I am planning a trip to the USA for later this year or early 2023. I live in Australia and have been to Europe, but wanted to explore the USA, both as a holiday destination and as a potential place to migrate to, since I work in game development (currently for a government organisation, but that contract will end eventually) and the industry here is absolutely tiny, effectively gamedev jobs here end up ultimately being peripheral support jobs for larger American or European companies, and lead to dead-end careers. There are a few companies here who do actual gamedev (like Blowfish and Blue Manchu), however their offices here are quite small and very competitive.

I have always held to the idea that the best way to explore a place is to talk to the locals, as they know the best places to go and won't try to lure me to expensive, boring tourist traps the same way as a travel agent or random "top 10 destinations" websites will. All I know right now is that the total trip would be around a month (maybe 1 and a half) and probably has a budget of around $5000 AUD.

I would love to hear peoples opinions, ideas for locations, etc.

I currently have been recommended the following by friends:

• Mount Rushmore
• The Rockies and the Grand Canyon
• New Orleans and checking out the French Quarter
• Gambling in Las Vegas and also checking out Nevada (especially some New Vegas locations), possibly spending a night sleeping under the stars in Great Basin
• Tetons/Yellowstone, then going to South Dakota to see Badlands National Park
• Seeing San Francisco, then heading up to see Olympic National Park, maybe taking a Valve tour while in Washington
• Checking out tourist stuff on the East coast as well, as there's a lot to see in NYC and other cities (cue the Louis Rossmann empty retail space NYC tour)

Some things I had in mind (these aren't highly researched, just stuff I heard about or wanted to do):

• Spending a few days in Texas to see some old-west history and some national parks, seeing things like rodeos, saloons etc. I need to see at least one big hat.
• Is it legal for tourists to fire guns? (at a range under supervision of course), as I would like to visit a range and fire something at least once, since I can't do it in my home country and I find guns fascinating on a mechanical level.
• I need to visit outback steakhouse at least once so I can laugh at how inauthentic it is
• I have never experienced snow at Christmas. I probably wouldn't be in the USA for christmas unless I organised it specifically, but it would be cool having an actual white christmas (so the carols will make sense)
• There's so much culture and everyday-life stuff to explore that's so different from anywhere else - tipping, baseball, halloween, thanksgiving etc. I will need to explore some of it if I plan to live there. Obviously it depends on time of year etc

Ideally this whole thing would effectively end up as a cross-country road trip, fast at some points and slow at others. Trying to get a good balance of nature as well as tourist destinations.

Does anyone have any recommendations, advice or ideas for how to efficiently travel the US? I was thinking of doing the west coast for mostly nature things then flying to the east coast for mostly urban/tourist stuff. I have heard the midwest is nothing but corn, so wasn't really planning on doing much in the central states.

It's also home to some of the best ZylonBanes in the world.