I agree with Hazardous, Denver is probably the best place to start out if you're by yourself. You would probably run into a good crew in NOLA and they can give you some good tips at the very least but chances are most people you would be interacting with are home bums which will approach you as soon as they see you have a backpack on and some of them can be volatile and become aggressive for no reason, in major cities more than anywhere else and while this is true wherever you are, the western half of the country seems to be a little better in that regard, people are usually more helpful and this type of lifestyle is better tolerated, even the home bums seem to be a bit better behaved out west, I'd say CO, MT, OR and parts of ID are the more friendlier places to explore and start out with, VT is also pretty cool if you ever end up there but that's just my two cents from personal experiences, i'd also try to find someone to head out with if possible, it can be hard to find other travelers on the road
