Brit Hoping for an East to West Coast Road Trip

[baker951]

I am looking into the idea of doing a road trip in the summer of 2010 from the east coast to west coast taking in a number of famous site's a long the way Looking at starting North East and finishing in San Francisco. I will hopefully have around $2000 dollars to spend. I am basically writing on this forum to find out the feasibility of this sort of adventure.
I will be 21 at the time. I am happy to camp all though on some occasions maybe 1 of 3 nights would prefer a motel. I would like to check out the nightlife in most places I visit but would also like to take in both the major city's and the small towns. I have around a month to a month and a half in order to carry this out.
Is this possible? Is there any websites that can assist me in the planning? Any major recommendations in places to visit?
Any help would be greatly appreciatied.
Matt

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

I'm afraid that $2,000 may not go nearly as far as you might hope. Let's just look at the car rental. You should be able to find a car hire for around $200/week with unlimited miles, but then you'll have to start tacking on the 'extras' such as a one way drop-off fee of $200-300, an underage driver fee of $25/day, insurance fees ($?) and petrol expenses of roughly $350-400. So that just the car and driving will run you on the order of $2,000 or more leaving you nothing for anything else. The fact is that a month on the road is a very expensive adventure, and your current budget is just not up to it.

AZBuck

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

I completely agree that you just can't make the math work at $2000. Its just not enough money for a month long trip.

I really think you would have a hard time even finding a rental car alone to come in on that budget, once you factor in the one way cross country drop off fee and your additional fees for being under 25.

You're also going to need a plane ticket, and even if you get the car under $2000, your airfare and car together will almost certainly push you over your threshold - and you haven't even gotten into food, gas, or lodging expenses.

Simply put, you need to double your budget as a starting point. Quite frankly, with $2000 you'll need to keep things fairly frugal for lodging (with your planned mix of motels and camping), gas, and food. Doable, but there's not a lot of wiggle room there.

In pretty much any case, you're going to need more money. You might also look at finding some friends to travel with you and share some expenses, or you might look at other transportation options like trains or buses which have some big downsides but should be much cheaper. Using hostels, where available would also help save you money as a solo traveler. None of those things will solve all of your money problems, but they could help get things closer to where you need to be.

[baker951]

Thanks for the advice. It seems as though i had underestimated what I was planning to undertake. I am now thinking of reducing my scope maybe just do a tour of the west coast, with a diversion to yosemeti park and then Vegas and the Grand Canyon. I have also started to put effort into finding someone to join me on this embargo.
Would it be cheaper rather than renting a car to buy one and then sell it once we have finished with it?

[AZBuck]

I'm afraid that it makes absolutely no sense to buy a car for anything less than about three months. The beating you'd take on trying to resell it as a 'motivated seller' alone would rule it out as a cost effective measure, then there's the fact that with no real time for either transaction you'd be buying retail and selling wholesale. In addition, the shortest time period you can buy insurance for is 6 months, and again you'd be paying a premium as a young driver with no American driving record. And that's just the money part, you'd also need to establish a real American address, not one offshore or a post office box. So no, buying and reselling is simply not an option.

AZBuck