I d check out a few Greyhounds and some colleges to see if any student is driving that way. Amtrak is rough.Well let s see...go down coastal california. Go to Vegas from there. Day trip to the Grand Canyon--they have loads of those. Then desert through. Might be a good idea to look at hopping a flight from Phoenix to Houston or Dallas. That s a long long drive with very little to stop at. Without a car, those cities in Texas are difficult to get around in. What is it you are hoping to see? If it were me, I d probably fly AZ or NM straight into Florida. Enter the south. Florida is not very wide. They also have lots of places that do bus trips for you. My friends live in Tampa and they ve done day trips down to Key West. Come back up to Savannah and Atlanta. Go to Charlotte straight up 85. You can go to Carowinds which is a really cool amusement park. From Charlotte you are real close to the mountains so I d say go up to Jonson City TN if you can get there and take a white water rafting trip. If not, Charlotte is home to the white water rafting center. I d take in a baseball game--Orioles are cheap. That s real close to DC and there are lots of trains DC to Phily and to New York. I ve riden the Chinatown to Chinatown bus. Takes you from Chinatown Phily to Chinatown NYC. It s cheap and fairly comfortable.From there, I d have to see where in New England Amtrak can take you. It would be cool to see some nature--Vermont or Maine. Then Toronto...I think I d knock out Canada b/c that didn t seem to yield many options. You d have to go back to NYC pretty much. I d look at flying out of hte Northeast again back out west. Perhaps Denver or somewhere in that area based on flight prices. So let s see...Starlight to LA. Pacific Surf to Vegas. Fly to Houston or New Orleans. Just find a stop near there (AZ, NM, NV that is a cheap flight to somewhere in TX). New Orleans to Miami on Crescent, Silver Star. Silver Meteor to Charleston. Greyhound a bus to Charlotte. Charlotte to DC, Phily and NYC on the Carolinian. Maple Leaf to Toronto and then to Chicago. Zephyr to Denver and on to Salt Lake City. From there I d look at a Greyhound b/c you d want to see some of the National Parks that Amtrak has to avoid.The only backtracking is if you go north of New York, you d have to come back to NY to depart. From Denver or Salt Lake, find some way to Yellowstone. If you can then get back up to West Glacier, you can Empire Builder back to Seattle.That does leave off Memphis and Atlanta but the backtracking there....I think if you want to do those you should look into an alternate. You could Greyhound from Charleston to Atlanta. Then ride that route up to Charlotte. Then only Memphis would be a big decision maker for ya. If there is anything out west you want to see though you d have to get off Amtrak.Definitely look at some college towns for some ride boards. I know we had one all the time. Students offering rides. The few hostels we have in the US do day trips on buses to places too.Good luck with the trip though.
Because You Are The Ships Captian
Well, Coast Starlight will get you to most of the big cities in California, Sacramento, Bay Area, and Los Angeles. From LA, I d take the Southwest Chief (gets you close to the Grand Canyon) to Albuquerque, NM and transfer via Amtrak bus to Sunset Limited in El Paso. That takes you through San Antonio, Houston, and New Orleans. Amtrak lies, you can t get to Florida on that train. The tracks are still washed out from Hurricane Katrina. It s gonna be hard to get to Miami without backtracking. You could take the Crescent from New Orleans up through Birmingham and Atlanta and then maybe catch a Greyhound bus from Atlanta to Savannah where you can head south to Miami on the Silver Meteor and then back up the Silver Meteor all the way to Washington DC, Philly, and New York. From New York you can get trains all over the Northeast. You can get the Maple Leaf up to Niagra Falls and Toronto and then Lakeshore Limited to Chicago. And then from the windy city, take the California Zephyr through Denver and Salt Lake City. There you could either head all the way back to Sacramento on the train and head back up on the Coast Starlight or take an Amtrak bus from Salt Lake to Portland. It makes a big circle and I think it hits just about everything on your list. Only backtracking is really to see Florida.