Road Tripping in the USA!
- Thread starter [TW]Fox
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They are absolute junk and it baffles me why everyone is so obsessed with them. They are cheap coupes over there and it shows in every aspect of them. The rental companies must love the over odds amounts of money tourists clamour to pay to rent them.
I did it once, ticked the box, never again
Yes. Different engine but the engine is probably the least crap bit anyway. Its still fundamentally the same car.
Various tour companies offer packages which includes the flight and bus transfers to the main viewpoints. We went with Vision Air. You leave at about 9am and are back on the strip mid afternoon.
Though this was 6 years ago
About 6 months before you go.
The problem that you have is that you are presumably trying to one-way the car from Chicago to California. Rental firms do not want Illinois plated cars going all the way to California, so they'll put various measures in place to discourage it - mostly by restricting the available classes and adding significant one-way fees to the cost of the rental.
I never really get the whole Route 66 thing - as well as coming up against this significant one-way issue by doing 'Route 66' (Which hasn't really existed for half a century anyway) in its entirety you spend 50% of your trip in the middle of flat plains giving you less time to focus on the other 50% which is absolutely epic.
A better idea would be to fly into Chicago, spend some time there, and then fly on to somewhere like Denver and pick up the trip properly from there. From Denver to the West Coast there is almost no section of the country which isn't mind blowing in terms of scenery and interest. You might still come up against a one-way issue though.
I never really get the whole Route 66 thing - as well as coming up against this significant one-way issue by doing 'Route 66' (Which hasn't really existed for half a century anyway) in its entirety you spend 50% of your trip in the middle of flat plains giving you less time to focus on the other 50% which is absolutely epic.
A better idea would be to fly into Chicago, spend some time there, and then fly on to somewhere like Denver and pick up the trip properly from there. From Denver to the West Coast there is almost no section of the country which isn't mind blowing in terms of scenery and interest. You might still come up against a one-way issue though.
No, not really unless you are going in July or something.
30 quid a day used to be reasonable but with the devaluation of sterling that's probably closer to 40 now.
I really don't get the recurring questions here lately about driving that route and then not bothering with the scenic bits nearer the West coast..
Because most of these route suggestions major on the central states which are flat and avoid the really very scenic bits because they spend all their time driving through features prairies
This is often the case with US Car hire.
btw, one day rental is a total ripoff. Longer term you pay half the daily rate!
This comes up all the time. Somebody says oh I will spend a day there and people come back and argue that unless you spend 3 years there with an expedition crew you'll miss out.
Yes, spending days in Yosemite is amazing. Yes, you see much more when you do hikes. Yes, you miss some of what it's about by day tripping.
But a day in Yosemite is still great, you still see wonderful things and you still get a taste for what it is about. When you are on a 2 week holiday you simply cannot cover anything in depth, it's all about getting a taste for the various areas and perhaps planning return trips.
So that part of your trip, for me, works - perhaps not going all the way to San Francisco on the same day.
Exactly what I did - overnight in Bishop, then a day in Yosemite, then overnight in Modesto, then into San Francisco for lunchtime. Worked well.