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So me and my soon-to-be wife are planning on going on a road trip out west for our honeymoon. It may seem like an odd choice, but she's never been past New Orleans (we're East Coasters), we've talked for years about road-tripping and never done it, we love travelling and the outdoors, and we have about 3 weeks after our wedding before we have to get back to work.
What we don't have is a lot of money. Well, I should say that we don't think we have a lot of money. We're going to use most of what we get from our wedding to pay for the trip, and since we don't know how much that will be we're going on the assumption that it won't be a lot. So, we're looking for cheap places to stay and places to go from Florida to California. We are not high-class people looking for cheap nice places to stay. We're just looking for cheap places. We'll have a tent, so camping is definitely an option, though it is our honeymoon so we'll want a bed some times .
But yeah, neither of us have ever done anything like this before, so if anyone has any advice or specific suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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When will this trip be taking place approximately?
I think hiking the rocky mountains is spectacular, I'd offer to let you spend the night at me and the wife's apartment, unfortunately besides a bed I only have one couch and one love seat. If that still suits you let me know, cheap as free over here.
There's also quite a few hatrackers in Salt Lake City, if that interests you, maybe we could all catch lunch. I think temple square is worth visiting at least once, there's also the zoo. But again Rocky Mountains = Win.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Are either of you members of AAA? Or the military (or anything else that could possibly get you a discount at hotels and motels)? Or do you know anyone who is? They have great tour books and also can put together a Trip Tick (sp?) to follow precisely the route (complete with stops) where you plan to take. You could also check out the local library's collection of tour books, too. Make a topic for research. My mom was always able to find really neat yet obscure places to visit on our family vacations by browsing tour books.
As far as possible places to go, my brother and I traveled back to the East Coast from Colorado (which is a sight in and of itself!) over a few days. The highlight for me was Mammoth Cave (I do believe that's the name) in Missouri. He really thought the museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base was cool. Of course, he's in the AF, so...
Posts: 691 | Registered: Nov 2008
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Be careful with TripTix. My friend friends and I used them for a two week fast paced East Coast road trip and they took us in the wrong direction several times. We ended up abandoning them halfway through the trip. To be fair to AAA though, half the wrong directions were the fault of my friends not looking up the correct addresses for some of our stops, but the other half were AAA's fault. I checked them all when we got back.
We went to Mammoth Cave on our trip, and I'd say it was easily in the top three of things we did, and we did a LOT of stuff.
The only things that really would stand out for me on an east/west trip if you're traveling across the lower US would be Diamond Crater State Park in I think Arkansas, and the foresty things in southern California like the petrified forests and the Joshua trees.
I'd consider doing a sort of zigzag, going up to KY to see Mammoth Caves, then over to Arkansas to see Diamond Crater, then go straight up to Mt. Rushmore, maybe stop on the way and see some goofy stuff like the Corn Palace or Carhenge. Then I'd go across the upper states and see Yellowstone and Glacier National Park (while it's still there), then work my way down California to the stuff down there and then come back along the southern route.
Plenty of great camping in there, but there should also either be cheap cabins to rent in some of those places or youth hostels when you get into the larger cities. Everything I just mentioned should be really cheap. Admission to state and national parks is either free or really cheap I believe, and the tours at Mammoth Cave aren't too expensive if you only do one or two. They sell little "mining" kits at Diamond Crater so you can search for your own diamonds, and people find them all the time. Someone found one last year that was a couple carats, canary yellow, worth like $16K. The guy named it after his wife, who really, really didn't want to be there.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Ah, okay... Saying Mammoth Cave was in Missouri was a result of some mixed memories. We thought about going to Mammoth Cave (in KY) but ended up going to, I believe, Onondaga State Park in Missouri and toured the cave the park was named after. Glad we cleared that up. Posts: 691 | Registered: Nov 2008
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By the way, the glaciers at glacier were never the cool things to see anyway. It is the things the glaciers formed. We now get to see MORE of them with all that pesky snow melting...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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