In mid-March, I was thinking of taking greyhound from my current location on the east coast out to California. Is this a good way to see the country?
How about driving?
I recommend driving; buses are smelly, cramped and often filled with weirdos.
This is a horrible way to see the country.
The only things you will see are Greyhound stations in different cities, and I can tell you that no Greyhound station I have been to, from Maine to Miami, has ever been in a nice part of town.
Few cities west of Philadelphia are transit-friendly, so even once you get there, you will have limited mobility and ability to go see things you want to see.
Furthermore, you can’t just stop the bus to go see the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere or the world’s largest meteorite crater or the world’s largest covered wagon.
On top of all that, you’re going to be dealing with nasty, smelly, drunk, hung-over, proselytizing, seat-encroaching, drug-smuggling, creepy, belligerent, loud-music-playing, and just plain disagreeable people. And every time you get used to your seatmate’s quirks, he leaves and a new one comes on and the process starts all over again.
Greyhound is a great A-to-B method if you have absolutely no other way to get there. But if you want A-to-B-and-stuff-in-between, it’s much better to drive.
You get your own seat, your own schedule. You get to pick the food that you eat. You’re not limited to rest stops and seedy areas of big towns. You can take a random side way if there’s something you want to see. Most importantly, no fellow passengers.
Signed,
Scrappy, veteran of three long-ass Greyhound trips and three cross-country drives.
As are cars, quite often. 
Drive.
I think most people regard extended greyhound trips as rather hellish. As far as driving, it depends how much time you have to devote to the task - if you need to power through in five days it won’t be very enjoyable, whereas if you have two weeks it could be very fun, even relaxing maybe. (Google maps says NYC - SF = 43 hours of driving).
If you need to get straight through, I have heard great things about Amtrak’s California Zephyr service. It only takes 2 days from Chicago, IL, pretty neat, and takes in some spectacular scenery (obviously you have to get from wherever you are to Chicago first.)
Don’t do the bus ride unless there is no other way to travel. Agreed with all who have posted so far, but I also have to include the long ass layovers in the Greyhound terminals that you will be stuck with on a cross country trip. Most have dirty bathrooms and homeless people. You can’t sleep because you never know if the guy next to you will run off with your stuff the second you do.
SSG Schwartz
There’s nowhere I need to go so badly that you’d ever get me on a Greyhound bus again. I’d *walk *across the US first. Tell you what, go to a nearby bus station and check out the john: every one I’ve ever seen looked like a thermonuclear shit bomb went off inside. How else do you get shit on the walls, floor and ceiling? Or how about 12 hours with a crazy, screeching lady who wouldn’t shut up and a driver who did nothing about except threaten to throw her off the bus every 20 minutes for the whole 12 hours? She disembarked at her intended destination. And have you forgotten about the poor schmuck who got decapitated by the guy sitting next to him on the bus?
I took Amtrak from Oakland to New York and had a great time. You don’t really get to see much of the country though, except seeing the Rockies through the window. Other than that it’s mostly corn and desert, and obviously you don’t get to meet the local color.
You might want to check out The Green Tortoise. It’s a tour company that takes school buses, converts them to sleepers, and hauls hippies and Europeans around America and Mexico. There is a lot of bathing in hot springs and cooking communal feasts. I’ve done a couple trips with them and have some family members who are devotees. It’s a good halfway point between “crazy adventure” and “easy tour.” And it’s a pretty inexpensive way to travel.
Anyway, they do some cross-country trips and I think it’d be a lot of fun.
Buses in the US are not the nice, clean, comfortable way of getting around like they are in Turkey (best bus system in the world IMHO) or many other countries. Better to drive.
I did take the bus once from Reno to San Francisco. Once of the last people to board was a fellow who once on, stood at the front and addressed all the passengers “I’m the MAN… and I OWN this bus.” We dropped him off at a police station 40 miles up the road.
Just drive… save the bus trips for a country where they work.
Well, looks like there are no real cross-country Tortoise trips till June. But really, I’d highly recommend it if you can handle a slight hippy vibe, being in close quarters with travelers from all over the world (mostly Europe) and some small-scale roughing it.
That said, I don’t think Greyhound is the worst thing in the world. It’s true that the stations are usually pits and you will certainly meet some sketchy people. But it’s nowhere near the worst bus line in the world (that honor belongs to Luxe Voyage, out of Guider, Cameroon) and you always walk away with stories. A cross-country Greyhound trip isn’t something I’d embark on expecting to enjoy it. But I could see how it’d be worth it. If I had the money and nothing better to do, I’d do it. But chances are you probably can easily find something better to do…
Yeah, Greyhound travel is nothing to lose your head over. [sub]Sorry.[/sub]
In Ontario, at least, Greyhound has apparently bought up as many of the competing bus companies as it can. Then it cut service. The buses are nominally comfortable, but in reality Greyhound seems to have a motley collection of banged-up buses inherited from their former owners and still showing the old logos. (You never know what you’re going to get. One time the bus that picked me up in Madoc, Ontario, bore the Aeroports de Montreal logo!) I’ve often been on buses with broken seat backs that won’t stay up.
Oh, and long-distance bus travel in North America? Try not to. The bus goes straight through, not stopping for more than an hour at a time to gas up and change drivers and wipe the bug splatter off the front window. You get ‘rest breaks’ every four or five hours during the day. Hopefully they’re at a restaurant that serves edible food and has usable washrooms.
My friend took the bus from Toronto to Vancouver, and he said, “Never again”. And he’s a public-transit users and supporter in the city. Three days without a shower or a decent meal.
Oh, did I mention the food? One of the two worst meals I have ever had in my life was in the Sudbury bus station on an eleven-hour trip from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie.
Toronto to Montreal (sixish hours) is about the longest I’d recommend for bus travel. (The last time I did that, the bus broke down and the trip lasted 7.5.) You can take the train in 5 hours or less. Intercity buses are really best at regional service, not truly long-distance trips.
I’ll add, though, that the drivers do a great job dealing with all the crap.
Going transcontinental? Take the train. Fly. Drive.
If you’re really into nondescript highways, sketchy people, and new and exciting smells, go for it.
This.
Totally apart from how pleasant or unpleasant it is to actually ride the bus, once you get to the station, what will you do? How will you get around? The only way going Greyhound would be a good way to see the country is if you had friends in a lot of different cities who were willing to meet you at the station and show you around.
Even then, Amtrak may be cheaper and/or more comfortable.
As an east-coaster, you may not be prepared for how vast the country is, or how long the stretches of flat nothingness between cities or points of interest can be. Driving across the country can be interesting and enjoyable, but if you’re not careful it can also be tedious.
Wow, not one vote for greyhound. Okay, sounds like driving it is.
I see that rental cars often come with “unlimited mileage”. Hope they don’t mind a 5000+ mile round-trip. Or, maybe my parents (who are only a few hundred miles away) won’t mind if I borrow one of their cars for a while.
Also, would someone be so kind as to point out the “must stop” parts of the country. My guess is this list would include the Grand Canyon, Los Angeles, Denver…
Disregard… I’ll start a new thread.
Okay, as no one else is, I’ll defend this.
Back in 1980, I wanted to get a RailPass and tour the country. The only problem was, they didn’t have RailPasses for the US. I could, however, get a 30 day Bus Pass with Greyhound for $380.25 and get unlimited travel on the bus system.
So I did.
I was a poor grad student with very limited funds. I arranged to mooch off, uh…, stay with friends, relatives, and bare acquaintances. Wherever I didn’t know anyone, I stayed in college dorms (cheaper than motels, or even the Y).
I met lots of interesting folks, and no weirdos. I saw lots of the country.
I’m sure things have changed, but I suspect you could still get a good deal travelling by bus.
If I could afford to travel by car, I probably would have, but the bus is still an acceptable alternative.
One piece of advice – I was able to sweet-talk a copy of the nationwide schedule. If you can, get one. Nowadays, you can probably download it onto a datastick or something.
I did a Dayton, Ohio to Los Angles trip in the 70’s and it had it’s up’s and downs. The downside was every bus, and I mean EVERY bus, had a screaming baby on it. Luckily I brought headphones that covered my ears. If you go, ear plugs and noise canceling headsets would be a good idea.
Magiver, if it’s any consolation, you’ve earned Heaven, having already experienced Hell. 
The longest journey I’ve ever had on a Greyhound was 8 and a half hours, of nondescript highway. I finally understood the appeal of McDonalds et al. After driving for hours, anything, even a shitty burger joint would be a welcome distraction from the monotony. I regularly travel by bus in Ireland where they tend to pass through every little town (there are also express buses that stick to the main motorways), a pain in the arse as it is the journeys often have interesting sights.
The biggest problem is that there are vast stretches of the middle of this country that are nothing but uninteresting. I have no memory of making the east coast to west coast drive my family purportedly made when I was 2, but my mother assures me it was a nightmare.
I’ve made a halfway drive, LA to Dallas or Austin, and long parts of it were just boring as all get out. Which is to say that if you can at least have a comfortable environment while making that drive (a car you control instead of a bus you don’t), you’ll likely be better off.