United States
USA Travel Guide: Landmarks, Cities, Road Trips and the Filming Locations Between Them
A USA travel guide built around the location index, not a bucket list: seven files covering the coasts, the desert southwest, the USA landmarks worth the detour and the practicalities of getting between them.
8 files · fifteen regions in the master index
What this USA travel guide covers
American material makes up most of this site, for a straightforward reason: most of the screen locations worth travelling for are in the United States, and most of them are on public land where anyone can stand. The master index below covers around sixty of them across fifteen regions; the files after it go deeper on the ones that need it.
Treat this as a USA travel guide organised by ground, not by state ranking. The famous USA landmarks are here where they are actually reachable, the cities are here where they are worth walking, and a USA road trip is here where the driving is the point rather than the cost of getting somewhere else. A USA road trip planned that way is shorter, slower and better than the coast-to-coast version most itineraries start from.
Three road trips, not one country
The Carolina coast
Southport, Wilmington, Rodanthe and, three hundred miles further south, the South Carolina locations that stand in for North Carolina in The Notebook. Three days at minimum, and there is no fast road along the barrier islands.
The desert southwest
Monument Valley, the Utah parks and the Arizona canyon country, usually driven as a loop from Las Vegas or Phoenix. Public land almost throughout, extreme summer heat, and long gaps between fuel.
The Californian coast
San Diego to San Francisco, best done over three days on Highway 1: with the caveat that the Big Sur stretch closes for landslides and the closure can invalidate the whole plan.
The practical layer
Three files cover the things that go wrong on an American trip rather than the places: which prepaid SIM to buy, which is a coverage question, not a price one; how tipping actually works, which is a wage structure rather than a courtesy; and which type of travel card to carry, which decides how much of your money the exchange takes.
Road trips fail on the practical layer far more often than on the route, which is why these three files sit under the itineraries rather than after them. Long American road trips in particular turn on connectivity and card fees long before they turn on scenery, and this USA travel guide puts them in that order deliberately.
All three sit in travel tips alongside the rest of the practicalities. The screen material for every country is in the location index.
Distances between cities, honestly
The most common planning error on this silo is treating the United States as one destination. A few real figures, all by road, to calibrate against:
| From | To | Driving time |
|---|---|---|
| Charleston, SC | Rodanthe, NC | 8 hours |
| Los Angeles | Monument Valley | 9 hours |
| Chicago | Winterset, Iowa | 6 hours |
| New York | Savannah | 13 hours |
| San Diego | San Francisco (coast) | 3 days |
Domestic flights are cheap and frequent, and the right answer for almost every pairing above. The driving is worth doing inside a region, not between them.
What an Australian or British visitor should know first
- Prices exclude tax. Shelf and menu prices almost everywhere are pre-tax, and sales tax varies by state and city from nothing to nearly ten per cent. The number at the till is not the number on the label.
- Tipping is structural. In many states a tipped worker is paid a lower base wage on the assumption that tips make it up. The tipping file covers it in full.
- ESTA or a visa is required in advance for most visitors and is not issued at the border.
- Distances and fuel. Fuel is cheap and stations are far apart in the west. Fill up when the tank is half empty, not when the light comes on.
- Health cover. Treatment is expensive and insurance is not optional in any practical sense.
Public land, USA landmarks and what access really means
A large share of the entries in this silo sit on public land (national parks, state parks, national monuments and highways) and that is why they are the best ones to visit. They are open, they are cheap or free, and they have not been redeveloped.
Three practical notes. National park entry is per vehicle and an annual pass pays for itself in about three parks. Several of the busiest now operate timed entry reservations booked online in advance rather than at the gate. And tribal land, Monument Valley among it, is administered separately, with its own fees and rules, and a national park pass buys nothing there.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best filming locations to visit in the USA?
The ones on public land, because they are open, free and unchanged: Monument Valley, the Philadelphia Museum steps, the Georgetown steps, Griffith Observatory, Bixby Creek Bridge and the Madison County bridges. The private houses are more famous and much less satisfying to visit.
How far apart are the American landmarks on this site?
Far. The Carolina coast, Monument Valley and the Californian coast road are three separate trips, not stops on one. A useful rule is that any two states that do not share a border are a flight, not a drive.
Do you need a car in the United States?
Outside the north-eastern cities, almost always. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco all work without one. Everywhere else on this site (the Carolina coast, the southwest, the Californian coast road, Iowa) assumes a car.
What should an Australian visitor know before a first US trip?
Three things that catch people out: tipping is part of the wage, not a bonus, prices on shelves and menus usually exclude sales tax, and the distances on a map are larger than they look. All three are covered in the travel tips files.