[84porsche]

Stay in places with lights and stay relatively close to major highways. If you do that, you can get some nice major hotels. But it is all a matter of how much you are going to spend and how far you are going to drive in a day. You can probably make it from MD to Chicago in one day about 10-12 hours of driving. The next day you can make it from Chicago to say Oklahoma or New Mexico and day 3 to California. You can find 2 major hotels in these cities and it shouldn't cost you more than $300 for 2 nights. You may even want to stop in Vegas and attempt to get your money back.