Two months across the States and back

Hi all, a friend and I are planning to spend two months travelling across the USA next year, but I can't help but feel that my plan might be slightly too ambitious. The basic outline is:

Starting in New York, travelling by Greyhound across to California via the likes of Washington, Orlando, New Orleans, San Antonio, Vegas and a few other stops.

Stopping for 2-3 days at any given location

Travelling back across the north of the country, Seattle, Rapid City, Chicago etc.

All in all this will take almost exactly two months.

Worked out that travel and accommodation costs will be about £2500 (about $4000), with aspirations to have further spending money of about £3000 ($5000).

Basically need to gather the thoughts of people experienced in this area, ie will this financial target be enough? Any places that we must see (bearing in mind we are travelling entirely by bus)? And any other ideas, thoughts or experiences in general.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks

As you are going to be mostly relegated to stopping in urban areas with the bus when you get to a city take any tours of the area that are available.,check out each cities calender of events to see if anything interesting is happening, If you are in a city thats near a particular beautiful spot rent a car to get to it..

Good Luck

[ Edit: Edited on 02-Nov-2009, at 09:18 by jambo101 ]

Use the stop in Rapid City, South Dakota to visit the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills.
http://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm

Graham,
I think you are better off buying a van once you arrive in the US. There are heaps of decent running vans for $2K. Buy one you can sleep in and it will almost pay for itself. Motels will average at least $50/nite all across the US. Very few for less, many cities it will be more. Sleep in the van half the time and you save $1K in motel costs. Sell it when you leave for $1.5K and you are way ahead of your Greyhound transport and motel costs.

It is not possible to visit our National Parks on your Greyhound Pass. You will have to take a tour or rent a car from the closest city. Much easier to drive yourself to: Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Zion, Arches, Yosemite, Sequoia.

I have helped 4 groups of TP members buy cars/vans here in Vegas. Not very difficult here, should be similar in New York. Send me a PM if you have any questions.

The van idea is great unless you are travelling across the northern part of the country in winter (when you will freeze to death in the van) or travelling across the desert (and to Las Vegas) in the summer--when you will be burning up in the van--even at night.

So just keep this in mind when you plan this van trip.

Thanks for the replies everyone. We did consider buying a van or a car, but since I'm the only driver amongst the two of us we decided that in the interests of fairness and not being able to split responsibilities that we would take the bus. I am however hoping to occasionally hire a car to get to certain places outwith the cities , such as the national parks as mentioned above, but for the most part it is the cities we are hoping to see.

Ham Radio the stop in Rapid City was mainly so we could see Mount Rushmore!

[ Edit: Edited on 03-Nov-2009, at 02:21 by graham160 ]