American fly-drive need advice

Murphy_The_Cat

mattarmy wrote: »

It will be me and my girlfriend going. We can both drive she isn't 25 until April but I assume this will be OK to share the driving as we would be travelling after then.

Nice one Matt.
I'm fairly sure that noone will penalise her one shes 25, but its worth a quick check..

The reason I asked if anyone else was going with you, is get an idea of what you both like. If you're both into surfing and beachlife, no problem. but if one of you is into Civil War reenactments and the other is palaeontology, then you'd need to do a whopping amount of compromising .

trets77

mattarmy wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

This sounds like a better idea maybe. I've just fancied going to Texas for years but I'd be happy with the above.

How much difference would a round trip make price wise in other peoples' experience? I'd rather do the Phoenix-Vegas-LA route without having to go back on myself.

Maybe I could do Vegas-San Fran-LA instead? Then return to Vegas from LA to hand back the car. This suits in terms of flights as there is a direct flight from Manchester to Vegas as well which is more convenient that flying from London (I live in Liverpool)

i've done LA-SF-LV in 2 weeks and it was just the right amount of driving .

You should be able to get a free one way drop off between California and LV ( or vice versa) . Carhire 3000 is who i always book with .

this was our itinerary but how i would do it , if i did it again

i would budget 2 full days in LA ,(3nights)

2-3 Days driving between LA and SF. you could do it in less but there are so many great places in between . if i did it again i would take the Pacific coast highway and aim for the Santa Barbara area as day 1 , the head for Monterey day 2 . ( 2 nights)

onto SF day 3+
2 full days in SF (2 nights)

1 days driving to Yosemite +

1-2 full days in Yosemite , depend on if you plan any hiking ect if you just want to drive around the place one full day is fine . (2-3 nights)

1 day driving to Death Valley . depending on when you go this journey can be easier in the summer months . if you go when the Tioga pass is closed then it is very long trip around the Sierra nevada mountains via Bakersfield to Death Valley . +

1 full day in DV ( 1 night)

from DV it is about a 3 hour drive to LV . and you can use our Vegas thread for getting a good deal on room .

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2174765