Want to see the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, do some white water rafting in the Grand Canyon, walk along the famous stars on Hollywood Boulevard and then visit with Mickey Mouse before an air balloon ride over the vineyards of California? No problem. How about a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, pay your respects to the King in Memphis, see how New Orleans is doing after Katrina, learn more about the American civil war at one of the battleground sites, take a paddle steamer ride on the Mississippi, visit the Alamo, and then spot celebrities homes in Beverley Hills? You can take bus tours that will get you from one part of the US to the other and have excursions along the way but with fly-drive or Amtrak you set the pace.
There are most restrictions with choosing the Amtrak option. Once you buy your ticket for a chosen route – or a pass that will allow you unlimited Amtrak travel if you’re going to be in the US a while, then you can have stopovers at any point along the rails your train travels. You get off your Orlando-LA Sunset Limited Train in New Orleans, spend a night or two there before catching the next Sunset Limited train and traveling to Houston for a city stopover, then before arriving in LA, you might like to have a final stopover in Tucson, Arizona. Even though you are restricted to the rails, you can still experience a lot of varying American culture. The best thing about the Amtrak option is that you can enjoy the view and let someone else take care of the driving.
There’s a lot more flexibility with a fly-drive vacation but keep in mind the amount of miles you’re going to cover every day in order to get to your exit airport on the right day. To really get the most out of this kind of vacation you’ll need to do a lot of planning but this will pay off once you arrive in the US and you see your travel itinerary in action. Remember to factor in a few days when you aren’t driving, and try to get an early start most days so that you arrive in your daily destination before lunch leaving plenty of time to explore. Of course you could combine the two and Amtrak across the US, drive up one coast and fly out of an airport there – for example, fly into Washington DC, take the train to Chicago, and then down to LA. From there hire a car and drive up the western coast to Seattle.
If you love the idea of travel, and you want to see as much of the United States as possible on your vacation there, a fly-drive holiday, and/or Amtrak is the best way to do it!