Originally Posted by The Historian

You'll get a lot of good advice, and some bad advice, on this topic. My suggesting is to start thinking about the three big things:

1. Time
How much time do you have for the tour?

2. Comfort
How comfortable do you need to be? Do you need to stay indoors? How often? When? How much to you eat, and what? What sort of gear do you need? What gear do you want? Etc....

3. Money
How do you pay for it?

You will find all sorts of estimates about what you should buy and how much the trip will cost. Some people live expensively on the road, and some live on shoestrings. Look up BF poster "GPSBlake" and he'll tell you about going from South Carolina to Texas for 400 dollars on a Wal-Mart Schwinn Sidewinder. But he slept for free on public and municipal land and lived on peanut butter and crackers. I could never do that. :-(