Road Tripping in the USA!

acemastr said:
Also SixTy were cheapest for me renting in Florida, SLK350 for 7 days was £190.
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This has come up about 900 times in this thread now, and its misleading and gives people the impression they can rent Merc SLK's for 190 quid a week. They can't.

Sixt charge about that per week for a standard convertible - ie, Mustang or similar. Same as everyone else. You want a Merc convertible, right now for 1 week in low season it's circa £600.

What happened was that you got very lucky presumably because they didnt have anything else to give you and could hardly upgrade you to a mini-van, so you got a great deal.

It doesn't mean that £190 is the going rate for an SLK and all it does when you continually bring it up is mislead people :p
 
We stopped at some huge mall between San Diego and Vegas, on the outskirts of LA. Ontario Mills I think?

Also, the CTS is a totally horrible car inside. I spend the weeks approaching my trips nervously worrying the only car left in my class at the rental lot will be a CTS :D
 
SF is very expensive to stay in, especially parking.

I don't drink so I stayed in a nice Marriott out in Foster City. Much cheaper, free parking. It was about 15 miles from SF which sounds far but took literally 15 minutes to drive as its right down the interstate. Useless if you want to go out drinking though. 4 nights is a very long time in SF, too. We did 2 I think (With 3 days there).
 
We had 3 nights between SF and LA and I dont think I'd have wanted to rush it any more than that. Perhaps 3 nights in SF and an extra night along the PCH?
 
Peerzy said:
San Francisco

With our £100 a night budget we can't seem to get anything decent in SF, so I think we are going to resort to staying just outside the city and drive in each day. This shouldn't bother us as we are staying in LA and SD. Can anyone suggest somewhere close to SF that's worth staying in and using as a base.
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I picked Foster City. 20 minutes down the interstate from Downtown SF.

PCH
Leaving SF we have 2 nights before we arrive in Santa Barbara. Looking at the map it seems sensible to stop somewhere around Monterey for the first night and somewhere near San Luis Obispo for the second night.
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Exactly where I stayed - though we picked Morro Bay down the road from SLO. Morro Bay is nothing special but was a handy overnight stop. Monterery is very, very nice and Laguna Seca is of course a 10 minute drive away.
 
I went with Bishop and then did the next night the other side of Yosemite. Bit of a trek to come back out to Mammoth Lakes after being in Yosemite?
 
Peerzy said:
I think I'd rather do my first night in Mammoth Lakes and then the second night somewhere else and the third night the other side of Yosemite. The only probably is I can't find anywhere to do the second night!
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I can't remember if you are staying in Death Valley or not. If you are not and driving from Vegas then IMHO Mammoth Lakes is too far. If you are overnighting in DV then it'll be fine.

Unless your second night is in Yosemite I'm not sure I see the point in having the second night? It'll take a good few hours to get into Yosemite from any of the towns either side anyway.

We did one night one side, day in Yosemite, one night the other side.

You've been planning this thing for months, I'm going the month after you and I've not even booked a flight yet :D
 
Peerzy said:
Where are you going this time?
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Into and out of Boston, then Vermont, New Hampshire, into Canada, down to Toronto, hopefully across to Chicago and back.

Not really my first choice of route frankly but it'll still be cool hopefully. I'd rather go to Colorado and Utah :p

To jump back to an earlier question - Alamo are the 'best' to rent with correct?
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Its who I rent with now, it's just much better being able to wander around and take your own car. If you get a crap one just swap it at the next corporate Alamo location. Which if you are picking up from LAX will be Vegas.
 
Peerzy said:
That looks a nice journey, but does it lend itself well to a loop (is there much to see on the way back)?
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No, it kinda doesn't. Not sure if Chicago will be feasible, as you say you then end up with an enormous drive back through pretty much nothing. But she really wants to visit the other side of Canada (We did West last year).

That's very useful to know - I assume it's just a case of walking in and asking to swap and they're happy to do it?
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Yup, I got rid of a terrible Cadillac DTS by doing this.
 
The convertible has much less boot space than the coupe, you can fit two large soft holdalls in but that's it.

On the seats is crap and will discourage you from putting the roof down.
 
By taking soft holdall's we would open the roof with the luggage in the boot which meant we got to have the roof off quite a lot of the time.
 
Both really, having large cases on the back seat is annoying, it's a security risk, it's faff, it rattles, it comes flying into the front if you had an accident, etc etc.

If you are renting a Mustang Convertible, make sure your luggage suits it. If you can't, IMHO rent something else because driving around in a Mustang Convertible with the roof up 90% of the time is crap and you'd have a better trip in a nice saloon.

We did the Mustang thing once to tick the box - roof down almost all the time. It's done now so we always rent Luxury Saloons instead where we can take as much junk as we like without worrying.
 
How long is the holiday? We managed 2.5 weeks with large holdalls, the type big enough to have wheels. It's the fact its squishy that makes the difference.
 
Rich_L said:
Top tip : If you can't fit your stuff in two large holdalls, you're taking too much stuff, regardless of trip length.

Take enough for a 2 week trip and take an hour out of your month-long trip to visit a laundry mid-way :p
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This is a good point I don't think I've seen made before. We usually do a full load of washing at least once per trip, almost every hotel you stay in will have laundry facilities - all done for you if you are staying somewhere posh, self service facilities if you are not.
 
Well you don't HAVE to go for 3 weeks, that's a fairly extravagant amount of time to go to a place like that, its obviously going to cost more. You don't need 3 weeks especially if you were going to waste a whole week in Vegas :p
 
Tbh I wouldnt bother getting a Gopro camera Peerzy. I used one last year and I don't even think I've bothered to watch the footage. I also spent too much time faffing around with it and starting it/stopping it/whatever when I should have been enjoying the scenery. It's the latest fad, you don't really need a GoPro on holiday.
 
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