We are thinking of blowing the kids university fund on a family RV trip around the west coast of the USA next year. We want to do all of the biggies like Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone..and maybe a dash of Moab. It’s probably the last time the kids will ever talk to us before they go all late teenage proper.

Has anyone on here done this recently? Can anyone recommend a decent firm that could put together a fly-drive package? Otherwise it looks like Branson gets the cash again.

Well, for a start, put your own package together!
The USA is ridiculously easy to travel round. The place is made for it!
Research where you want to go, then just turn up. We did it (car & motels) in 2005 and it couldn’t be any easier.
More popular places like the Grand Canyon you might need to book in advance, but if you go in September you’ll get the best weather and their holiday season is coming to an end so most places are quieter.
I do happen to know that Moab has a very good RV park though. Very good indeed!

Yeah, the wife and I have been before, last time we camped. I’m more looking for a flights+rental package to save all the hassle of dealing with separate companies.

It’s not really any hassle is it? All done in an hour or twos research on t’interweb 🙂
We’ve tried this before, more than once, but its always been cheaper to book direct, and then you get a better choice too

Expedia.com is worth a gander though. 🙂 I think that’s where I looked first.

In case you didn’t know, it’s eye-wateringly expensive to hire an RV in the USA too. I know for two people its faaaar cheaper to stay in motels and hire a fairly big car.

Mrs B and I managed to rent a VW campervan for SSWC08 and driving round Napa, Yosemite, Carmel etc. Worked for us but your teenagers would need a tent really. Price-wise it worked out OK although as pointed out above proper motor-homes can be a bit pricy. Even more so during school holidays if that is when you are going.
TBH you would be better off going on your own and taking your bike in September. Cheaper and as much riding as you want;-)

blackhound , id be interested to hear what company that was from.

a day van camper might be the solution to our problems , we are heading out to san francisco next summer if i dont change jobs before then

3 weeks in the area and we would like to go to go see the sites , we were thinking car and motel but this was an option we didnt think of – would mean we could take bikes as well rather than just hiring a sports car and bikes when we get to the ride places.

trail_rat – this looks like the one we used, website changed since 2008! We got a flight into SF and caught a train down to Redwood which all worked well.

http://www.californiacampers.com

Did BC with wifey. Arranged it all myself, dead easy with a bit of internet trawling.

We used cruiseamerica for RV hire; to be honest, weren’t that impressed with the quality of the van, but think we were just unlucky.
I’d agree though that it’s probably cheaper to pick up a car and book your own accomodation, but you will lose out on some of those adventures that an RV will give you – emptying the ‘waste’ tank is something you never forget!

It’s phenomenally expensive.

It’d be far better imo to just rent a car, you could buy all the camping gear you want when you are there and still be way ahead. You’ll also spend a sodding fortune on fuel. Yes, it’s cheap in the US, but at 5mpg and with 2,000 miles to drive it gets costly!

Camp sites in the US are pretty nice places to be – they tend to be embedded within locations like state or national parks, so you might spend a week or so at that location doing the walks or out on the lake or whatever. Camping like this is lovely.

Campsites are all over the place, there’s a national chain called KOA which publish a directory, they are the campsite equivalent of motels. However if we are just en-route and there is nothing special to see we’ll stay in a motel. They are absolutely everywhere, they are cheap and you never have to book. Just drive til you are fed up and stop.

If you find yourself in the Dakotas with a tent, you have the option of heading for National Grassland (of which there is a lot) and rough camping out on the prairie with the coyote and the buffalo. Just make sure you are 400 yards from the road. It’s definitely a highlight imo!

molgrips, we are seriously considering camping now. That is how we did it last time using KOA but as you rightly say $300 on tents and stuff will be piss in the wind compared to RV.

Camping with optional nights in a motel also gives you loads of flexibility. State and National Park campsites are great imo, we never bothered with commercial grounds like the KOA. We just used to look for the little camping symbol on the map and drive there, always found a great campsite when we got there.

e.g.

Take the cost of an RV, then find your nearest REI store (www.rei.com). Then go absolutely nuts filing your trolley with fantastic outdoor gear, and marvel at how much money you have left over 🙂 And you can then take the gear home with you!

Something else to consider – RVs are limited to certain sites and pitches on those sites. You usually can only stay in big state parks with tarmac roads and all the facilities, which are very non-wild and often busy in season. Not that they are bad, of course.

With a tent though you have many more options. There are lots of places that only take tents – many have campsites with room for a car, but there are also places you can walk 50/100 yards from the car park say and camp down by the river or in the woods proper. Not too hard if you have relatively portable kit (which you could easily choose when shopping).

The other alternative would be to buy a small tent suitable for putting in a rucksack (we just got a Marmot Limelight 4p which is sublime for this reason) then you can pack up and walk into the wilds for a ‘back country’ camp, which most state/national parks and national forests have if they are big enough. You need a $5 permit from the office for that, and you’ll probably need to take water and adhere to strict rules about fires and poo etc.

I went to a place called Zion Canyon once. Walked a mile or two up an old logging trail that went all the way out of the canyon, and we spent the night in the bush on the plain high above the canyon floor. Ace 🙂

Smaller tents are not that much of an issue in the US cos you usually never have to worry about spending all day in them in the rain. All campsites apart from the ‘back country’ ones have a picnic table at which you’ll probably be sitting most of the time and a fire circle, around which you’ll arrange the tables 🙂

I’m sold. Tent it is then. Now to break it to the kids 😉

How old are the kids?

Most state parks just charge a fee per pitch and you can put more than one tent per pitch so 2 smaller tents might be an option over one larger one.

I lived in this for 2 months in 2010. Two of us went from Vancouver to Tijuana and back sticking mostly to the coast with a few detours for vegas, grand canyon etc. North West Pacific coast is all jaw droppingly stunning coastlines and giant redwood forests. California is, well, California.

You really don’t need to plan anything in America. Driving around is very easy and everything is open. Just turn up and check it out. It was amazing and I’d start all over again tomorrow.

I’m sold. Tent it is then. Now to break it to the kids

Don’t forget to mention the bears, keeps them keen

Funnily enough we are planning to do a West Coast road trip next summer. Not done any of the detailed planning yet but the general idea is to fly in to San Francisco and drive up to (probably) Seattle and fly back from there. Hadn’t considered camping – was planning to go with hotel / motel mix. Really keen to see the North West coast area having done the Seattle to Vancouver / Whistler trip a couple of times in the past I wanted to include stuff further south as would love to see Portland as well. Kids never been to America so it is a chance to do a few of the tourist things in SF before heading north. Probably spend a couple of days in SF, then put in a drive and stop for a couple of days, tour that area then move on.

! ha ! Only last month, me & the glorious new Wife had just got back from such a trip.

We went over & over the pros & cons, had lots of mates saying an RV is to much ect, get a car & motel it..

Well, we did the RV, & had the absolute time of our lives ! we booked only THREE tings for our 2week road trip;
Flights
Shity hotel in Hollywood
The RV.

We landed in LAX. Checked into the Historic Hotel, Hollywood (built in 1929!!) did the tourist shite, which was, shite, spent time in Venice (go to the canals!) & both got some shite tattoos done.
On day 3 we swapped our SUV (need a car in LA) for a 25ft, 5berth RV (its all we could get) & headed for Lake Havasue. The next 9days were total adventure, Grand Canyon, (better than anything in ANY city) Hoover dam, 3days in a trailerpark trash RV site in Vegas, then through Death Valley, Mammoth lakes, over the Tioga pass (scary in a snowstorm!) & through Yosemite park. Once we made it to San Francisco, we dropped the RV off, gota cheap hotel, & spent the last few days on a massive tandem bike ride & Alcatraz.

Total spend, for everything, was about £3900. It cost $200 to fill the RV up!

The thought of doing 1500+ miles in a car.. no thanks, the thought of stressing out about getting to a Motel on time, no thanks. We didn’t plan squat, we flew by wire. Had a few moments, (seeing a dog get splatted upset the wife bigtime, & the snowstorm made my palms sweat) But we will never forget it.
We used Apollo RV. all good there 🙂
Oh, & don’t read trip adviser to much, the only people who post “reviews” on there, are the ones with something to moan about. There many more people who do such trips, without any problems.
Happy to give advise if wanted 🙂

Not in the US, but we did an RV trip in BC/Alberta a few years back. We opted for a “5th wheel” so we could leave the trailer behind and do day excursions in the tractor (a 5L V10 Diesel). We averaged 15mpg over the 2,500 miles we covered and with fuel costs, that worked out the same as driving a car over here for that distance.

Throughly recommend it. We plan on doing it all again next summer (or the one after).

Camper2 by druidh_dubh, on Flickr

Camper1 by druidh_dubh, on Flickr

Nice rig! Jealous.

You really don’t need to plan anything in America.

True. Although booking helps if you are going to a hot spot in summer.

The thought of doing 1500+ miles in a car.. no thanks,

Why? Are cars harder to drive than RVs? As for stressing about finding motels – I’ve done more long road trips than I can remember, always a combination of tent and motel, and never had any issues. Only once did we have to drive 45 mins to the next town cos one was mostly booked up due to some convention or other.

You’d be doing well to get high single figures in terms of MPG in an RV I think. My father in law used to get 5mpg towing in his F250 similar to druidh’s up there, only about 10-12 unladen. Whereas in a car you’d be doing 30-35mpg. After 1500-2000 miles that adds up to a fair bit of cash.

EDIT just noticed, druidh’s was diesel, my FIL’s was petrol. Diesel ones are not common, the hire place must specialise in them.

Oh yeah – on the subject of cities – there’s usually a KOA at least around cities, so you can still camp. I wouldn’t though, who the hell wants to go to a city when you’ve got all that amazing scenery to experience 🙂

Diesel makes a huge difference

In used RVs at least, diesel costs way way more, and I think there was a premium when I checked rental prices too.

Why? Are cars harder to drive than RVs? – I drive a car most days. Always wanted to do the RV thing, & driving that was easy-as. It was just our preference.

Hopefully we will do the same with our kids in few years. Maybe I was just to influenced by that Chevy Chase film.

At the end of the day, your gona spend a wad of cash, so you may as well do whatever you want to do. Its worth the bill, whatever that be 🙂

Our F350 had 425 ft/lb of torque. Driving it with the trailer off was a scream 😆

Two things.

druidh looks absolutely nothing like what I expected him to. Nothing!

Secondly, I would love to drive around America, just take a couple of months off work, hire a big car, throw a bike and a tent in the back, wing it.

Mrs samuri, she’s not so keen. Bummer.

You were expecting this?

You can always wing it in the US, it’s easy, you don’t need an RV. If you want to splash the cash go for it, but I’d rather camp 🙂

Breaking news

The family are bought into the camping idea,

And, and AND AND AND AND AND AND ..they want to do a week in Orlando, I don’t. So I’ve been given a week’s USA biking pass

Woooooooooooooooooooooootttttt

Fab.

How’s that going to work? Do you have to go to Florida with them (in which case biking will suck) or can you fly somewhere else?

A week’s biking pass? You could always trade that for a scuba pass and hop a plane down to Grenada

Peter

Camping is easy and just turning up I can only ever remember being turned down once. And got in just down the road.

I once spent a day in a tent avoiding raid, that was in Oregon when I coudn’nt be arsed. Great weather other than that.

Enjoy it.

A week’s biking pass? You could always trade that for a scuba pass and hop a plane down to Grenada

Peter

Very tempted…watch this space Mr W

You were expecting this?

Something more like this. (Although I have no idea why)

You are Clark Griswold driving the family truckster

Don’t miss Wallyworld 😀