TrekAmerica’s top road trips

Forty years on from the launch of road trip movie Easy Rider TrekAmerica has selected its top five cult road trips - both fictional and real - including three in the USA, with details on how travellers can follow in their tyre tracks.

Easy Rider: Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play two bikers who set off from Los Angeles to reach New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, stopping along the way to spend a few days in a commune.

Travellers can swap the Harley Davidsons for a minibus and follow the bikers’ route on TrekAmerica’s Cross Country BLT trip, which passes through many locations used in Easy Rider including Los Angeles, Flagstaff, Monument Valley, New Orleans and Taos, New Mexico. The 21-day Cross Country BLT starts from £1,479pp.

On the Road: Jack Kerouac’s semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Sal Paradise who travels across the USA from the east to the west coast during the late 1940s.

Sal Paradise’s cross-country route begins in New York and travels west through the northern USA states towards Los Angeles. Travellers on TrekAmerica’s Northern Trail will find themselves on a similar route, stopping in Chicago then passing through Iowa, Wyoming and Nevada before travelling south through California from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  The 21-day Northern Trail starts from £1,199pp.

Thelma and Louise: Two Arkansas women break free from their lives to take a weekend road trip, but after killing a man, they find themselves in a bid to reach Mexico.

TrekAmerica’s Americana Road Trip follows the route of the female fugitives, stopping for a dip in Hot Springs, Arkansas, before crossing into Oklahoma where Route 66 was born and on to the canyon landscapes of Utah and Nevada, including the Grand Canyon.

The 21-day Americana Road Trip costs from £1,439pp.  All prices exclude air fares.   

www.trekamerica.co.uk