Anyone who's been traveling the USA before?

I'm thinking of travelling the USA next summer for a month and just wondering how did you get from one place to another? How expensive you found things like transport and getting from one place to another? Where did you stay? Couchsurfing? Hostels? Hotels? And any other info you may have that could help me. Thanks x

Reply 1

Sabertooth

Original post by GarethThomas_

I haven't traveled extensively in the US, but I do live here. Greyhound buses can be reasonably priced but I'm not really a fan as some routes are incredibly long and the seats are not comfortable/I get car sick on those buses. Trains suck; European trains are so much better. There are a number of cheap airlines, I'd probably most recommend them for long distances. Depending on your age, you could possibly rent a car if you wanted more flexibility.

Reply 2

Sephiroth

It depends what you want to see. Cities, mountains, deserts, canyons, beaches?

I've made a few trips to the US and the best was my most recent where I went on an adventure tour with a company called Green Tortoise. We spent two weeks going around 8 or so national parks in Wyoming, Utah and Arizona and I met so many great people whom I hiked with in the parks. I'm still in touch with most of them and we share photos on FB from the trip. I highly recommend it if you're traveling alone and like nature.

If you haven't heard of Green Tortoise maybe you've heard of Trek America - they're similar to them but cheaper. The only way to see the national parks properly is to go on a trip like that or to drive, because public transport won't take you to most of them and day tours will give you at max 3-4 hours in each location. Enough to say you've been but not enough to experience it.

If you want to see cities then you can do that without a tour company and depending on the distance between them you can either fly or use Greyhound or Megabus.

A month isn't enough time to see all the highlights of the country so don't try. I've spent 7 weeks in the US spread over my three trips and there's still plenty places I haven't been to. I suggest picking either the east or west and sticking there, then plan a second trip to do the other side. East is more about cities while west is more about nature. So decide what you prefer to see and plan from there.

You should have posted in the travel forum, you'd probably get more responses.