Leondean -
As you can imagine, a "best route" is entirely subjective. A lot
depends on interests and there's so much supplemental research that
you can do about local areas. So I'm going to map this out given what
I know from travel in 48 or the 50 states and put in a lot of personal
preferences - including camping and biking.
Even if the car is smaller, a folding bike or bike racks are viable
options. And bike rental is widely available if you're not interested
in traveling with two extra wheels.
After Sept. 1, campgrounds in state and national parks empty, as the
school year starts anew after the American Labor Day, which happens to
fall on Sept. 1 this year. Weather is pleasant in the northern
climates through mid-October. Harvests are occurring across the
country during the first two months.
Internet access is readily accessible through phones in any American
chain hotels. An excellent resource in looking at travel and
distances is:
Mapquest
www.mapquest.com
A good road guide for the entire country is the Rand-McNally road
atlas:
http://www.randmcnally.com/
SEPT. 1-8: SAN FRANCISCO AREA
San Francisco is an extremely cosmopolitan city and a good place to
stay to let your personal time clock catch up. Some events happening
during that week are listed at the Convention & Visitor's Bureau:
http://www.sfvisitor.org/
The Bay Area is fascinating, with an abundance of museums and
theaters. Though you may not be a fan of American baseball, one of
the highlights of the city is Pac Bell Park, a baseball stadium built
right in the neighborhood and not too far from Fisherman's Wharf:
SFGate.com
"Pacific Bell Park"
http://www.sfgate.com/pacbellpark/
Other city favorites not to be missed are:
* traveling by cable car
* a trip to Alcatraz - which starts at Fisherman's Wharf, a tourist
center of the city. This website has a very good description of the
city neighborhoods, including the Wharf:
http://www.sfgate.com/traveler/guide/sf/neighborhoods/wharf.shtml
* other water-based options include taking the ferry across the Bay
to Sausalito and harbor tours, including dinner tours
* the Pacific beaches and Golden Gate Park - and near the park,
overlooking the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the Cliff House
restaurant:
theinsider.com
"The Cliff House"
http://www.theinsider.com/SF/Attractions/CliffHouse.htm
If you get bored, I'd head SOUTH through Silicon Valley. There's an
amusement park not far from Intel in Santa Clara:
Paramount's Great America
http://www.pgathrills.com/visit_directions.jsp
But I'd probably continue on to Santa Cruz - taking CA17 through the
Santa Cruz Mountains -- and visit the park there and hop about the
town. More picturesque is Monterey, CA, just south on Highway 1 - the
Coast Road. The Monterey Aquarium is know as one of the country's
finest:
http://www.mbayaq.org/
Pebble Beach has several stunning golf courses and there are tours of
the gated community there. Sea lions and other sea life is abundant
on the rocks just offshore. Carmel, just south of Monterey is a
quaint town of cottages and has Clint Eastwood as its former mayor.
The trip to Carmel is about 2 hours from San Francisco.
You may wish to continue down this rugged portion of the coast as far
as San Simeon:
Hearst Castle, which is another 160 miles south of Monterey:
http://www.hearstcastle.org/
In returning to San Francisco from Monterey, I'd highly recommend
going through Castroville-Prunedale-Gilroy and stopping to enjoy
locally grown fruits and vegetables - particularly artichokes. Gilroy
is known as the "Garlic Capital" and serves it in more forms than
you'd ever guess possible.
SEPT. 9-15: THE TRIP NORTH
Leaving San Francisco, the trip north should be made on U.S. 101, as
it will take you through Berkeley and into the Sonoma Valley.
Berkeley is home not just to a university of reknown, but also to a
restaurant of renown:
Chez Panisse
http://www.chezpanisse.com/
You can hop one valley east to Napa Valley, if there are particular
American wineries that interest you, but the Sonoma Valley around
Santa Rosa have dozens of wineries and restaurants. Napa is a bit
more compact and is easier to cycle than the hillier Sonoma County.
This isn't a long trip, but I'd plan a day in the wine country, then
head up the coast on day 2, taking CA116 out of Santa Rosa to the
coast. Jenner-by-the-Sea has an excellent inn and restaurant at the
mouth of the Russian River:
Jenner Inn
http://www.jennerinn.com/InnLight/history.html
Plan to stay on the coast for the next several days. Mendocino, an
arts community is about 80 miles north of Jenner. Mendocino to Eureka
is another 120 miles. Eureka/Arcata/Samoa is an old fishing-logging
town with an interesting city center in Eureka. Nearby are the famous
redwood forests:
Humboldt Redwoods State Park
http://www.humboldtredwoods.org/
Coastal access is very good here and there are some local institutions
that are interesting around Humboldt Bay, including a cookhouse
serving up what the loggers would get:
Samoa Cookhouse
http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/3772/samoa.html
An old blimp hangar that's now a bed-and-breakfast, very near the
shore:
Samoa B&B
http://www.northcoast.com/~airbb/places.html
Day 3 or 4 should take you into Oregon. At Gold Beach it is worth
going up the Rogue River into the wilderness area for camping or
rafting:
Rogue River Raft, Inc.
http://www.rogueriverraft.com/Rogue-river-rafting.html
Day 5 or 6, continue another 200 miles north along the coast. The
sites are continually changing and at Newport, OR you'll find an
excellent aquarium which housed Keiko (of movie fame in "Free Willy")
prior to his release in Norway:
Oregon Coast Aquarium
http://www.aquarium.org/
North of Lincoln City we'll head you inland towards Portland (though
there's no reason not to continue on the coast). McMinnville is a
delightful town on the way to Portland with an unusual creation of the
late Howard Hughes - an 8-engine plywood float plane that was only in
the air once, briefly:
Evergreen Aviation Museum
http://www.sprucegoose.org/
And we'll wind up the week in the city named the Rose City, Portland,
OR. For any American cities, there are excellent Internet resource
sites such as:
Citysearch
http://portland.citysearch.com/
But don't neglect the local newspapers like the Portland Oregonian.
When you're in the city, weekend entertainment guides are most-often
published on Fridays. Here's the Oregonian's weblink:
http://www.oregonlive.com/
SEPT. 16-22: WASHINGTON STATE
Just north of the Columbia River and about 50 miles off the interstate
is the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, which has excellent
visitors centers in the middle of the devastation of the 1980 blast.
This is a heavily-forested area and very interesting, as there are
lava tubes on the south side of the mountain. You can also climb
5,500' from the base camp (which has excellent camping) to the top of
the volcano, a hike that takes about 5 hours up and 3 hours down:
Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/
But we've got to get you through the best of Washington state and on
the way back south, eventually to Las Vegas. So on day 2, we'll send
you to Seattle. The Seattle Times has an excellent outdoor guide to
the area:
Seattle Times
http://www.nwsource.com/travel/scr/?pageid=WA
This researcher actually lives in the area and would recommend taking
2 days and doing the following:
* take the ferry out to Bainbridge Island for lunch
* DO NOT miss the tour of the Boeing factory. It will take you only
1/2 day:
http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/tours/
* make a stop at the Pike Place Public Market for provisions:
http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/
* go to the locks in Ballard and watch the salmon moving through the
fish ladders:
http://www.cityofseattle.net/tour/locks.htm
Seattle has excellent bike trails; a dinner train; dinner cruise lines
that tour the area.
On day 5, we're sending you north into the San Juan Islands. To do
that you'll drive north on Interstate 5 to Anacortes. The slower,
much more picturesque route is to take the Mukilteo ferry to Whidbey
Island, then drive to Anacortes. You'll be taking the ferry to the
town of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, where you can bike the
island - or rent a motorbike at the ferry dock. Here's the best way
to see what you'll be getting into. Here's the ferry schedule and
glimpse into the islands:
Washington State Ferries
Anacortes-San Juan Island
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/schedules/current/index.cfm?route=ana-sj
IslandCam
http://www.islandcam.com/
Spend a day, perhaps the night on the island. It's the site of the
Pig War, in which England the United States nearly came to blows over
possession of San Juan Island. Orca whales are easy to spot from
shore, but there are also excellent whale watching trips from the
harbor:
Western Prince Cruises
http://www.orcawhalewatch.com/
On day 6-7, we're sending across the Cascade Mountains, out of Friday
harbor on the ferry back to Anacortes. From Anacortes, head straight
east on WA 20, through the mountains to Winthrop, WA. You'll go
through wonderful high mountain landscapes and end up in a cowboy town
with wooden sidewalks:
Winthrop, WA
http://www.winthropwashington.com/retail.html
Having crossed the mountains, you'll be in a much drier climate.
There's lots to do in Winthrop, Chelan (which sits at the foot of a
60-mile long Alpine lake) but we're sending you south now - inside the
mountains and on the way to Lost Wages (err, Las Vegas).
SEPT. 23 - 29: BACK SOUTH THROUGH THE PARKS
It's south now, through the fruit-and-wine country of eastern
Washington during harvest season. From Winthrop, you're headed south
to Yakima (through Chelan, Wenatchee and Ellensburg) - then down
through the Dalles on U.S. 97. Follow U.S. 97 across the Columbia
River and plan on stopping in the Bend or Sunriver area. You're
re-entering an area of high volcanic activity, including Three Sisters
and Crater Lake. Sunriver is a resort community not far from Mt.
Bachelor and an interesting possible stop - but there are lokes of
parks in the area.
Day 2's goal should be Crater Lake National Park:
http://www.nps.gov/crla/
If you can arrange lodging at the park, it's spectacular but
reservations generally are a long time in advance. The crater itself
is fairly high, so it will be cool (and possibly have already received
some snow) but there are lots of national forest campgrounds at lower
altitude nearby. Note that there's a once-daily cruise on the lake -
it's worth catching.
Day 3: continue south on U.S. 87 - we're sending you down the east
side of Mt. Shasta now and into the Central Valley of California. If
you get a chance, the lake area around Redding, CA is spectacular, but
right now the goal is to get you down to Sacramento. Sacramento was
the real jumping off point for the trans-continental railroad built
after the American Civil War and has an excellent old town center and
railroad museum:
California State Railroad Museum
http://www.csrmf.org/
It's time for a choice now: you can go east through the Sierra Nevada
mountains into Reno or the Lake Tahoe area - or you can can go south
along CA 49 through all of the old gold-mining towns. In either case,
we'll get you to Yosemite National Park.
Reno's the gambling center of northern Nevada, with some of the same
entertainment that you'll find in Las Vegas, but less intense (or
brightly lit). A trip down the east side of the Sierras can be very
interesting, with many natural hot springs in the area south of Carson
City:
Nevada Hot Springs
http://www.hotspringsenthusiast.com/Nevada.htm
If you choose the Gold Country highway, many of the towns have
historic and interesting town centers, including Jackson and
Placerville. One town, Columbia, was a ghost town that's been
restored as a state park, attempting to keep the period feel of the
1800s. There are also excellent wineries nearby in the area around El
Dorado.
Yosemite National Park is one of the most-popular in the U.S. and can
be crowded, particularly on weekends but camping is plentiful nearby:
http://www.nps.gov/yose/
From Yosemite you may wish to head east to Tonopah - then south onto
Las Vegas. Or you can drive down through Mono Lake and Mammoth Lakes,
down to Barstow.
SEPT. 30 - OCT. 6 LAS VEGAS
We'll leave you in Las Vegas for a week. Over-and-above the
entertainment in this gambling capital, you're close to Lake Mead. A
tour of the dam is interesting and the weather will be warm enough
that you can rent a boat and picnic on the lake or water ski. Tour
operators also run helicopter and airplane tours over the Grand Canyon
in Arizona:
Scenic Airlines
http://www.scenicairlines.com/?src=google
OCT. 7 - 13 ON TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Los Angles, Hollywood and all of southern California are close enough
to Las Vegas, that it's worth some time traveling west before going
east from here. Disneyland's an obvious attraction - though I'd
recommend waiting until you get to Florida to see the larger Disney
resort.
Some interesting trips in the Los Angeles area:
The Getty Museum
http://www.getty.edu/
Universal Studios
http://themeparks.universalstudios.com/hollywood/website/park_overview.html
Scuba diving in the Channel Islands :
http://www.calboatdiving.com/
Trips out to Catalina Island:
http://www.catalinaexpress.com/
OCT. 14 -20: EASTBOUND
Here's another opportunity to see the Grand Canyon, heading east on
Interstate 40. It's about an 8-hour drive from Los Angeles through
Williams, AZ to the Grand Canyon. In addition the area around the
Grand Canyon, the Sedona red rock area south of Flagstaff is
spectacular:
http://www.sedonawebcam.com/
From Flagstaff, AZ, continuing east you'll find Albuquerque and Santa
Fe to be interesting cities within about a one-day drive:
Albuquerque, NM
http://www.abqcvb.org/visitors/
Santa Fe is an artistic center and home to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum
:
http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/indexflash.php
OCT. 21-27: THE LONE STAR STATE
The days are getting shorter and it's cold in the northern plains, so
the advice would be to head into Texas on Interstate 25 (connecting
with I-10). West Texas and the area around El Paso isn't very
picturesque but by the time that you arrive in Kerrville and New
Braunfels, you're in Texas hill country. The hill country's excellent
territory for horseback riding. San Antonio's a very interesting
city, one with canals:
The Witte Museum
"A Visual History of San Antonio"
http://lonestar.utsa.edu/reneg/river.htm
Houston's now about 3 hours east of San Antonio; Baton Rouge, LA about
4 hours east of Houston. Houston's a hard-working city but not a
great tourist location. In Baton Rouge, you'll be in Cajun country,
with a strong tradition of blues (and food) of their own:
Cajunradio.org
http://www.cajunradio.org/batonrougecajunzydeco.html
OCT. 28 - NOV. 3: HALLOWEEN WEEK
Halloween and costumes are great American traditions and New Orleans
has some exuberant parties:
New Orleans Online
http://www.neworleansonline.com/calendar/
Traveling east out of New Orleans you'll find Biloxi, MI, and Mobile,
AL, to be fishing cities with excellent seafood. A likely course is
to follow the coast of the Gulf of Mexico through the Panhandle of
Florida, going south to Tampa, FL (though Clearwater or St. Petersburg
are more visitor-oriented). And St. Petersburg has the Dali Museum:
http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/
However, Ybor City is Tampa's historical heart:
http://www.ybortimes.com/history.cfm
NOV. 4 - NOV. 10: SOUTH FLORIDA
Residential communities line the west coast of Florida from Tampa
south to Marcos Island. Sarasota and its offshore islands are
interesting. The marine life is very different now that you're
nearing the tropics. The Mote Laboratory has a marine recovery center
in Sarasota to aid injured birds and other marine life:
Mote Marine Laboratory
http://www.marinelab.sarasota.fl.us/
Ft. Myers also has an attractive barrier island, Sanibel Island, which
boasts some of the best shell beaches on this coast.
Eventually, we're heading you across Alligator Alley, an 80-mile
stretch across the Everglades. You can arrange Everglades tours at a
few spots - and may wish to take the U.S. highway further south, the
old Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41).
NOV. 11 - NOV. 17: MIAMI
Miami's metro area stretches from Coral Gables in the south to West
Palm Beach in the north. This city has a strong Spanish flavor,
because of immigrants from Cuba and many other Central and South
American countries. Cruises, even for a few days, are readily
available in Miami, including short cruises to the Bahamas.
NOV. 18- DEC. 24: SOUTH TOWARDS HAVANNA
But my preferred south Florida locations are in the Florida Keys - Key
Largo, Marathon and Key West. Key Largo's an excellent dive location,
with the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary as a border reef about 10
miles offshore. However, even if you don't dive, there's snorkeling,
bonefishing and comfortable outdoor restaurants:
http://www.florida-keys.fl.us/ntmarine.htm
You may not be aware that Key West is a separate country, but it
thinks that it is:
Conch Republic
http://www.conchrepublic.com/welcome.htm
One of the trips that's most-interesting out of Key West is to Fort
Jefferson, where the most famous internee was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was
arrested and convicted after treating the broken leg of Abraham
Lincoln's assassin:
http://www.terragalleria.com/parks/np.dry-tortugas.3.html
NOV. 25 - DEC. 1: THANKSGIVING WEEK: NOW LET'S GO TO DISNEYLAND
We're approaching a U.S. holiday, Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 27. It's
going to be most of a day's drive from Key West or Miami north to
Orland and Disneyworld.
So we'll get you north to Disneyland but not before a one-day stop at
Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center:
http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/
All the time that you're in Florida, you should check newspapers for
launch schedules (they're in most newspapers too). The
most-impressive are the evening launches, visible clear across the
state in Tampa.
The entertainment area around Orlando is full of parks, including
water parks, Universal Studios - and, of course, Walt Disney's legacy.
It's worth most of a week:
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/waltdisneyworld/index
DEC. 2-8: NORTH TO WILLIAMSBURG
North from Orlando, the next major American city is Atlanta. It is a
diverse cultural city with excellent historical resources on the
American Civil War. However, you may find it more interesting to take
a week to head up the East Coast of the U.S., through Savannah and
Charleston. Charleston, SC also has excellent historical sites from
before the American Civil War - and though the war started here, the
city was one of the few southern cities to emerge from the war
virtually intact:
Ft. Sumter
http://www.nps.gov/fosu/
As you move into the Carolinas, you'll be near Kitty Hawk at the 100th
anniversary of the Wright Brothers initial flight on Dec. 17, 1903:
http://www.countdowntokittyhawk.com/
A fairly leisurely trip up the coast can still put you in the
Washington, DC area by the end of the week. A likely destination is
the restored village of Williamsburg, VA, a historically preserved
early settlement that's impressively decorated at holidays:
Colonial Williamsburg
http://www.history.org/
DEC. 9-15:
This is one of the most-open capitals in the world, with Congress, the
Supreme Court, the FBI and even the White House open to visitors.
Little has changed since Sept. 11, though you may have to get an
American citizen to arrange tickets for a visit to the White House.
The core of the museums in Washington (though not all) are managed by
the Smithsonian Institute:
http://www.si.edu/
It's an excellent city for biking, with bike paths running along the
old Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, as well as south to Mt. Vernon (George
Washington's estate). The only problem: it's getting late in the
year, thus it's getting cold.
Washington is not inexpensive, but there are options for staying out
of town and driving into the city. One option is to stay in
suburban Virginia (around Vienna) or Maryland (Frederick) and use the
excellent subway system:
Metro Rail System Map
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/metro/
Excellent resources on Washington-area activities includes the
Washington Post, linked above. It's important to remember that
Alexandria, VA is part of the metro area. It has excellent
restaurants and I can recommend the river cruises around the Capital
from the docks there:
The Dandy
http://users.erols.com/bitebyte/dandy.htm
An interesting side-trip from Washington is Annapolis, MD, the home of
the U.S. Naval Academy and a fishing town on the Chesapeake Bay. It's
about 1 hour driving time from the city.
DEC. 16- 22: PHILADELPHIA OR BOSTON OR BOTH?
We actually have an extra week in here. You can while some time away
in Philadelphia. You're now in the crowded northeastern corridor of
the U.S. and New York is only an hour from Philadelphia. You can also
drive through New York and head to Boston, coming back south later in
the week.
I suspect that you'll find someplace in the west charming and stay
longer, then be glad that there's an uncommitted week in here.
DEC. 23 - DEC. 31: CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK
This is a town that will be alive with shoppers and holiday
decorations. There's no shortage of things to do in what Frank
Sinatra calls "the city that never sleeps."
The best that I can do is highlight the best resources for activities
in New York. There are two excellent magazines, The New Yorker and
New York Magazine, both of which are widely available on newsstands
throughout the country. Their websites are poor reflections of what
they offer in print: a complete listing of music, theater, movies and
art gallery presentations.
Google search strategy:
I think that I used every major combination of places that I could
imagine going from S.F. to Seattle to Sacramento, Las Vegas, Houston,
Key West and Washington, DC.
There's lots to do and if you follow the Paul Theroux approach and ask
lots of questions, you'll find great things to keep you busy. I've
tried to keep you out of the colder northern climes after late October
but you run a good chance of seeing snow in New York or Boston in
December.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
