east coast tour

[lucy_love_]

my bh wants some info on flying into new york, train to boston then driving to florida. also hitting some other places on the way maybe. going for 3/4 weeks. just getting a fly drive and maybe getting accomadation once over there. hes also on about going to virginia but i would like to go to sanfrancisco!!! he wants to do east coast. any ideas. anyone done anything like this.

thanks

love

lucy

 

[Mr-D]

If I was doing that I would fly in to Boston then trek south and include New York on the way.

D

 

[lucy_love_]

sorry yes bh did say that but he was talking too fast and i just wrote it in a dodgy order.

 

[kristieuk]

You may want to consider visiting a lot more places, but a couple of years ago, I flew to Boston, stayed there for a couple of days, then drove down to Cape Cod (couple of hours drive) where I stayed for a few days, taking in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, then drove to New York (about 5 hours drive). I didn't stay anywhere on the way down, but there were some lovely looking seaside towns in Connecticut.

After a week in New York, I flew to Florida (about a 4 hour flight), and stayed for three weeks before flying home.

I was travelling on my own, so the trip was pretty limited by that, but I would loved to have driven further down the east coast.

I can't help with the west coast, but I would highly recommend and east coast tour!

Good luck.

 

[disneyholic family]

remember that the US is a HUGE country and the driving times are a lot longer than you might think....
there are lots of amazingly beautiful and interesting places to visit just about anywhere in the country, but because of the distances, you really need to figure out how much time you have, how long it will take to drive and how much time you'd like to visit in each place..

to give you an idea of drive times, back when i was in university, a bunch of us drove from Baltimore down to Orlando (that's when we stayed in the tent in Fort Wilderness).....driving straight through, with only a stop to sleep in a roadside motel, it took us 2 full days of non-stop driving to get there.....and that's just from Baltimore which is already about 1/3 of the way down from NYC...

things are far away....

If I were driving down the east coast i'd make a point of stopping at Washington DC....(my husband is from washington and i did my dissertation research at the library of congress - a spectacular place)...
washington has many interesting places and is certainly worth at least a couple of days....

and of course if you've never been to New York City, well....that's a magnificent place and also well worth a few days to at least skim the top of what there is to see...

however, the fun part about roadtrips is just going along with the flow.....exploring all the little spots along the way....
not sticking to the big interstate but also driving along the scenic routes..
you'll mainly drive down I-95, but you really should venture off so that you can see the 'real' america......

there are probably good roadtrip guidebooks that you can use for ideas of what to see and where to drive....

there is a beautiful city in the southeast....charleston, south carolina?....i can't remember...actually there are lots of nice places in the south...and along the coasts of the carolinas....so many places, so little time...

and then there are the smokey mountains...and blue ridge mountains...
i grew up driving south along I-75 (and before it was finished along these little tiny country roads, through beautiful hill country)...

as for a road trip in the west....just driving along the coast of california is worth its own trip....and then if you have 2 months, you could do a coast to coast road trip.....that's something i've always wanted to do, but still haven't managed.....one day....

 

[UKDEB]

We spent 25 days doing this in April/May this year. Having been to New York twice before, we decided to fly into Washington DC. We spent 3 nights there, then drove down the Skyline Drive through the Appalachians with a stopover at Roanoke and then on to the Blue Ridge Parkway where we spent two nights in a log cabin in the mountains. From there we took in Charleston and Savannah and finished up in Orlando for two weeks.

There were several other places we could have taken in (Atlanta and St Augustine were both in the orginal plan), but it's difficult to work out how long each leg will take and how long you think you'll want to spend at each place, so we decided not to try to cram in too much.

Initially, we thought it would be nice to just wing it and stop as and when we felt like it, but we started to get a bit nervous about that as the trip got closer and we ended up booking most of the hotels before we left. I'm particularly glad we did when it came to Charleston and Savannah - we had trouble getting somewhere. I think you'd be OK if you just wanted Travel Inn style accommodation.

We did around 1200 miles in total. We initially planned on 11 days to travel down and then 2 weeks in Orlando. By the time we reached Savannah (9 days) we'd all had enough of living out of suitcases and were all keen to just settle somewhere, so we missed St Augustine and drove straight from Savannah to Orlando.

The speed limit on the Skyline Drive is 35mph and on the Blue Ridge Parkway it's 45mph. That made for some very pleasant, leisurely driving and for a good proportion of the trip, we hardly saw another human being.

All the places we visited were fabulous, but DC was the surprise highlight. I don't think any of us had any huge expectations about it, which probably helped. All the tourist attractions are 'must sees'. We were lucky to catch the tail end of the cherry blossom - the Tidal Basin was stunning. We almost didn't bother with Arlington Cemetry - it's a little further out across the Potomac and we were all shattered having walked for miles on our first day. However, we felt obliged to do it and hopped on the Metro - we were all so glad we made the effort.

 

[julie d' tooth fairy]

Hi Lucy,
I would defiantly recommend touring the US, although we my DH (BBF – Big BORO FAN!) & I haven’t done the east coast tour, we have been to Boston, Philly, New York, Washington and Norfolk (Virginia) and on a number of these trips we drove to Orlando for a few days.
My DH is in the Royal Navy and I have flown out to visit him when whatever ship he was on at the time was in port all over the US.
So I can say that although it has been some time since I (we) visited some of the places listed below they are all worth a visit.
Boston is great, New York is amazing and if you like the ‘Waltons’ driving along the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia is outstanding…we spend a day driving along it and I wished we hadn’t booked our hotel for 10 days in Virginia Beach (Norfolk) as the trip along the Blue Ridge was only supposed to be a day trip and we were planning to return to the hotel, but once we were up there we wished we’d checked out of the hotel and picked up a motel along the ridge.
We did our most adventurous trip to date last year, but this was the west coast, flying in to San Francisco and staying there for 3 nights was brilliant, doing all the usual tourist stuff, pier 49, golden gate bridge and of course Alcatraz.
From SF we drove for 5 hours to Yosemite National Park and spent 3 nights in the park (DH is a photographer and would have loved to have spent 2 weeks here) breath taking scenery.
From Yos a 6 hour drive to a small mining village (Tonopah http://www.tonopahnevada.com/TonopahHistoricMiningPark.htm) with an over night stay, up early next morning and we set off for Death Valley (DV), we got all the way to the ranger station (4 hours later) at the entrance to DV but the road was closed due to flash floods! So we turned around and drove around DV another 6 hours till we arrived at another small village near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (GC) called Kanab (http://www.kaneutah.com/) and spent the night here.
Next morning we drove to the North Rim and spent the morning there and then set off for the South Rim via Area 51 and the little A’le’Inn (http://www.littlealeinn.com/) of the CG National Park (The main tourist area) and stayed in a small log cabin on the rim of the canyon for 4 nights which was out of this world and again my DH was in heaven with his photography…If you go do the Helicopter flight a real must!
From GC we headed for the Hoover Dam (massive) and in to Vegas for a weeks rest in the Luxor, and if you like WDW the Vegas is WDW on acid for adults, some may say it’s a bit tacky but we felt it was good value for money and we had a hoot!
From Vegas we drove the 5 hours to LA for 4 nights and the compulsory trip to DL and Universal, which rounded the trip off nicely.
I think we drove about 2500 miles…well I drove for 15miles DH did the rest…lol, on reflection at times the convertible wasn’t such a good idea. My DH booked it all on the Internet I think the whole trip ended up costing about £3500, but he did get military discount in all of the hotel we stayed in.
I would really recommend driving, yes it can be tiring but you see things you just wouldn’t seen normally I guess you could call it the real America and as long as you plan a few days of rest towards the end of the trip you’ll be fine.
Go for it girl…

Julie

 

[Queenie]

I'm planning on doing something like this soon so I can give you a few links:

www.amtrak.com (train schedules, prices and booking)
www.orbitz.com (internal US flights)
www.greyhound.com (coaches)

I've looked at a few tours. Los Angeles - Las Vegas - Orlando over 2 weeks cost us £692.30 each for flights to and from the USA, a coach from LA to Vegas, an internal flight from Vegas to Orlando, car hire for a week in Orlando and all the hotels.
A train based trip down the east coast starting in NYC going down to Philadelphia, then Washington DC, then Orlando cost us £213 each for the train alone with Amtrak.

PM me if you want any details. Good luck!

 

[lucy_love_]

thanks everyone for the advice.

well have a good look at those links and take in what you all said. it sounds fantastic.

im already excited about this years hol. so ill get that out the way. one of my best freinds has close family in nantucket. shes been a few times and loves it there.

thanks again

love

lucy

 

[pmcpmc]

lucky to have family all the way down the east coast.
Last year we spent seven weeks on holiday .
We flew into Boston, my wife,myself and DD(13)
We spent the first week in Boston with family .then we travelled to Rhode Island to stay with an aunt.
From there to Springfield Mass. to a cousin.From there to Niagra Falls and then back to Boston for our flight to Orlando.
We stayed three weeks in BWV and then flew back to boston for a christening.
When the festivities were over we drove to New York,Washington,virginia Pittsburg and back to boston.
You really have to decide what you want to see as there is so much.

 

[lucy_love_]

that sounds fantastic pmc.

the only family that i have who live away is my brother in ipswitch and were going there on thursday for 4 days. LOL

love

lucy