Road Trip

2015 US Road trip

Chicago-New Orleans

Before flying out...

Have you felt like the city eats you alive? I felt like that for a long time, no energy, no positive attitude and nothing was good enough.  So I planned this road trip in less than a week, spending most of my savings to make it happen, a trip of a life time.

windmills from Indiana

I wanted to spend my birthday in New Orleans, and I was flying to stay with my sister in Chicago. Looking all options between flying there for a few days or driving, for a bit more money I would be literally visiting 11 states from the US in few days. It was very ambitious but I did it. After feeling all drained and passionless, what a better place to go than the birth place of Soul food and music. The idea was go to as many places related with this subjects "Soul Food & Soul Music", so we did.  So here is the story of how I made it happen through driving over 2,100 miles round trip from Chicago to New Orleans and ... the way back.
Lucky for me I just gathered enough air miles through British Airways to make pay a round ticket to Chicago, if I wouldn't have this miles I literally wouldn't have made it. This time of the year (before spring break) is cheaper than the summer. It was my birthday so I got lots of lucky money from my beautiful husband as well.

The US is a huge gem of beautiful scenery, amazing roads,  and undeniable friendly people. On the road you can find gas stations, hotels, touristic points in less than 15-20 miles from each other.

My sister rented the car in Chicago and we had it for 8 days. I arranged the hotels, I used Choicehotels.com, is a cheap and average chain of hotels and give you several options with in the US, and some international cities.  The advantage of this is that they are in down towns as well as in the outskirts of the cities. Most of them are very comfortable, they offer a continental breakfast, have parking and you can modify your booking on their website.
To organise my trip I used Onenote from Microsoft, you can use it to access date from any mobile, up load photos, keep pages with security password. I copied all my hotel reservations, I made my itinerary, I wrote notes on places I should visit. Because is linked with hotmail you can share it with people through email, for example I sent my husband a link where he could see the information with out modifying anything, he could see the name of the hotel where I was staying and phone number it case I needed to be reached.

(All this tips are based on my own experience, this suggestions are specially for first time travellers of the road, if you haven't drive in the US, read about their driving rules, they are very different than the UK. My sister and me both have US driving license so we are very comfortable on the roads.)

So here are the quick steps to organise a Road trip:

Choose a theme for your trip: The aim of the trip should be enjoying the drive, the beautiful roads, the hidden gems on the road. But you need to have your priorities. For me it was all about the food and music. What I did is before leaving to my trip I looked per city places where to eat and where to listen to local music. I used the local website, trip advisor and you should consider yelp as well as is very popular in the US.

Get your dates right: if you fly from Europe to the US you gain hours, when you come back you might even lose a day, consider that and the jet lag.

Get a good companion: I did this trip with my sister, although initially was meant to be with my sister and cousin, it didn't happen like that. You can do it by yourself if you want but I think it will be more expensive this way. It was easier to do it with just one more person because you don't divert from the original plan. We have very similar taste so we didn't argue at all of things to do or places to go.

Get a Cash Passport from Travelex: Most banks will charge you for using your cards abroad. If you are gonna exchange a significant amount (you don't want to carry lots of cash on you) get a Cash passport, let's say you want to exchange £1000.00 that will be a lot of cash to carry around, right? 

Get your card (For free), pre order the exchange online (always better than in the counter). You can register online the card, check the balance and deposit more if necessary. If you lose your card during your trip, you can get the cash back.  They don't charge you for any transaction, you can pay for $1.20 or $300.0 it doesn't matter, it works like a debit card. After you can add pounds, euros, dollars again!

Get your plane ticket: considering the time difference it is important, specially if you are coming back to work straight away. If you are doing a Road trip straight away, give yourself at least 24 hours to adjust to the local time before hitting the road. Same for the way back, the jet lag is more harsh on your way back to Europe time, give yourself at least 48 hours before going back.

Rent the car: Choose well known companies, my advise will always be this, for two reasons: 

No. 1 if you (knock on wood) have a flat tire or a minor accident it's easier to get a replacement faster.
No. 2 cheap companies will always try to trick you into more bills just when you are returning the car, if you have doubts look for the companies' reviews. 

The cheapest way to get the car is to return it to the same place where you pick it up. Of course you can return it somewhere else, but you might end up paying from $300 to $500 more, just to drop it somewhere else. 

Always get the insurance, you might be confident about your driving but you can't be about others. Use a credit card to rent the car, some credit cards have insurance for when you travel abroad, check this with your CC company. The reasons for using a credit card is because if they use a debit card, they will hold a deposit of usually the total amount of the length of the rent. So if all your money is in a debit card you will not have that money available.

Consider the fuel: When you are choosing a car check online the yield of gas per gallon when driving in the city and on the highway. Mapquest.com do this calculation for you, add the start point, cities where you will stop and your end point. This is a expend that is very important, to make the best of the car, ask what type of fuel you should use. In my case a bit over 8 gallons where around $20 and it yield around 300 miles. A couple of times we hit some traffic outside the big cities so it was less, and some times we were longer in the down town so it varies, but end of I fill the tank 6 times for a 2,100 miles. 

Have a very long playlist: My sister and me both had very long playlist of music, we plugged our iphones (you need the usb cable) and it was fantastic. Radio sometimes doesn't tune for a long time as you are driving by, I totally recommend sometimes to have it off while some one is having a nap. But definitely you need it to hype yourself up, specially if you hit the road while is dark. 

Cost for food: You can eat from  $20.00 per day if you want to,  but we were there to eat. so per person it was around $50.00. What we did is: we took in every hotel we stayed the continental breakfast, took an apple or a banana for the road. In the rooms you have a coffee maker so you just take your coffee or tea take away. The places where we ate are for locals so they were very reasonable, we were no there for the Michelin Stars. If you want to find out pointers of how to eat abroad check this out: Eat good food abroad

Be safe: Don't drink and drive, you are in a foreign country and rules don't apply the same. Always be friendly. Ask the locals or authorities where is safe to go and where is not. For gals, I felt a bit not happy with a hotel, I changed hotels straight away (you will read about it). Thinking about money sometimes make things fussy, well don't get confuse your safety is first, if you don't feel safe just move on, a couple hundred dollars are not worth a scare. 

One more piece of advice is if you are most likely be jet lag, don't drive when it gets dark, at least not for the first five days. I didn't, during the day I was fine, but as soon as the sunset was coming, my eyes were filling pretty heavy. You don't want to snooze in those conditions. I will keep writing about my road trip so check in back soon!!!

... one more thing is you decide to do your trip, share with me your wonderful experience!