Yes, the United States is easy to backpack independently in its cities and along its rail corridors, though the distances between regions are huge and most national parks assume you have a car.
English signage, card payments almost everywhere and hostels in every major city (dorms around US$40 to 90 a night, highest in
New York City and
San Francisco) keep daily life simple. Cost and distance are the hard parts: plan on US$80 to 130 a day, and note that New York to Chicago is a 2 to 2.5 hour flight or about 19 hours by train. Pair transit-friendly cities with park buses like YARTS into
Yosemite and the free
Zion shuttle, or a short rental for the Southwest.
Plan on at least two weeks for one region of the United States, and four weeks or more if you want to cross the country.
Fourteen days fits California comfortably:
San Francisco,
Yosemite, the Monterey coast,
Los Angeles and
San Diego. Three weeks covers the East Coast from Boston through New York and Washington D.C. down to Charleston, Savannah and
New Orleans. A month lets you link New York and Chicago with the Utah and Arizona canyons and the Pacific Northwest, using an overnight train and a few flights. Give big cities three to five nights and parks at least two, because drives like Moab to the Grand Canyon take 5 to 5.5 hours.
Yes, you can travel the United States without a car between and within its major cities, but most national parks are hard to reach without one.
The Northeast is the easiest region: Amtrak runs Boston to New York in about 3.5 to 4 hours and New York to Washington D.C. in 3 to 3.5 hours, and subways cover all three cities. Greyhound and FlixBus fill gaps elsewhere, often US$20 to 60 for trips under 6 hours. A few parks work by bus, such as YARTS from Merced into
Yosemite Valley and the free canyon shuttle in
Zion. For
Arches, the
Grand Canyon and Utah’s back roads, budget a 5 to 7 day rental at roughly US$40 to 80 a day before fuel.
On a first trip to the United States, the places to prioritize are New York City, the Grand Canyon and at least one big Western park such as Yosemite or Zion.
Give
New York City four or five days for the Met, MoMA and the Statue of Liberty ferry.
San Francisco and
Chicago are the strongest cities after it, at three nights each, and
New Orleans earns three or four nights for its food and live jazz. In the West, the
Grand Canyon South Rim needs two days,
Zion is about 4.5 hours away by road, and
Yosemite is 5 to 6 hours from San Francisco by train and bus. Most major parks charge US$35 per vehicle for seven days, and 11 of the busiest, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Zion, add US$100 per person for visitors who are not US residents.
If you are short on time in the United States, skip the stops that cost a full travel day for a single sight, starting with Mount Rushmore and Niagara Falls.
Mount Rushmore sits in western South Dakota, far from every other headline stop, and an hour covers the carving.
Niagara Falls is 8 to 9 hours from New York City by bus, so it eats two days of a short trip. The Orlando theme parks are a vacation of their own, with one-day tickets around US$120 to 200 per park.
Las Vegas is easy to drop unless you use its airport as the gateway to Zion and the Grand Canyon. Put the saved days into New York, California or the canyon country.
Yes, our itinerary-planner does exactly that. Set your trip length in days, give your interests and travel style, optionally give start- and end location and/or some mandatory stops you would like to include and the itinerary planner creates your personalized routes for the USA in seconds. Try it out!
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