Coast to Coast: The Best Things to See on a Cross-Country Drive

When you’re ready to plan a cross-country drive, your route will be largely dictated by highways, major cities and iconic landmarks. Not sure where to start? Here’s our template to plan an amazing voyage. We’ll highlight the best things to see on a cross-country road trip, and help you decide what you have to check out.

How do I plan a cross-country drive?

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota

The first, and arguably most important parameters you’ll need to determine: How much time do you have? And, how many miles per day are you willing to drive? While you could certainly go Cannonball Run style and try to blast across the continent in record time, you won’t see much beyond asphalt if you emphasize speed. You’ll want to leave yourself time to see things along your journey, otherwise it won’t prove very enjoyable.

At the very least, to do a proper cross-country drive, you’ll need a week’s time. More likely, you’ll want at least 10 days or so to do it right. And if you’ve got two weeks or more, you can really see a lot of stuff and check off a lot of bucket-list destinations along the way.

What should I see on a cross-country drive?

So you’ve committed to making the classic cross-country drive. Fantastic. So, what should you see?

What route should I take across the country?

Well it all depends on which route you’d like to take. We’ve provided a few sub-route options: A Northern Route that takes you on a tour of the Canadian Rockies, a southern Nashville-to-Las-Vegas trek, and a central trip from Chicago to Denver that covers a ton of the Midwest.

This article has a list of some of our favorite attractions across the country. We’ll add more items here over time.

Peter Stringer

Peter is a travel junkie and photography enthusiast based in North Carolina. He's been to 47 states and 27 National Parks.

Photo Gallery: