Hey me and my friend are from northern ireland (21 and 22) and we have talked about doing this for some time now and have started putting pen to paper and working some stuff out.
Firstly our route - Starting in LA we aim to spend about 21 days total travel from the UK back again, so this gives us around about 19-20 days to get from LAX to JFK. We have a rough plan put down on paper, ill give u a brief plan -
LA for 3 nights to see how life is in american.
Then on to the Mojave national preserve along the way to Las vegas, couple of nights their just to live it up.
From vegas we plan to head to the grand canyon aiming to finish in Albuquerque that night.
From there on to Oklahoma city maybe spending the night.
Then down to Dallas aiming for Houston (night over in both or maybe just Houston depends)
On to New Orleans for a night
Then a hell of a drive to Orlando for about 2 nights
After this we sort of hit a dead spot up threw south and north Carolina until we finish our trip with a few days around Washington and New york.
Id just like to ask for some sights along the way or places we should visit, we have a few days spare at the moment they shouldn't be to hard to fill in Im sure.
The main reason Im writing this post is to do with car hire in american, we have looked a few websites and we see pretty much all of them have surcharges because of our age and additional driver charges.
We had planned to keep the main expense of this trip to a minimum (flights, car hire, fuel and food) so we could have plenty to spend as we wished.
At the moment we aimed to spend around 4000 pounds (6000 dollars give or take) in total, So we took out 1500 dollars for flights priced and checked.
Around 45 dollars a day on fuel (this is a bit iffy) which is about 800 dollars for 18 days driving.
Looked on some maps and work it out to be 4000 miles to get to the main places we need to hit but that dont take into account the places we will get lost or spend off the main route.
Accommodation we set a target of no more than 40-60 dollars per night while on the road (18 days maybe less) because we will have prepaid our hotels in LA and NYC.
Leaving Food we hoped to not spend more than about 30 dollars per day less some days more on others.
Car hire we aimed to have for about 600 dollars but after we found the charges for our age and that number was set to increase by around 50 dollars per day (2x25 for 2 drivers under age). Any advice on companies that favor the young? We need a pretty decent sized car/SUV for about 18 days max with 2 under 25 drivers that we can pick up in LA and leave at NYC.
By my maths that leaves about 2200 (again give or take) for car hire and money spent on tours and sight seeing etc.
Im would like your guys advice on how to save some of this money or were to spent extra to make the trip a total success. We don't really know the cost of "living" over there so some info would be much appreciated.
We haven't taken into consideration road tolls or any other charges that may or may not apply.
That turned into a bit of a wall of text but there is so many questions that need answered and made 100% sure before setting off this july.
Thanks Ben