Great point Betty! I live in Florida and hurricanes prevented me from attending two out of the last 5 Gatherings.Be aware that October is during the hurricane season. You most likely won’t be affected, but you may want to keep that in mind.
Without knowing what routes you've done before (since I'm a bit of a completionist in terms of routes), I'd consider doing Sunset Limited to New Orleans, Megabus or the Crescent to Atlanta, and then Red Coach down to Florida (it goes to Ocala, Gainesville, and Orlando.) I'm not a big fan of Greyhound personally and prefer some of the other bus lines, and both New Orleans and Atlanta are worthy layover cities for an overnight or two to explore. Since the Sunset Limited seems most likely to be cut if Amtrak LD service is cut in the future, I'd want to do that route ASAP, especially west of San Antonio. It's also relatively direct, and would avoid any issues if hurricanes hit the Carolinas in October (which is quite possible, and would impact an all-Amtrak route but not a Amtrak + bus route.)
If I had plenty of time, and money was no object, I would take the Coast Starlight from LAX to Emeryville, spend a day or 2 in the Bay Area, then the California Zephyr to Chicago, spend a night or 2 in Chicago, then take the Lakeshore Limited to New York Penn. Then spend a night or 2 in NYC, then take one of the Silvers to Florida.
I always take the Capitol Limited, but have never taken the Lakeshore all the way from Chicago to NYP, and I prefer New York as a place to visit. Thus my suggestion of Lakeshore over Capitol Limited.I like this plan, but would recommend taking the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington, then going on to Florida. I think the Capitol has better scenery than the Lakeshore, and I prefer Washington as a place to visit.
Happy New Year Jamie and Rosie!!What a response, thank you.
Have to write that the two that appeal most are from west point and jebr. Some will know we don't mind riding buses if that's the best option, and we do have this thing about trying not to go back on ourselves in any one trip. Up to Chicago and back down to Florida feels a bit like that, of course caused by current Amtrak routes. We were trying to find something we have missed in the past, we have never tried either of the above.
Previously we have travelled from LAX with the Sunset Limited to NOL and onwards to Florida with Greyhound, that wasn't one of our best Greyhound rides although the next year we took two more Greyhounds of more than 24 hours and really enjoyed them.
Have also suffered from hurricane disruption when Mathew approached northern Florida 2 or 3 years ago AmtrakBlue. We got lucky in one way and were offered help to get home from friends in Virginia, we were able to divert easily thanks to good friends.
The journey across to Florida is one of three options we are considering from San Diego to get to the east (almost certainly flying out of NYC), none involve flying across the US as we would miss so much.
Just to explain we have travelled around the US a few times, the Surfliner, Sunset and Zephyr are our favourites so far. This part of the journey will be governed by which friends we get to meet up with or as we learned just this evening, two of our friends will only be 200 kms away from our French home... while we are away travelling. We are waiting to hear from a few more people before setting off in a particular direction.
Hope the many suggestions above help others looking to make this journey, there's enough travel ideas here to keep most people happy for a while.
Merci!
Might mention ... MegaBus runs from Atlanta to Gainesville ... however, there is no train in G'ville - but Palatka is only about 45 minutes drive and both Silvers stop there.
With enough notice, I could probably drive you to Palatka so you wouldn't need an Uber
Happy New Year Jamie and Rosie!!
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