I am moving from Houston, TX to Mountain View, CA and so far here is trip:

1) Stay somewhere near Albuquerque on Night 1
2) Drive to Grand Canyon stay in Flagstaff Night 2
3) Stay near Yosemite or Lake Tahoe Night 3
4) Drive through Tahoe to Mountain View


Where should I spend my time at these places? Any cool non-expensive places to stay on this route? Any other Advice?

Wow. From HOU to ABQ in one day (850 miles)????

To put it mildly, that is one ambitious itinerary. As you laid it out, there is no time to do any sightseeing, just driving.

Any reason you're going through ABQ rather than staying on I-10?

I agree, that does seem a bit ambitious. If I were doing the drive, I would probably go Houston-Wichita Falls-Albuquerque-Flagstaff-Bakersfield-NorCal, or Houston-Kerrville-El Paso-Phoenix-Bakersfield-NorCal.

You'll have plenty of opportunities to make the Tahoe and Yosemite visits once you've moved to Mountain View. And once you get settled, check in with the Bay Area A&M Club. We usually have one happy hour or game watching party a month, plus Muster and an end of summer picnic.

Oh, forgot to mention in the first itenerary, nothing wrong with making a one-day pit stop in Vegas, between Flagstaff and Bakersfield, if you so choose. It's not that far out of the way, and you can check out Hoover Dam if you're interested.

We drove to San Diego the day after Christmas '06 for the Holiday Bowl. We drove straight through the day/night and made a detour in Tombstone, AZ. DO NOT RECOMMEND.

I did a similar drive a couple years ago. I went:

Houston - Dumas
Dumas - Denver - stayed two nights in Denver with a friend.
Denver - Elko, Nevada
Elko - San Fran

There are plenty of spots to detour through and seen cool stuff, particularly just west of Denver. I've taken I-10 to cali enough times to know that it might be the most boring route possible.

If one is serious about going through Albuquerque, going 287 through FT. Worth and W.Falls and Amarillo is the wrong way around. And if you hit Ft. Worth at rush hour, you'll be sorry.

I'd take 190 to Temple, 36 to Abilene, 84 through Lubbock - Clovis - Ft. Sumner and on to I-40 in Santa Rosa. Knocks 40 miles off.

I drove from Tyler to Stockton and that was
Not much fun. I should have planned it better. It we just drove till we got hungry or tired and found the closest motel 6 since they took pets. When we moved back to tx we drove from Stockton to Bakersfield (late start) then drove from Bakersfield to Tyler straight through.

Have fun while your out there see the sights. I had some coworkers that were from out of state and never even drove the 3 hours to yosemite or Tahoe, etc.

congrats on your job at google.

Tahoe will be way out of the way. I also don't think you can drive through Yosemite this time of the year - the through roads are closed due to snow.