my road trip

ILOVEHOLIDAYS

silvercar wrote: »

We've just done this trip in reverse order. Did it over 18 days - 1400 miles altogether!

LA - Cambria - Big Sur - Monterey - San Fran - Yosemite - Lone Pine - Vegas (incl trip to grand canyon south rim).

Enjoy!

Thanks the flights were cheaper from and to LAX to i think it will work out better for us this way.

is there any hotels you recommend?

i cant wait

Murphy_The_Cat

ILOVEHOLIDAYS wrote: »

we do spend a lot of time in the car sightseeing. my oh is a transport director and we often take a job on at the weekend just for the drive but I do understand where you are coming from

thanks I might drop a night at LS and SF just to spend less time on the road

If you're doing that for a living, then you'll certainly appreciate the effects of long drives.
A bit more of a relaxed driving routine should pay you rich dividends. Planning to do less and allowing yourselves to do more, if you want to, could make your holiday even happier.

On my recent trip, the google maps mileage for our 14 day trip was 1200 miles -- the mileage that we actually did was 2350 miles.

The route that you're looking to do this year has one hell of a lot more to take your interest than a trip to Florida !

silvercar

ILOVEHOLIDAYS wrote: »

Thanks the flights were cheaper from and to LAX to i think it will work out better for us this way.

is there any hotels you recommend?

i cant wait

Do you have a budget? (and do you intend keeping to it;) ) We broke the hotel budget at every turn.

I don't think we are at the same budget point on this holiday for hotels.

Murphy_The_Cat

silvercar wrote: »

Do you have a budget? (and do you intend keeping to it;) ) We broke the hotel budget at every turn.

I'm going to be very unMSE now.
My holidays are a big deal for me -- its our family time together.
For us, having prebooked, quality suite hotels, that are already dialled into the SatNav have a value all out of proportion to the cost of the room.
Yes, they are going to be a few $$$'s more than a 'budget' option, but not having the hassle of finding a hotel that you like the look of, haggling for a price, checking out the room etc is time that I'd rather spend enjoying ourselves.
One possible difference for me is that we travel as a family of four and we have a very strong preference for suite accomodation where we have a bedroom seperated via a door. (Homewood Suites are excellant for this) If this isn't a requirement for others, then your choices have just increased considerably.

Several years BC we didn't prebook accomodation and it generally worked OK forus, but having done the trwal for a room after a long drive, its a real PITA.

silvercar

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

I'm going to be very unMSE now.
My holidays are a big deal for me -- its our family time together.
For us, having prebooked, quality suite hotels, that are already dialled into the SatNav have a value all out of proportion to the cost of the room.
Yes, they are going to be a few $$$'s more than a 'budget' option, but not having the hassle of finding a hotel that you like the look of, haggling for a price, checking out the room etc is time that I'd rather spend enjoying ourselves.
One possible difference for me is that we travel as a family of four and we have a very strong preference for suite accomodation where we have a bedroom seperated via a door. (Homewood Suites are excellant for this) If this isn't a requirement for others, then your choices have just increased considerably.

Several years BC we didn't prebook accomodation and it generally worked OK forus, but having done the trwal for a room after a long drive, its a real PITA.

I agree. Better to do the research at home and go knowing you have chosen accommodation in each stopping point.

We fly with Avios where possible and use the savings to upgrade our hotel budget.

We lost out on our first choice of accommodation in Big Sur because the cheaper rooms had gone when we came to book, so we booked elsewhere. Also when we were in Lone Pine, we had pre-booked the Comfort Inn, arrived after a long driving day and there were people at reception trying all the hotels in town and they were all full! Bit of a pain to drive to a different town.

Another detail for us is that we would rather limit the amount of times we enter credit card info via hotel wifi - and I am certainly not paying for data abroad. (I know some people will buy a local SIM with data abroad, but we had made the decision not to do so this holiday and we did find free wifi widely available.)

Murphy_The_Cat

silvercar wrote: »

Another detail for us is that we would rather limit the amount of times we enter credit card info via hotel wifi - and I am certainly not paying for data abroad. (I know some people will buy a local SIM with data abroad, but we had made the decision not to do so this holiday and we did find free wifi widely available.)

I don't take my phone abroard with me, but I can see how this could be important to the folks that do.
Having wifi included in the hotels pricing certainly helped me to utilise my Kindle Fire whilst I was away

ILOVEHOLIDAYS

silvercar wrote: »

Do you have a budget? (and do you intend keeping to it;) ) We broke the hotel budget at every turn.

I don't think we are at the same budget point on this holiday for hotels.

To be honest no we dont have a budget but im not gonna blow 10k + on a holiday just for a bed for the night as we will be on the road most of the time. but thats just us. we havent got kids so dont have to worry about them.

to stay in some of the travelodges that have good reviews for under £50 for the two of us then thats just where we will get our head down. thats why the vegas hotels and maybe the bishop/jamestown hotels will be better.

ILOVEHOLIDAYS

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

I'm going to be very unMSE now.
My holidays are a big deal for me -- its our family time together.
For us, having prebooked, quality suite hotels, that are already dialled into the SatNav have a value all out of proportion to the cost of the room.
Yes, they are going to be a few $$$'s more than a 'budget' option, but not having the hassle of finding a hotel that you like the look of, haggling for a price, checking out the room etc is time that I'd rather spend enjoying ourselves.
One possible difference for me is that we travel as a family of four and we have a very strong preference for suite accomodation where we have a bedroom seperated via a door. (Homewood Suites are excellant for this) If this isn't a requirement for others, then your choices have just increased considerably.

Several years BC we didn't prebook accomodation and it generally worked OK forus, but having done the trwal for a room after a long drive, its a real PITA.

we havent got kids and as long as the room is clean then thats all that matters. if i wanted to spend a long time in the room then thats a different matter but i dont.

we wanted to go and not book the accomadation but having never done this before my OH is very dubious and after being on the road i can imagine the arguements it would cause

Archergirl

If you do manage to go to St Louis Obispo make sure you book into the Madonna Inn. It's a big pink building look it up online, it's quite expensive but it's a fab place with every room a different theme, well worth a night.
Make sure your hire car has cruise control, I think most of them do now.

silvercar

ILOVEHOLIDAYS wrote: »

we havent got kids and as long as the room is clean then thats all that matters. if i wanted to spend a long time in the room then thats a different matter but i dont.

we wanted to go and not book the accomadation but having never done this before my OH is very dubious and after being on the road i can imagine the arguements it would cause

We booked Cambria 3 nights before. There was a lot of availability.

Then again Lone Pine was booked out when we got there, so glad we had booked.

I don't know whether you get better deals at the very last minute.

If you want a recommendation for Vegas, we stayed at the Venetian and it was amazing. In general, Vegas hotels are cheap for what you get because they expect you to spend money in the hotel restaurants/ casinos so are to some extent subsidising your room costs.