I frequently receive e-mail questions concerning driving on extensive road trips across the USA and about buying a car to drive around the USA.  Here are a few things I have learned after many years of driving in the USA and a few tips on how to best plan a driving vacation in the USA.

First of all, you must understand that the USA is a large country.  The 48 contiguous states of the USA cover a land mass that is 4,000 km wide from east to west and nearly 3,000 km from north to south. The huge seperated landmass known as the state of Alaska lies over 4,000 km north of the other states.  Driving across the USA or between widely seperate sites can be quite a daunting task.

Driving along the East Coast from New York City in the North to Miami Florida at its southern tip is a typical journey for vacationing motorists.  The trip is about 2,000 km long and requires nearly 20 hours of continuous driving.  It can be done in a single day if you forgo sleep and stop only for refueling, eating and restroom breaks.  Some adventuresome people, such as carloads of students on Spring Break during March, have done this, but it tends to be a grueling and exhausting pace.  Most people take two days to complete the trip with an overnight stop near the midpoint.  It still requires two days of extensive driving.  If you are on a leisurely vaction, and prefer to see many of the attractions along the way, this becomes a three-day drive.

Driving cross country from the East Coast to the West Coast, such as a trip from New York City to Los Angeles, is a 5,000 km journey that requres at least 50 hours of continuous driving.  Theoretically, it could be done in little more than two days, but most people would spend at least four or five days to complete such a journey.  If you are on a leisurely vacation and intent on seeing some of the attractions along the way, you would make it a two week journey.  Few residents of the USA would attempt such a journey.  It requires too much driving time, and you would spend most of your vacation behind the steering wheel of the car with little time to enjoy your vacation.  US natives would rather take an airplane from New York to Los Angeles, then rent a car to explore the West Coast.

Some overseas visitors write to me saying, "I want to see the country and to meet the people by driving across the USA".  I personally have seen much of my country and met many of its people.  I believe we have many wonderful thing to see and to do in the USA, but not every part of our country is very interesting.  When you drive across the Great Plains of the Midwest, and you have spent ten hours staring out of your windshield at a road that stretches straight ahead until it disappears on the horizon with both sides lined by mile after mile of monotonous grain fields, you will eventually say, "Why am I doing this?"

If you really want to see the USA and to meet the people, just choose an interesting part of the country and spend a week or two in that area,  Then, hop on an airplane and go to another interesting area of the USA and spend another week or two exploring that.

People constantly ask me about the feasability of buying a car in the USA to explore the country, then selling it.  Here is my succinct response:  "Do not do it!"  It is not difficult to buy or sell a car in the USA, but it is very difficult to obtain the necessary permits to drive that car.  If you are not a resident of the USA with a permanent adress in one of the states, it can be nearly impossible to register a car and legally drive it.  I know that renting a car for an extended period can be expensive, but it will be far easier than trying to drive a car that you purchase.

Other people ask me about buying a car in the USA to ship overseas.  This is a much easier task as long as you do not drive the car in the USA.  You could fly to New York City, take a bus or drive a rental car to the largest Corvette dealer in the USA near Atlantic City,  purchase a new or used Corvette in less than an hour, have the Corvette delivered to the seaport in Newark New Jersey or in Baltimore Maryland, and have it shipped overseas.   All of this could easily be accomplished in one day.