like them in the world.
Here is a [thread=568968]thread from 2010[/thread] my wife started about our trip to the US Southwest, with links to other SDMB threads. I’d love to go back to Zion. I feel like I’ve seen Bryce, except for long hikes in the canyon itself (where I think I’d be guaranteed to get lost). Staying in Kanab worked well for us, but your trip is looking to be very different.
Another thing to keep in mind while touring the Southwest is the altitude. When we were at the scenic overlooks in Bryce Canyon National Park, I found myself getting out of breath very quickly as I walked up. I’m in my early 50s, overweight, and out of shape, but even so the altitude effects surprised me. I forget the parks’ altitude at the base, but the scenic overlooks were all on a canyon rim that was even higher up.
Here’s another [thread=621187]thread from 2011[/thread] about touring the Southwest.
Have fun! Let us know what you end up doing!
Thanks for the continued inputs to this thread. I wasn’t on the computer over the weekend so have only just caught up.
I’ve been told that we should be planning to be in the LA area between May and August. We have a good friend who lives near Anaheim and is planning a familyfest and asks that we plan for sometime around then. That may make some difference to places we can go.
We’ve still only got 4-5 weeks to spend otherwise it gets too expensive for me, even with great friends to see and stay with.
I appreciate the Google maps reference, but I’d like to travel the Pacific Coast highway and may miss out on Glacier National Park and some of the PNW. I too have heard it’s a lot like NZ.
My partner has said he has no problem with the sort of distance that’s on the Google map (about 5000 miles), although I’m a little concerned. But it does mean we could do a circular trip and not do any one way rentals. I’ll check rental car rates for that sort of usage.
He also wondered whether we could use camping grounds. I don’t know what they are like or how they compare with NZ ones. We have many seaside ones that have 15-20 x 30-40 foot lots where you could pitch a tent or park a caravan and car. They also have communal kitchens and ablution blocks. Like this one at Ohope Beach. Anyone got any experience with them?
One thing that comes to mind when mentioning the time of year is that so many references online are made to spring, summer and fall. It’s not automatic for me to be able to put that in months of the year. In NZ, spring is September to November, summer December to February and autumn (fall) is March to May. I know intellectually the northern hemisphere seasons, but not instinctively so if people could help me out with months rather than seasons, I’d appreciate it.
Pretty much all state and federal campgrounds have tent-only areas for your convenience. They have the added benefit of being cheap. On weekends they can fill up pretty quickly, particularly once school is out (June-August).
Campsites are all over the place and vary greatly in price, accoutrements, availability, and beauty. Most of the state campgrounds are pretty nice but may or may not have showers or flush toilets. Campgrounds have various degrees of popularity. Yosemite Valley in particular has very limited availability, although it has a small number of sites set aside for first come first serve. This would entail arriving at the camp reservation office well before dawn and driving at night to do this. This unfortunately would cause you to miss most of the spectacular drive into the park. Camping is less crowded before Memorial Day and after Labor Day.
If I were you, I’d consider just going to a Mega Sports Mart and buy a cheap tent, sleeping bags and an ice chest and then give that shit away at the end.
That’s how we got our last lot of camp gear. In Christchurch, we met an English couple touring NZ and they gave us their tent, sleeping bags and other stuff as they left for the airport on their way home.
Most rental cars offer unlimited miles and can be driven in any US state or Canadian province. The major exception is Enterprise, which is more geared to locals needing a car while their’s is in the shop or needing a van to drive the soccer team to a tournament than vacation rentals. Dollar, Thrifty, Avis, and Budget ban smoking in their in practice and in theory, Enterprise and Alamo do in theory only, and Hertz and National allow smoking.
The US doesn’t really have the New Zealand hut system, where there’s a central building for cooking and hanging out, although there may be a trail center or visitors center that may or may not be adjacent to the campgound. Often there might be charcoal grills in the picnic area. There will usually be an outdoor picnic table and a fire grate at each campsite.
Second that. Seems like everything in the SW is between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. Our first stop three weeks ago was at the Grand Canyon, and we were gasping for air after a short hike (both of us 65). We seem to have become acclimated at this point and don’t have that problem, although we tire more quickly than at sea level. Off to Arches and Canyonlands today!
I haven’t been to NZ, but have camped in Aus and the US so may have a basis for comparison. In the US campgrounds tend to have well demarcated spots each with a table and fire pit, and do not tend to have communal cooking facilities ( vice versa in Oz). Most that are near the beaten path will have flush toilets, but usually only the larger ones will have showers. All but the most primative will have running potable water of some sort. They do fill up, and many now take web reservations. If you are planning to go to popular places, I would get on their websites now and make a res as soon as you can. Many will only let you do it within 6 months. As for cooking on the road, while at the mega camp store you could get a burner that attaches to a dispo propane tank. Good for heating up soup, boliling a kettle. If you are planning to go anywhere near No Cal and especially the PNW, make provisions for rain, as it can and will happen any time. In fact, if you are going to go as far north as Olympic Peninsula, you could go to a bonifide rain forrest.
Actually that’s a good route and season. Add in Carlsbad Caverns just down the road from Roswell.
Two thoughts Kiwi Fruit (from another Kiwi):
The western USA is vast and you risk spending most of your time on the road. Initially that’s exciting but after day 3, it starts to pall.
Many kind people suggest journeys which include mountains and coasts. We have those in abundance in NZ and volcanoes and hot-pools. The NW and British Columbia are a lot like NZ.
IMHO and based on my own experiences, you will be enriched by the South-west. The places I haven’t visited are Las Vegas and Death Valley but want to one day.
Time and fatigue can be your enemy. As with Australia, you are better to take a modest bite, walk a bit in various places because you’ll remember much more than if you try to hit every spot. For example Yellowstone is nice as are the Tetons but not extraordinary to you. By comparison NZ has nothing like the Southern Utah canyonlands.
The 4000 mile, shorter but truer, Southwestern trip.
You can easily spend a week in Arizona, a week in New Mexico, and 9 or 10 days each in Utah and California, with a weekend in Vegas. I got rid of the more foresty type destinations since stuff looks too much like NZ (except Yosemite…there’s a lot more than trees there). I would not start any earlier than the second week of September, some places will be past the peak heat of summer, but will still be quite warm (and hot…like Death Valley 105-115F), but more comfortable than July or August with less traffic all around.
Of course, you can reverse the loop if you prefer the Coastal/Yosemite trip before the deserty Southwest portion.