Suggestions for North America Itinerary please

We are arriving in New York in early May for a 5 week once in a life-time retirement holiday. We intend staying in New York for a few days but our intention is to visit other parts of North America and would welcome suggestions for achieving our aim

We prefer the countryside to cities as we like walking. We do not intend to fly but hire a car or use a train for one-way long distances but a bus might be possible and we fully respect the vastness of the country although we have never been there.

One of the places we would like to visit is the Colonial East Coast but we would also like to go to Boston, Niagara falls, New England and Canada.

It has occurred to me that a circular route might be a possibility travelling accross to the Grand Canyon and then northwards to pick up the railway to Toronto as we would also love to travel on the Trans-Canada sightseeing train.

Suggestions on a route would be welcomed from anybody

.Many thanks

Suggestions for North America Itinerary please

Check out Tauck%26#39;s Website.

They have this sort of thing down pat and their offerings will fire your imagination as to how to put this together:

www.tauck.com/docs/search.php鈥?/a>

Suggestions for North America Itinerary please

Excellent suggestion by Carpenter about Tauck tours. They are one of the best if you like bus tours.

First things first. If you are not going to fly, hire a car or use a train for long distances, you might want to re-think the Grand Canyon. It will take you five days minimum to get there by bus and another three to four days to get to Canada to catch a train to Toronto.

Second, Canada. As far as the trans-Canada sightseeing train is concerned, everything between Toronto and Alberta is pretty much farm country. The real scenery is between Calgary and Vancouver, the Canadian Rockies.

As for a suggested colonial route, you might want to consider flying into Boston and use that to explore the Colonial east coast. Then down to New York. From there, you might consider a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia, a lovely, restored colonial village.

Another itinerary you might consider is to fly directly to Los Angeles. From there, you can take bus trips to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Then go up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco, Seattle and ultimately Vancouver. There you can catch the trans-Canada train to Toronto. Side bus trip to Niagara Falls. From Toronto, bus on to Montreal, perhaps Quebec City, and then down to Boston, winding up in New York City.

It%26#39;s a lot of traveling. This is a very big country.

My family and I have driven cross country several times--each time taking a different route and ending up in Las Vegas. (My parents live there!). If you have any specific questions, please post back--I%26#39;ll be glad to answer.

It%26#39;s an ambitous trip, but a wonderful one! Instead of a circle, I%26#39;d recommend a horshoe shape. Considering the places you listed above, the fact that you don%26#39;t want to fly, and your preference for the country rather than cities, here are some suggestions:

Start out in Toronto, then make your way to Niagara Falls (about 2 hours away). From there, enter the US and go east/ northeast into New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, very nice), then down to Boston. Make sure to visit Cape Cod while in Massachusetts. Then head south to New York City.

After NY, keep traveling south through Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and into Virginia. Someone mentioned Williamsburg, which is a restored colonial town, very nice. Then keep heading south/southwest to Shenadoah National Park (website below). Take the Skyline Drive, which is a 100-mile section of road that will wind you through the mountains. Gorgeous scenery, lots of opportunities for hiking.

http://www.nps.gov/shen/home.htm

Then I%26#39;d recommend you take a train westward to make up some time. I%26#39;d like to see you head for New Mexico--Santa Fe and Taos are gorgeous. From there, you can drive west to the Grand Canyon. Then west/northwest into California. At Los Angeles, pick up Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1) and drive north along the California coast. Spectacular scenery. Stop in Santa Barbara, Carmel and Monterey before making your way to San Francisco.

From SF, I%26#39;d recommend a detour inland to Yosemite National Park--breathtaking! You can then make your way back to the coast, perhaps stopping on the way in the Napa or Sonoma wine-making regions of California (very nice). Then head north up through Oregon and Washington, either by car or train, to Vancouver. Pay a visit to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. From Vancouver, take a train east/northeast through British Columbia and then into Alberta and the Canadian Rockies. There are glass top trains which are great; the scenery is spectacular. In Alberta, visit Lake Louise, Banff, and Jasper National Park. You can then make your way eastward through Canada, but I%26#39;d rather see you spend more time in the scenic areas I outlined, perhaps flying home from Calgary, Alberta.

This is a lot, I know, and there are countless other itineraries you could follow, but it%26#39;s a start anyway. Pick up a good road map of North America, and start plotting out your ';must-see'; places, then maybe we can help you fill in the rest.

Good luck, it will be a spectacular trip!

Thank you for the responses, the suggestions are all useful although I would add that I am arriving and leaving New york by ship which crystallises the start and finish of my itinerary.

Happy Traveller thank you for the great route, the old Wild

West has a great attraction and appears most interesting. My intention was to use the train for long distance and hire a car to cover the major areas of the journey which i hope to put together

On that point thank you SueFee for your offer. Can you or anybody else reading this recommend a reliable and reasonable company that hires cars for one-way journeys. I presume it must be something that happens in your vast country as they also do in Europe.

Many thanks

Pinwillow---You can rent cars for one-way trips but please note that it is incredibly expensive. It%26#39;s much cheaper to do a round trip rental (return it to the same place you picked it up). That said, the major companies to call---Hertz, Avis, Budget and National. Hertz and Avis tend to be the most expensive anyway but have alot of locations--probably they%26#39;ll be the best ones to do a one-way rental, if that%26#39;s what you want.

Don%26#39;t forget the great state of GEORGIA where you can go to the Blue Ridge Mountains to the beach where the water is great to swim in, in about 3 hours driving

You could take Amtrak%26#39;s Lake Shore Limited train to Chicago from New York City. This train leaves New York City in the afternoon and then travels alongside the scenic Hudson River into upstate New York, where it stops at Albany, the state captial. Then it%26#39;s East across the state of New York, to Cleveland, Ohio (at night) and then mid-morning you get into Chicago. From Chicago, you could take the Capitol Limited train to Washington, DC. From DC, it%26#39;s easy to get a train back up to New York City. The trip from NYC to Chicago is overnight and so is the train trip from Chicago to DC. Traveling by train in sleeping compartments is expensive, but Amtrak coach is definitely not.

If you wanted to go on a round-the-country train trip, you could go from NYC to Boston to Chicago to Seattle to Los Angeles to Chicago to Washington, DC to NYC.

If you have any questions or need any help, please feel free to email dvdmovie1@aol.com

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