Hey everybody!
I'm new to this website but it seems full of helpful people so I figured I could seek some advice here. I'm from the UK and next year I'm taking a trip round the world with some friends (Japan, Thailand, Australia and America).
We're flying into LA from Australia then making our way up to San Fran, and then flying east to Chicago; but from there, there are a ton of places we wanna visit and we were wondering if a road trip would be possible/feasible/sensible.
Basically, we wanna go up to the Niagara Falls from Chicago, then over to Boston on the coast, then basically down the coast, stopping at NYC, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Williamsburg (VA), Orlando and Miami.
For this leg of the trip we'd have three, maybe four weeks. Is this enough time to pull off something like this? Would we be able to stop at each place for a couple of days?
There are also further complications. As we're from the UK, we won't have our own car out there (shipping them would be too expensive); we're also just 18/19 years old (in our gap years before university). Most rental companies have policies where the primary driver must be 21+. This is clearly a problem. Are there any rental companies that allow 18/19 year old drivers?
Also the destination is obviously a long distance from the origin...1200 miles maybe. Most rental companies will charge an extortionate drop-off fee for this, as we won't be returning the car to Chicago. In my guidebook it mentions Driveaways, where you drive someone's car from A to B, can anyone fill me in on this? Would they be OK with us taking 3/4 weeks to do this journey? And are they still strict on the 21+ thing?
There are 4 of us making the trip btw, so we were thinking maybe an RV or some sort of van might be more suitable, but again, we may need an additional license or something for this?
But yeah if anyone could send any advice or assistance my way, I'd greatly appreciate it. If all else fails, we'll just be getting Amtrak passes, although I feel that driving would be more adventurous and we'd get to see more of the actual country.
Many thanks,
Rory