Musken

Hi,

We loved our California, Arizona, Amangiri and Vegas road trip this summer, including stays in Four Seasons San Francisco, Bel Air, Amangiri and MO Las Vegas and have already started thinking that we want to do something similar in the US next year - but going another route.

Does any of you have ideas of a nice 2-3 weeks long trip that includes a city or two plus some great nature experiences (beach, mountain, forests or whatever) and of course some luxury hotels on our way? We do not really mind about where - but need to have good summer weather (not San Francisco summer!!), and memorable experiences and hotels.

Lose ideas:
- Starting in San Francisco and visiting Napa Valley, Yosemite and maybe all the way to Amangani. Where would good stops and great hotels be?
- Starting in Los Angeles and going to San Diego and thereafter further, maybe over to Mexico?? Again: Hotels, places to stop etc. would be appreciated.

However, also a completely different part of the US could be interesting. This is just very, very lose planning, trying to see if there is a route with enough to see and enough great hotels making it worthwhile to take a closer look.

pricesquire

My .02 cents:

Start in DC. Drive into Virginia and hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Western VA. Take it down into Asheville. Smokey Mountains/Blue Ridge/Pisgah...great scenery, one of the best road trips in the country, imo.

Go from there to Atlanta. Shoot over to Charleston, then Savannah.

Take 17 down the coast - never leaving a stones throw from the ocean! - and check out Amelia Island. Then hug the coast and take the Coastal Highway - A1A all the way to Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, South Beach, and then the best part: the Florida Keys.

This obviously is not a Western US road trip, but it's one of the best I've ever taken. I've sent other people on this trip and they're still raving about it years later.

Luxury hotels in every stop I listed.

Musken

Thanks a lot. Will definitely get back to ask for hotel recommendations if we chose this route. However: Since we are in the lux hotel forum: What would be the absolute best 2 or 3 hotels that we would be able to stay in if we take this tour?

offerendum

Denver-Jackson Hole-SLC-Moab-Santa Fe with one or two more stations like Bachelor Gulch, Colorado Springs or Mesa Verde?

Valveking

If you do the Atlantic route above, I would certainly stop by the Cloister in Sea Island and the Inn at Palmetto Bluff. Both are beautiful Southern resorts.

At the beginning of the trip, you might want to go the ancient Greenbrier in West Virginia. It is a blast from the past. I am sure it is quite dated, but is a piece of American history.

And certainly spend a day or two in Savannah and Charleston which are two of the most beautiful cities on earth.

KatW

Vermont, Quebec (just across the border from Maine), and Maine with stays at:

The Pitcher Inn
Twin Farms

Manoir Hovey

Hidden Pond
Camden Harbor Inn

pricesquire

St. Regis, Ritz, or MO in DC

Grand Bohemian in Asheville

Zero George, Planters Inn, French Quarter Inn, Wentworth mansion, Charleston place in Charleston

Inn at Palmetto Bluff

Sanctuary/Kiawah

Forget the name right now but 2-3 in Savannah

Cloisters at Sea Island

Ritz on Amelia Island

Lots of options in both South FL and ATL

robyng

We live in Florida. To get nice weather in the summer - I definitely don't recommend any part of the eastern US - especially the SE. Even the NE is very variable (can be hot and "sticky").

When we want nice weather in the summer (cool ---> a little warm - but certainly not beach weather) - we go to the Pacific NW. Oregon - Washington - British Columbia (Victoria/Vancouver/Whistler) - Idaho - Montana - Wyoming - perhaps parts of Utah. All of the major cities in this part of the world (Seattle - Portland - Vancouver) have luxury hotels. And there are quite a few super ski resorts that have IIRC luxury hotels that do double duty in the summer as "nature attractive" places to stay. Some have summer festivals as well. I'm talking about places like Sun Valley (in Idaho) - Jackson Hole (in Wyoming). Victoria Island (BC) has both "city places" - and "in the sticks" places as well. I'm sure that there are places I've never been to as well.

I'd do a loop in this part of the world. Robyn

P.S. Hard to beat a lot of the SE US in the spring (azalea and soft shell crab season and the like) - but you're talking about the summer.

quitecontrary

Or New England in the fall - that's a drive we plan to do at some stage.

Ericka

Wow! You're going to put us Americans to shame by seeing more of the US than we have.

I'd vote for doing something different...east coast perhaps. You were in NYC recently, right? For New England, you could do Twin Farms in VT, The Point in the Adirondacks, any of a number of good hotels in Boston and Bass Cottage Inn in Bar Harbor, Blair Hill Inn on Moosehead Lake, and maybe White Barn Inn or Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport if you wanted a little beach time. Note, the beaches in ME are pretty but crowded during the summer. There are also nice hotels in Newport, RI.

The Blue Ridge Mountains (Blackberry Farm) and the area around Asheville is also stunning (Biltmore Estate, Grand Bohemian).

TofuNinja

I stayed there as a kid a few times. It was a fun place to run around and evade the parents.

Pausanias

The best of many long drives we did started in Denver and from there we went up through Nebraska, South Dakota (Badlands, Mount Rushmore), Wyoming (Devil's Tower, Little Bighorn), then across Montana to Glacier National Park, down through Helena and back into Wyoming and Yellowstone, then Jackson Hole where we stayed at Amangani, the only luxury hotel on the entire trip, though a B&B in Helena called The Sanders was the best place we stayed.

We also did a southern loop - and agree with people above who recommend The Cloister on Sea Island which we adored. Talk about 'Old Money.' On that same trip we stayed at the awful, conventioneer Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, plus a big resort on Hilton Head as well as The Inn at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee and two choice B&Bs in Charleston and Savannah.

quitecontrary

That's certainly true in our case too - in that we have seen a lot less of our own country or even Europe than a lot of travellers from overseas have done. Recently I've seen reports of RobynG's travels to parts of England that I have only ever passed through and SanDiego1K has had several very interesting trips in Europe yet I've only had one actual holiday in England (when the children were younger), short trips to Ireland and weekend breaks in various parts of Europe although we had a lot holidays in the Cote D'Azur when the children were young. We tend to have our longer trips in either the US - mainly California which we've done a few times and Asia.

Musken - if you do go back to California I suggest going north to Mendocino and beyond to see the Giant Redwoods - have you been to any of the National Parks (apart from the GC) - we visited Yosemite which was fantastic. We also loved the Napa and have been 3 times but it's not my favourite wine land - that's the Stellenbosch and Franschhoek area of ZA where we've been a couple of times.

BTW - I agree with Pausanias about B&Bs in the US - some great properties there especially for short stays of a night or 2 when you're on a road trip. Great B&Bs in ZA too.

xracer

My question for you is this: given your love of all things Aman (and I don't mean this in a derogatory manner, just in a factual one) will you be happy with any trip that does not include Amangani?

If Amangani is a must, then I would second the recommendation given by offerendum: Denver-Jackson Hole-SLC-Moab-Santa Fe. That's a pretty big circuit, but certainly doable in 3 weeks. Heck, you could even work in a return to Amangiri if you really felt the need.

The weather along that route would be very nice in the summer and the scenery would be quite different than what you experienced this year.

robyng

I think it's partially a function of age on my part. If you like to travel - and live long enough - you get to a lot of places. Also - I have lived in Florida for 40+ years now. And have easy access to things like beaches and golf courses and tennis facilities. Not to mention a lot of warm ---> hot weather. So - with the occasional exception of a trip to something like a "tennis camp" - my travels have nothing to do with getting away from foul winter weather to a sunny beach. Which clearly isn't the case for lots of other people. Finally - my husband and I don't have children. I think it's more challenging to travel with children - to keep them amused - than without.

The US and Canada are extremely well suited to long car trips. Good roads. Inexpensive gas and inexpensive places for quick overnights between destinations where you plan to stay for a while (especially compared to what's available in other countries). We run into people from other countries all the time here who have done road trips that even we consider ridiculous (like going cross country in a week - driving for hours and hours - and even getting in 9/18 holes of golf when they arrive at their destinations for the night). We've done I don't know how many car trips in the US. And have been to 48 of 50 states (only ones we haven't been to are North Dakota and South Dakota). We haven't traveled as extensively in Canada (only 3 of 10 provinces).

When we were younger - we used to do a lot of longer driving trips in Europe as well. For the most part - it's a different kind of travel. For a few reasons. In most countries in Europe - things are much closer together. OTOH - if you drive on roads like the "brown roads" in the UK (when people used to use maps - the "brown roads" on Michelin maps were those narrow back roads - the kind where you often encounter sheep and stone walls) - they seem much farther apart. Also - many countries in Europe have "(great) restaurants with rooms". If you want to explore great restaurants (a frequent focus of our trips) - there's often no way to do it easily except by driving.

I guess another significant factor is that many more people travel these days. And places that were somewhat off the beaten path even 20 years ago aren't today. Yesteryear's "quaint" is today's "tour bus mecca". It's getting harder and harder to "get off the beaten tourist path" unless one is willing to travel in "low season". And tourists have a much larger impact in most smaller places than most larger ones (e.g., leaf changing season in the NE US is often a zoo - but even if the Tokyo metro area was inundated with tourists - it wouldn't make much of a dent in an area with 35 million or so residents)

FWIW - over the long run - I keep an eye on currency trends - economic trends too - in deciding where to travel. There are times when your home currency buys you a lot more in other countries - times when it buys a lot less. And - especially at the luxury hotel level - the world economy matters. Although luxury hotels rarely lower their "rack rates" - when the world economy isn't so swell - it's a lot easier to find "discounts" in the form of free nights - dining/spa/other amenity credits - and room upgrades. Robyn