Our Ultimate USA Road Trip Itinerary

Welcome to our ultimate USA Road trip itinerary! This is a cross-country road trip that my husband and I took recently from the East Coast to the West Coast, then south to Arizona. Our trip took about two months, which should be plenty of time to cover this route. Trip times will vary depending on how long you want to explore each destination. I hope this provides some inspiration for your road trip planning.

If you like the look of the map above and have more than 10 stops for your next road trip, check out my post with 12 reasons why you need the Roadtrippers app for your next adventure. You can also get a promo code there for $5 off when you sign up for the membership.

If you’re just getting started, be sure to look at my best road trip planning tips here too. We were able to cross several national parks off our Bucket List on this trip, plus other great attractions and historical sites. We didn’t even know about some of the sites until we saw them on the road. We also took time to visit a sprinkling of family and friends along the way.

We had some last-minute changes to our proposed USA road trip itinerary and we may have more on the 2nd half of the journey, but I thought I’d share a quick update with some of our favorites from our September travels. We’ve been on the road for almost exactly 5 weeks. We’ve driven over 5000 miles and stopped for at least a day in 15 different places along the way. I’ll only be sharing the list of stops in this post, but I’ will come back later and I’m working on diving deeper into each region plus even more.

I’m also planning to create some detailed downloadable itineraries from all my USA road trip routes. If you’d like to hear about those when they come out, please sign up for my mailing list below and you’ll get an announcement.

Our USA Road Trip Itinerary

North Carolina Road Trip Highlights

For my detailed Southeastern USA road trip itinerary that’s the first leg of this cross-country route with tons of recommendations for things to do, check out my “Southeast States Road Trip” post here.

If you’re looking for an exclusively North Carolina road trip itinerary, you’ll find my post about that one here. It covers several more stops in this diverse and beautiful coastal state.

The first part of our journey was in North Carolina. Two of the stops were visiting family, but that didn’t stop us from getting out and enjoying the state. As you may know, we lived in southeastern Virginia, just minutes from the North Carolina border for six years but did most of our traveling in our neighboring state to the south in the last year we were on the East Coast. It makes me wish we’d started sooner.

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Be sure to visit Hay Street in Fayetteville and wander around the fun shops and restaurants.

Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh is known for its craft breweries, live music scene, and free museums. Pullen Park is a wonderful stop if you love a classic carousel.

Hendersonville, North Carolina

Hendersonville is a small town of about 15,000 people in the shadow of the more famous, Asheville in western North Carolina. This stop was a family visit as well, but we’ve visited many times and love this charming place. It’s so close to Asheville and many other attractions in western North Carolina. The weather is mild and the mountains are gorgeous.

Nashville, Tennessee

We had never been to Nashville and only stayed one night, but it was an interesting experience. If you love music, especially country music, you’ll love wandering downtown in the “Music City”. Hint: My downloadable itinerary will have details about our wonderful Airbnb rental too.

Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas

In case you haven’t heard, one of my bucket list items is to get to every USA national park in my lifetime. I’m about halfway down the list and since Arkansas isn’t a state we’d normally pass through often, we decided to add Hot Springs to our USA road trip itinerary and visit the national park there.

Austin, Texas

Don’t you just love this sweet cat in the rolling cart? As you may have guessed, Austin was another visit with family. This was a change from our original USA road trip itinerary because our daughter was in the middle of a big (short-notice) move and couldn’t meet us where we originally planned. In order to see her and her partner, we took a detour to Austin to help them do some packing. Texas was another state with high COVID rates and low vaccination rates (although Austin is the best city in Texas for vaccinations) the overall situation prevented us from doing much sightseeing.

Thankfully we visited Austin pre-pandemic and did some fun stuff, so I’ll fill you in on those ideas in a detailed post. Suffice it to say that the food and music scene alone are worth stopping for. Be sure to try some BBQ and the Queso dip and chips if you go for any kind of Mexican food. It’s a specialty there.

Just west of Austin we made some cool discoveries as well in the Texas Hill Country, so you’ll want to come back to hear about those.

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Carlsbad, New Mexico was another National Park stop, although we had been to these gorgeous caverns nearly 40 years ago. We were on our way to Santa Fe and this was a great stopping point outside of Texas that gave us a chance to sleep and enjoy the cool temperatures and stunning geology inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Depending on the time of year, this is the perfect addition to a USA road trip itinerary. If you’re looking for other out-of-this-world destinations nearby you may want to try the aliens at Roswell, New Mexico too.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Is the chorus of the Newsies song running through your head now? I LOVE that song and I can see why Jack Kelly was dreaming of going to Santa Fe…for space and fresh air. It’s a magical place. We’ve visited a few times and it’s the perfect introduction to the Southwest on your ultimate USA road trip itinerary.

We had some very special friends (that we hadn’t seen in a while) meet us in Santa Fe, so we had a blast just catching up and enjoying the town. On Tuesday we stopped by the Santa Fe Farmers Market in the Railyard and picked up some scrumptious fresh produce, bread, and meat for the perfect farm-to-table meal at home. Terry and I made up for lost time on the East Coast by ordering Mexican food for nearly every meal out. Santa Fe is a great place to try Southwestern Cuisine of all shapes and sizes. Be sure to make reservations ahead of time if at all possible. Many restaurants are short-staffed and have shorter hours.

Spend time wandering the historic plaza with shops, restaurants, and unique buildings from the past. If you’re an art lover, you’ll get lost in all the spectacular galleries and museums around town. We found a special spot to watch the sunset over the city and it happened to be an easy walk from where we were staying. More on that next time.

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Our last stop for this portion of the trip was Colorado Springs, CO. This is another place that we’ve been to a few times, but it’s one of the places the screams Colorado. It sits on the doorstep of Pikes Peak and seems to be surrounded by mountains.

Be sure to visit the beautiful red rocks of the Garden of the Gods that are striking against the lush green trees. One cool thing I discovered when we visited is that someone with my family name helped to create the park. In 1909 the children of Charles Elliott Perkins left much of the land to the city of Colorado Springs with the stipulation that it would be free to the public forever. (A man after my own heart. I need to find out if we’re related.)

We were also a bit lucky to time our visit perfectly to catch the re-opening of The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. After 126 years of operation, the Cog Railway decided not to reopen for the spring 2018 season. Between then and the summer of 2021 the entire experience was redesigned and updated. A new modern railway system was imported from Switzerland, a new Visitor Center was built at the summit and many other improvements were made. I’ll fill you in on all the tips and secrets for making a delightful day and trip to the top of Pikes Peak in my upcoming detailed post.

We’ll Continue our Ultimate USA Road Trip Itinerary

If you’re looking forward to getting more details on these destinations on our USA road trip itinerary and learning about our upcoming national park and small-town stops on the rest of our trip, be sure to follow me on Instagram and Facebook, AND sign up for my mailing list where I’ll send notifications of new posts, plus other cool stuff. I promise I never send more than one email a week.

Have you been to any of these places? If so, what was your favorite part? I’d love to hear about it.