Glad to hear they were good spots! Can't see the photos at work, but hope you got to see some gators. Not sure if you went to the same tour, but if you did do they still take you under the bridge that shows how high the water was after Hurricane Katrina? That blew my mind!
Road Tripping in the USA!
- Thread starter [TW]Fox
- Start date
Yes, we got to see them twice, once in the Everglades and again at Gulf Coast. And yeah, we did see that, it was particularly impressive as there'd been a storm recently with a lot of flooding so the water was already much higher than normal, but nowhere near Katrina levels.
Hi all,
Bit of a hijack, anyone done any Canada related drives?
Im heading there in late May, starting in Totonto before flying over Vancouver. From there, driving to Calgary through the Rockies.
I have a good idea on route and stops already, but all thoughts welcome from those that may have done it.
Ps. Happy to ask this in travel section if needed
Thanks
Bit of a hijack, anyone done any Canada related drives?
Im heading there in late May, starting in Totonto before flying over Vancouver. From there, driving to Calgary through the Rockies.
I have a good idea on route and stops already, but all thoughts welcome from those that may have done it.
Ps. Happy to ask this in travel section if needed
Thanks
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Have done the Vancouver - Calgary (via Langley, Banff, Ice Fields, Lake Louise, Salmon Arm & Edmonton) many times, in both directions.Hi all,
Bit of a hijack, anyone done any Canada related drives?
Im heading there in late May, starting in Totonto before flying over Vancouver. From there, driving to Calgary through the Rockies.
I have a good idea on route and stops already, but all thoughts welcome from those that may have done it.
Ps. Happy to ask this in travel section if needed
Thanks
We usually fly into Calgary, pick Dad up in Edmonton, then take the scenic drive to Vancouver, stop to see Aunt & Uncle in Langley, daytrip to Vancouver Island to see Nana (no longer an option, sadly), before heading to Wife's cousin's ranch in Kelowna, then fly home from Vancouver.
Will spend a bit more time on this later - my number one tip is not to flash your high beams at a logging truck, in the middle of the Rockies, in November 2012.
I think my retinas are still burned from his response.
Just got back from our yearly NYC trip, I ended up renting with Turo for the first time so I thought some of you may be interested to hear my experience.
This time we'd planned on going up to Vermont and a few other places, so I didn't want to rent from one of the big names as I wanted something with 4x4 and winter tyres. In my experience, rental cars from NY don't come with winter tyres and you often don't get the car you ordered, especially around the Christmas period. The last thing I wanted was for them to give me something like a RWD Suburban on summer tyres for example. Therefore, I decided to go with Turo as you can choose the exact car you want.
I ended up renting a BMW X2 xdrive28i for about the same as what a midsize car would have cost from a normal rental company. I was able to collect the car in central Manhattan at no extra cost which was a big advantage and on collection everything seemed fine. The app works really well, you take pictures of the car, check in, the car is remotely unlocked and the keys are in the glovebox. It was raining at the time and the car was parked on the street, so I rushed this process a bit which proved to be a mistake.
The car drove fine but after about 500 miles I started to notice a very slight vibration in the steering. I didn't pay much attention to it as I'd been driving through a lot of mud and snow and figured that some of it had probably got stuck on the wheel but by the time I'd driven 1000 miles it was pretty bad so I got out and checked, to find that one of the front tyres looked like this.
I had been pushing the car pretty hard on mountain roads but nothing more than I'd have done in my own car so I don't think I was really responsible for that wear. Unfortunately, when I collected the car I didn't think of looking at the tread depth of the tyres, I just did a cursory glance at the wheels and sidewalls to check for obvious damage.
I sent the pictures to the owner and he apologised saying he hadn't noticed but as I was miles from any tyre shop we decided to just keep going and he'd "make it right". We were also on a tight schedule and I really didn't fancy losing hours waiting for tyres to be changed.
Unfortunately, the tyre ended up blowing out on our return journey, around 1.5hrs from Manhattan. The owner told me to call Turo support, who were brilliant. They sent a taxi which arrived within 15 minutes of me making the call, and we left the car at the side of the road with the keys in it (didn't seem a great idea to me but that's what support told me to do). A tow truck later collected the car and returned it to its owner.
The owner didn't charge me for the fuel I'd used. I ended up leaving him positive feedback as it was the first time I'd used Turo and I didn't want to receive negative feedback myself. The first time I used airbnb I left negative feedback for an owner and they also left me negative feedback which made it difficult for me to rent other places after that, so I just decided to swallow this one even though I wasn't really completely happy with his service. After leaving the feedback, I noticed the previous renter to me had left feedback mentioning the tyre, so the owner almost certainly knew about it.
All in all, could have been worse and we weren't majorly inconvenienced by the issue. I'd definitely use Turo again, although next time I'll be sure to check the tread depths on all the tyres. I'll leave some photos from our trip below, we ended up visting NYC, Stowe, Killington, Burlington, Princeton, Cape May and Atlantic City.
This time we'd planned on going up to Vermont and a few other places, so I didn't want to rent from one of the big names as I wanted something with 4x4 and winter tyres. In my experience, rental cars from NY don't come with winter tyres and you often don't get the car you ordered, especially around the Christmas period. The last thing I wanted was for them to give me something like a RWD Suburban on summer tyres for example. Therefore, I decided to go with Turo as you can choose the exact car you want.
I ended up renting a BMW X2 xdrive28i for about the same as what a midsize car would have cost from a normal rental company. I was able to collect the car in central Manhattan at no extra cost which was a big advantage and on collection everything seemed fine. The app works really well, you take pictures of the car, check in, the car is remotely unlocked and the keys are in the glovebox. It was raining at the time and the car was parked on the street, so I rushed this process a bit which proved to be a mistake.
The car drove fine but after about 500 miles I started to notice a very slight vibration in the steering. I didn't pay much attention to it as I'd been driving through a lot of mud and snow and figured that some of it had probably got stuck on the wheel but by the time I'd driven 1000 miles it was pretty bad so I got out and checked, to find that one of the front tyres looked like this.
I had been pushing the car pretty hard on mountain roads but nothing more than I'd have done in my own car so I don't think I was really responsible for that wear. Unfortunately, when I collected the car I didn't think of looking at the tread depth of the tyres, I just did a cursory glance at the wheels and sidewalls to check for obvious damage.
I sent the pictures to the owner and he apologised saying he hadn't noticed but as I was miles from any tyre shop we decided to just keep going and he'd "make it right". We were also on a tight schedule and I really didn't fancy losing hours waiting for tyres to be changed.
Unfortunately, the tyre ended up blowing out on our return journey, around 1.5hrs from Manhattan. The owner told me to call Turo support, who were brilliant. They sent a taxi which arrived within 15 minutes of me making the call, and we left the car at the side of the road with the keys in it (didn't seem a great idea to me but that's what support told me to do). A tow truck later collected the car and returned it to its owner.
The owner didn't charge me for the fuel I'd used. I ended up leaving him positive feedback as it was the first time I'd used Turo and I didn't want to receive negative feedback myself. The first time I used airbnb I left negative feedback for an owner and they also left me negative feedback which made it difficult for me to rent other places after that, so I just decided to swallow this one even though I wasn't really completely happy with his service. After leaving the feedback, I noticed the previous renter to me had left feedback mentioning the tyre, so the owner almost certainly knew about it.
All in all, could have been worse and we weren't majorly inconvenienced by the issue. I'd definitely use Turo again, although next time I'll be sure to check the tread depths on all the tyres. I'll leave some photos from our trip below, we ended up visting NYC, Stowe, Killington, Burlington, Princeton, Cape May and Atlantic City.