Road Tripping Western USA (SFO to DEN)

cubegame · 12 July 2019 at 9:43PM

The better half and myself are (due to fears of our currency being increasing worthless) going to pack ourselves off to the West Coast of the USA for our holidays this September.

Already booked is a flight to San Francisco, a return flight from Denver two weeks later and a nice SUV to fill the gap. I have the following very loose itinerary and I wondered if anyone has any suggestions of things I may be missing.

San Francisco
Yosemite National Park
Death Valley National Park
Las Vegas
Valley of Fire State Park
Cathedral Gorge State Park
Grand Basin National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park
Zion National Park
Grand Canyon National Park (North Rim)
Antelope Canyon/Horseshoe Bend/Monument Valley
Canyonlands National Park (Needles)
Arches National Park
Canyonlands National Park (Islands in The Sky)
Rocky Mountain National Park
Denver

I know it looks a lot but we're seasoned road trippers happy to knock out the miles......anything I missed?

VWPolecat · 12 July 2019 at 9:52PM

I would want a month minimum to do that.

stevie11 · 12 July 2019 at 10:47PM

I haven't been to all those destinations but can comment on a few. So two weeks for your itiniary, are you planning to drive every day?

San Fransisco is a nice starting point, if you have never been it is worth at lesst 3 or 4 nights. So then East over to Yosemite, are you staying over for a couple of days?

It is a fair drive to LV probably best part of 8 or 9 hours with stops. Are you staying around Death Valley or just driving through?

LV itself deserves a few nights, Valley of Fire is only an hour away and can do the the park in a few hours getting out at various points.

Now the rest I am not over farmiliar with so are you intending to drive from LV for a few of them or carry on your road trip?

Maybe others with experience can assist.

If you are concerned with dollar rates being low, to save a few $ how about just renting a mid or standard car rather than a nice suv, that way the rental should be cheaper plus probably more efficient on gas.

Overall I think 2 weeks visiting all those places would be too much time on the road and not fully appreciate the places you are visiting. The weather in Calafornia is not too bad at that time of year but as you travel South it will be hot especially Death Valley and Vegas, I would prefer rest days before travelling to the next major destination. Your holiday though.
Good luck with the plans.

dontone · 12 July 2019 at 10:55PM

VWPolecat wrote: »

I would want a month minimum to do that.

I was thinking that myself.
By an SUV, are you getting just a car or one of those camper vans?, which sounds more suitable for what you are planning.

We did the San Fran/Yosemite/Las Vegas trip in 2011. But, it was a 3 week trip, and we went to New York for 3 days first (I won a competition, so we had a hefty budget for it).
So our trip went like this.
3 nights NY,
6 hour flight from NY to San Fran.
24 hours in San Fran.
4 hour road trip from SF to Yosemite.
3 days in Yosemite - you might not get a room there. We had to book a year in advance. unless you are planning to camp. And there are tons of things to see & do there as well.
8 hour drive from Yosemite to Las Vegas (which truly is an amazing road trip)
2 weeks Vegas (to recover TBH)
Admittedly, looking back, we should have done 3 days in SF, and 10 days in Vegas. But we have done Vegas to Zion in one day and that was at least a 5 hour drive just to get there. I preferred Yosemite to Zion, but we barely had a day to explore Zion.
You might be better off having a couple of days in Vegas, and use that as a base to get to the Valley Of Fire (about an hour or so drive) and a helicopter ride from Vegas to the Grand Canyon.
What you are loosely planning to do in 2 weeks looks far too much imo. HTH

cubegame · 12 July 2019 at 11:09PM

As I say we're seasoned road trippers. We've also been to some of these ppace before. It's about 49 hours of driving so only about 4 hours a day. No biggy.

jackieblack · 13 July 2019 at 8:16AM

16 destinations in 14 days...
Are you planning on spending any time in any of those places? Or just driving through and viewing from inside your vehicle?

203846930 · 13 July 2019 at 8:33AM

Miss out the north rim and go to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose instead then continue east along state highway 50 past Salida to Royal Gorge and the Florissant Fossil Beds then on to Garden of the Gods just outside Colorado Springs.
All well worth a visit and little known enough to be reasonably quiet.

Grumpygit · 13 July 2019 at 8:43AM

We went to Garden of the Gods in May and was disappointed - not a "must see" place that's for sure.

Royal Gorge is good and you can go up and cross over either by bridge or cable type cars - hubby went across just before they shut the cable car things due to wind and he said the walk back across the bridge was "interesting" due to the flex and the wind.

There's also a train ride through the gorge which is a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours.

Pikes Peak is another place - we could only go up 14 miles as the top was still closed due to snow but the views are lovely....especially when we were there because of the snow.

There's a Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Colorado Springs - which is certainly worth a see as it's very humbling.....as they do list each fallen firefighter from 9/11 - certainly makes you stop and think especially if you had visited NYC and went to that memorial.

John259 · 13 July 2019 at 9:00AM

As others have said, this will need a month unless all you do is drive past places and tick them off on a list.

I agree with the advice from Duncan the Dog to miss out the north rim of the Grand Canyon and go to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison near Montrose instead. At the Black Canyon you can see the river from the rim, and also drive down to the bottom.

If you can extend the trip to a more reasonable timescale, I'd add Dead Horse Point State Park and the Upper Colorado Scenic Byway (UT128) near Moab, Utah. The first has a fabulous view over the Colorado River. The second runs beside the river and it almost feels like you're driving along the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

cubegame · 13 July 2019 at 9:30AM

Thanks for the tips so far.

In relative terms this is a short road trip for us. We've done 3000 miles plus in two weeks before without feeling too car bound. That said, my contingency if we fancy dropping it is to cut the loop north into Nevada for Grand Basin. That would probably mean cutting off Cathedral Gorge State Park too.

Does anyone have opinions on Grand Basin? I understand the Lehman caves are amazing but we have been to Carlsbad Caverns so we'd hope they'd compare at least.

We're sold on heading to the Grand Canyon North Rim though.

As for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we've been before and we found it a bit "meh".

onwards&upwards · 13 July 2019 at 9:46AM

I guess you really enjoy driving and that’s the main point of the trip for you? If so your itinerary makes more sense!

Road Tripping Western USA (SFO to DEN)

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