This page will answer the questions you have about planning independent road trip holidays to the USA from the UK.
This particular page is very large with a lot of information on it. You may scroll down it or you can click on the text links below to be taken to the relevant section of the page.
- Planning Fly Drives - basics
- Finding places to stay
- Finding and booking flights
- RV information
- Jet Lag
- Tips for Beer Monsters
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Planning Flydrives
How far to travel each day
If you are new to travelling fly drive a very good place to start planning is by is looking at routes in travel brochures. However, beware of taking the suggested routes and timings too seriously. Many of the routes I have seen advertised mean you will spend all day in the car and not really see the places you visit. Our first holiday left us feeling that we never had enough time in any one of the places we visited. If your plans require you to travel very big distances in a day, plan to spend 2 nights at the next place you visit. Better still, split the big drive and see some little place you wouldn't have picked for any other reason than its in the right place. By doing this we have come across some wonderful places.
Dont be too optimistic about how many miles you will travel in a day. If you are, you will not give yourself any chance to pause if you come across a view or attraction that grabs your interest. This happens more often than you would expect. To rough cut plan, look at the miles between places and divide by 55 to give roughly the driving time e.g. 275 miles = 5 hours driving. Decide where and when you wish to eat and plan your start time to get you to the right stop place at the right time - note if you wish to have an evening meal at your destination, in some smaller places it can be very difficult to find a restaurant open after 9.00 pm, so you need to arrive by 6 or 7 pm at the latest. Look at your route to see if there are places or attractions that you would wish to visit. Consider how late the previous day you arrived at wherever you are to see if you want some time to look around before setting off. If you are only staying one night you can see how a day can easily be overfull if you dont want to get up at the crack of dawn to make a long day of it.
I have seen routes in brochures suggesting looking round the town you start from, driving up to 300 miles in a day stopping off to see some major attraction before sleeping overnight and repeating the following day. This is not a realistic plan for most mortals !
Vehicles
When you go to pick up your hire car, the salesperson is very likely to try to talk you into an upgrade. They are well practiced and quite convincing. As long as you are confident you have booked the correct vehicle for your needs, dont be tempted to upgrade. On several occasions we refused to buy an upgrade only to end up getting it anyway. They do not actually keep vehicles for a specific booking and can run out and end up giving you a higher class of vehicle anyway. If they are being forced to do this, they will always try and sell it to you first.
When you pick up the actual vehicle, inspect it carefully and make sure they note any damage. Report anything significant before you drive off.
This is my absolutely top car hire tip
Whenever I have not followed this advice myself I have regretted it. Once inside the car, the temptation is to set off straight away and start your adventure. Don't do this. Sit in the car for at least 5 minutes and workout where all the controls are for lights, indicators, windscreen wipers etc. Believe me, its much harder trying to find these things once you are driving in traffic.Follow this link for an absolute beginners guide to hiring cars
Site Visitor post If you are making the car booking, you'll need CDW, and liability top-up insurance typically to $2M. Much cheaper to buy in the UK if your rental company allows. I normally buy just LIS from www.worldwideinsure.com as my credit card provides CDW.
The comment above is a very good tip. In my experience getting everything paid for on the car before you go saves you hassle and money at the other end.
Drive in circles
If you are hiring a car from one of the bigger companies, you can normally drop it off at a different place to where you picked it up. However, this is not always the case if you are picking up from a small airport/town and is usually not the case if you are hiring a minivan.
The best way to solve the issue of drop off is to plan a circular route. It is easy to do for most places you will wish to go flydriving to. Its much better to plan your route in this manner rather than have to change your carefully planned route when you discover the company will not let you do a one way drop off. If you really dont want to drive a circular route then investigate the car hire options before you plan details. A change to your start or finish point may allow you to do close to what you want.
You can checkout how we have applied these principles on the routes page.
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Finding places to stay
To book or not to book
It would seem to us that most Americans turn up at a town in the late afternoon and expect to find a motel room without pre-booking. They normally ask to view the rooms before they accept them and may well seek prices in several places before deciding where to stay.
We have tried turning up without booking and it has been fun, it leaves you with more freedom about where to stay and for how long. We've skipped through places having not fancied them and stayed extra nights at places we really liked.
However, be warned, it does not always work. We've been desperately looking for rooms unexpectedly when there is some 'event' going on in the town we did not know about and every room was taken. If you are a group of adults, you can consider driving onto to the next town or sleeping in the car. Its not that easy if you've a young family with you. In these circumstances I'd advise pre-booking all of your nights.
Even having prebooked, you can still have flexibility if you pay attention to the booking conditions, because if you let the motel/hotel know you're not coming before their specified cut off time (which is often 4.00 pm on the day of your planned stay or maybe 4.00 pm the day before), you can cancel the booking at no cost if you have found somewhere you would rather stay or if you find you want to stay an extra night somewhere. You find details about the cancellation times when you book the accomodation. The only place I've found where this does not work is where you have to pre-book ages in advance to get a place e.g. the National Parks.
Follow this link for an absolute beginners guide to accommodation in the usa
Useful reference materials
If its your first time flydriving and you are organising it yourself rather than booking a package, I would strongly advise you buy the Mobil Guide for the part of the states you are going to. These have write ups of all the good value and quality motels in a town and give quite abit of information about most towns. The Mapquest website (see link page) lets you access much of the same information, but I think the book is better to study when you are unfamiliar with what you are doing.
Site visitor accommodation tips
Visitor post 2.1.02 I found it useful to secure a couple of the free/reduced coupon brochures available on most street corners. Whilst I am not convinced that the advertised rates are always attainable, they are useful in planning where to stay and give an indication of what is a reasonable rate to expect.
Visitor post 4.9.02 Regarding accommodation coupons, call in at eating places like Dennys, or state tourist offices as you cross the border, for motel coupon books. One series is 'Traveler Discount Guide'. You can even print a few coupons before you go - see roomsaver.com.
Visitor post 7.4.03 Tip for newer USA travellers, especially those doing fly-drives. Pick up the tourist guide newspapers available at lots of information offices and elsewhere. They contain vouchers with special prices for accommodations. We found they saved us money, in some cases quite a lot off the standard price if you just turn up. The papers have phone numbers and directions to motels, some of which accept advance bookings.
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Beer Monsters tips
Cost
If you enjoy more than the the odd glass of beer, it can be quite expensive in the USA.
As we have always had young kids with us when we've travelled, we've got into the habit of having a few beers in the hotel/motel room after the kids are asleep. This is a cheap way to indulge ! In most places we've visited in the USA beer is sold in petrol stations (for exceptions see below). It is at least half and very often less then half of the cost you'd pay in a bar or restaurant. Supermarkets are even better value.Canada
They dont sell beer in petrol stations in Canada !
They dont sell beer in super markets in Canada !!!
They only sell beer in Government run/sponsored liquor stores. If you didn't know this, you could spend a frustrating hour or so out beer hunting. Keep you eye open for Liquor stores or Beer shops as you approach your destination, they are few and far between.
Colorado
Site visitor post 17.11.01 No restrictions except Sunday - only 3.2% (alcohol content) beer sales - and no other alcohol sales.
Mississippi
Site visitor post
If you're planning to visit Mississippi on a Sunday be prepared not to be able to get a drink. We visited Tupelo and struggling to find a bar after a long walk went into an Outback restaurant for a meal, (and a drink). We were disappointed. The staff told us no drink was available,( not even wine),anywhere in the county and others nearby. keep some in the car.
Bri
New Mexico
Site visitor post 17.11.01 No restrictions except Sunday - no alcohol sold before 12:00 noon.
Texas
Site visitor post About a third of the counties in Texas are dry! No alcohol for sale in restaurants or shops. After a long day's drive that's hard!!
BrynUtah
Site visitor post 17.11.01 Beer Monsters beware, another Canada. - state owned/operated liquor stores only - few and far between.
Wyoming
They dont sell beer in petrol stations in Wyoming !
This came as a rude shock. However, liquor stores and supermarkets that sell beer are much easier to find than they are in Canada.
Look at this prestigious award we have won !
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Jet Lag
From the UK to the USA
I am not a doctor or in any way medically qualified. However, I have a good personal knowledge of how to deal with jet lag based on personal experience of holiday and business travel from the UK to the U.S.A.
Tavelling west to America adds hours onto your day. At most times of year (depending on the change to and from summer time) from 5 hours on the east coast up to 8 hours on the west. This means that if you take off from London at 12.00 noon for a 6-7 hour flight to the east coast, you will arrive at say 14.00 local time in the afternoon, although your body will feel like it is 19.00 at night. It is more extreme going to the west coast where again setting off at 12.00 noon and flying for say 11 hours, you arrive at 15.00 local time although your body will feel like it is 20.00 hours. What this means is that at four o'clock in the afternoon in San Francisco, you are going to feel like it is midnight and time to go to bed.
All of my experience says to fight your natural inclination to sleep. Do your level best to stay active and awake until local time matches your normal bed time at home (if you can tough it out that long). You will almost certainly wake up early the following morning anyway, whatever time you go to bed. Your body will think it is 12.00 noon when local time is 04.00 in the morning. I now find that staying up late on that first night can virtually reset my body clock to local time. On that first night, however tired you are feeling, remember that if you go to bed at 21.00 local time and sleep a solid 8 hours you will still be up and wide awake at 05.00 local time the following morning.
From the USA to the UK
This is a lot tougher because you lose 5-8 hours from your day and its harder for your body to adapt. I have found that the key to this transition is to get some sleep on the plane - ignore the film you are better off sleeping. Once home then stay awake all of the following day, your first back in the UK and go to bed at your normal time. Its much easier to say than it is to do. If you have a choice of return flight times, take off from the states as late at night as you can to give you a better chance of sleeping on the plane.
Site visitor post 4.1.03
Set your watch to the time it is in your destination as soon as you take off. This seems to help the brain accept the time difference.Site visitor post 14.6.03
When we fly west, like you say, we try to stay up to something approaching local time bed time, and so try to eat early evening local time. By trial and error ('cos you don't really feel like eating when your body clock says its 1am in the morning) we discovered a meal of pasta seems the best option. We tend to do the same on the return trip, (but that's because Pasta is about the easiest to cook when you are half asleep!) I also agree with your comment about trying to get some sleep on the plane home and staying up until something approaching normal bed time.Site visitor post
Try Melatonin not avail in the UK but can be ordered over internet. I always buy loads when in the States. It also works for the over 50's as a sleep supplement. Lot's of information on the web about it.
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Finding and booking flights
General flight info
Invariably it will be cheaper to buy a return ticket transatlantic with one airline rather than fly out with one and back with another.
When you choose your translatlantic airline, choose it on the basis of the intinerary you intend to follow. By this I mean your needs will be different depending upon the shape of your planned holiday.A simple flight out followed by a drive around followed by a flight back will probably (depending upon your destination) give you a choice of airlines and cost will probably be the main factor.
A similar case is with one intermediate destination. The airlines will allow a 'free stopover' when you buy a return transatlantic ticket e.g. London - Los Angeles, Los Angeles - London would cost the same as London - Denver, Denver - Los Angeles, Los Angeles - London. In this example Denver is the 'free stopover', so you could fly drive around Colorado for a week followed by a week around California for the same flight cost as 2 weeks in California.
'Open jawed' flights are often a good idea for a flydrive e.g. fly out to San Francisco and fly back from Las Vegas. The cost is normally half the price of a return ticket to the outward airport plus half the price of a return ticket to the homeward airport.
You can combine 'open jaw' with a 'free stopover' to give even more options.
If you are even more abitious and plan to fly to a local rather then international airport then your choice of transatlantic carrier can be crucial. There will be only a few airlines servicing the smaller airports and you will get much better costs if your transatlantic airline is in partnership / alliance with this smaller airline. A good travel agent will know all about this, or you can look it up on the web.Finding a flight
If you have a good skilled knowledgable travel agent you know and trust then they can do all the difficult work for you. If you find one of these please let me know, they are as rare as rocking horse dung. This is not an attack on travel agents but a reflection of reality as I see it. Most travel agents are only really set up to sell packages. If you are reading this then you probably dont want to buy a package. Those who have the skills to serve your needs will probably be unable to afford the time to find you just what you need at the absolute best cost for you. Margins are small and most of the cost of your tickets will go to the airline not your travel agent, so they need to sell volumes of tickets to make a living, not hours just on one itinerary.
If you have the patience and the flexibility of when you can fly then I would strongly recommend that you prepare thoroughly before you go near a travel agent. Looking at what I have paid in the past and what I pay now, I think you can save at least £100 per person on a simple transatlantic intinery and substantially more on a more complex one. There may be other ways of doing this, but the best I have found is as follows.
Go to Expedia the Microsoft web based travel agent. With your basic outline of flight requirements ask Expedia for the best price way to fly. Adjust your preferred start times for the major flights by 3 hours or so and submit the request again. Repeat this timeshifting throughout your preferred travel days.
Now repeat the requests but flying out a day later. Do the same thing but vary the return day and do the same thing again and again varying any intermediate flight days.
What will slowly emerge from the sea of information you create is an insight into the pricing strategy of the airlines who serve your preferred destinations. You will find certain days of the week on certain routes are much cheaper than others and certain times of day are also much cheaper. This is a simple reflection of supply and demand. Popular days and times will cost more. In most cases it will be cheaper to travel Monday - Thursday.
By spending a long time researching you will be able
(a) to have a competitive quote to compare what a travel agent tells you they can do it for and
(b) you will have done the time sapping activity a skilled knowledgable travel agent cant afford to do and if such a travel agent can simply book the exact flights you ask for they are often willing to undercut expedia's price (presumably by shaving their own margins) to get a relatively easy ticket sale.
If you have the time and the inclination to do this, then you will get a competitive flight cost.Beware of the pitfalls of chasing the absolute cheapest flight cost over and above all other considerations. The cheapest flights you can buy are those sold at the last minute to fill up a plane. This is Russian Roulette, the longer you wait before booking the better your chances of getting a bargain price but also the better the chance of prices going up or seats not being available if the flight you want is close to full. Only play this game if you are willing to risk not travelling at all or are extremely flexible when you can go.
Too good to be true offers on the Internet are probably just that - too good to be true. Only use ABTA and ATOL backed agencies. Prices quoted will often not include the tax (about £60) and will often not be available.
Beware the famous 'from ' as in "Flights to San Francisco from ....." Invariably this will quote the lowest fare out of season without the tax. For San Francisco this would be say £220. The real cost then is £280 (inc tax) and in August (peak flight costs) would be £500 plus tax or £560. The £220 quote is just a spoiler to grab your attention which will leave you feeling cheated when you have to pay £560 for your flights in August to a real travel agent who is actually cutting you a good deal.
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RV (Recreational Vehicle) Information
This section of the Tips page was initially created because of repeated requests for RV information from site visitors that I was unable to answer. I trawled the internet and posted messages for help in many forums and gathered the information given here. Following our holiday in the summer of 2007 when we hired 2 RVs (there were 12 of us) I am now in a much better position to answer questions.
RV Basics
RV is short for Recreational Vehicle.Sometimes also called Winnebagoes or campers, although camper also refers to much smaller vehicle.
A self contained RV has toilet, washing, cooking and sleeping facilities on board.
You should be sat down with a seat belt on when on the move.
You should not cook when on the move for safety reasons. The driver cannot put the vehicle into cruise control and get up and walk around ! This comment is based on the true story where somebody sued an RV company for not explaining cruise control properly.
If you are a novice RV driver, look out for "pull through" campsites which mean you drive in from one end and drive out of the other and can therefore avoid reversing.
Reversing especially on one of the really big RVs is said to be the most difficult manouevres. Get in the parking lot of a larger store and practice as soon as you can after picking up the RV.
What....Where....How... etc
Where do I hire an RV ?
Cruise America seem to be one of the biggest in the business, so I would start looking there. They have 151 pick up points.What does it cost ?
As an example of 2003 prices, California & Nevada costs $900 - $1100 Jan to mid June and September to December (low season) and $1300 - $1565 in the high season. These prices and include 1,000 miles travel and 7 days hire.What is a hook up ?
You connect to mains electricity, water and drains from your holding tanksWhere can we stay ?
RV parks have hook up points (see above) and often shops, pools and other amenities. They typically cost $30-$40 per night for two people. You can stay free in the parking lot of most Wal-Mart stores. The national forests often have free camp grounds (without hook up points) and most of the national parks also have camp grounds often with hook up points.Should we make reservations ?
You should only have to do this if you are visiting a very popular place at a popular time. It rather defeats the object of freedom of movement if you have a strict itinerary.How easy is an RV to drive ?
It is surpisingly easy with the power steering and automatic gears. The most difficult thing is the reversing of very large RVs
As a Ex HGV driver the tips I will give when reversing a Large RV are: take it nice and slow, try to be smooth you are less likely to end in a mess.MOST Important
- if someone is guiding you - MAKE sure they stand to the side of the vehicle NOT behind it, so
a) you can see them and
b) if your foot slips on the throttle you don't run over them (this has happened many times with trucks !!!)
DeanSite visitor post
I agree with every thing that Dean says,I would add that only make small adjustments to steering when reversing,it is surprising how much a small adjustment to the steering wheel will cause the rear end to swing round,dont be afraid of pulling forward and starting again,even we experienced HGV drivershave to do so from time to time and we do it all the time. Like Dean said get someone to help you make them stand well to the side or in front and if you dont understand there signal or they go out of site STOP until they reapear if you dont move for a while they will soon come to see what is wrong.Happy and safe driving,remember the roads and rv parks are a lot bigger over there.
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