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Well just looked up some bus prices and they ain't too cheap, and I found a place that is quoting around £1000 ($1600) to rent a car with unlimited mileage which might be good. Saves having to wait ages on bus travel and gives me a bit of freedom and I won't have to spend monies on public transport in cities, but then I have to pay for parking and fuel so it might even out.

Choices choices

P.S.

If it comes to it the car can also be used as a place to sleep so another advantage there

Dude, even if you wanna go around the corner in America you need a car.

There are little/no places to even walk in some areas.

You're best off renting a car even if it turns out to be more expensive.

Heavily populated areas (Boston->DC) have pretty good mass transit, but the interior of the country is just too big (and some states lack the political will to spend the cash on rail networks, notthatimbitter).

For bus travel, check out lines like Megabus. Megabus is limited to the northeast quarter of the country, but has crazy low rates (especially if you're one of the first people to book a seat).

On the US-cannuk border, I went to O Cananda this year and had no issues with a passport.

On the car thing, it really depends on your itinerary. If you plan to go from East coast to west coast, it's not practical to drive. That'd be like 2 or 3 days straight of driving. Just driving down the east coast from boston to Miami, for instance, is like 24 hours straight of driving. But if you just wanted to bum around the state of california, say, it would make a lot of sense to just get a car.

Your best bet might be to do it piecemeal. Figure out where you want to visit, and plan flights/bus rides/train rides/car rentals accordingly. You could, say, fly into boston, tool around there on public transit, hop a train to visit spidey in NY, then hop another train to washington DC. All three cities have decent public transit. From there you can fly out to Cali and punch Crono in the face. At that point you'd have to rent a car because public transit is @#(! on the left coast.

Meh I think I might just go for the car found another for like $300 cheaper, for dense urban areas (Manhattan) I might just do park and ride and it gives me a nice place to stash stuff instead of carrying everything around with me.

Will probably do a circuit so Boston -> Detroit -> Chicago -> Seattle (via Minnesota, N Dakota and Montana or Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana) ->(Reno?->) San Fransico -> LA -> (Las Vegas?) -> Dallas -> New Orleans -> Pensacola -> Atlanta -> Charlotte -> DC -> NY -> Boston, or maybe Buffalo->Toronto if possible. Of course with a rental car the route isn't set in stone so I'm happy to do detours if anyone can convince me.

So the route will be for driving around 5 and a half days Good thing I have like 40 days to do around 7,800-8,000 miles which at 30mpg(US) should be 260-270 gallons(US) which I believe is ~$890(USD)?

HSharp wrote:QUOTE (HSharp @ Apr 14 2011, 12:19 PM) Meh I think I might just go for the car found another for like $300 cheaper, for dense urban areas (Manhattan) I might just do park and ride and it gives me a nice place to stash stuff instead of carrying everything around with me.

Will probably do a circuit so Boston -> Detroit -> Chicago -> Seattle (via Minnesota, N Dakota and Montana or Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana) ->(Reno?->) San Fransico -> LA -> (Las Vegas?) -> Dallas -> New Orleans -> Pensacola -> Atlanta -> Charlotte -> DC -> NY -> Boston, or maybe Buffalo->Toronto if possible. Of course with a rental car the route isn't set in stone so I'm happy to do detours if anyone can convince me.

So the route will be for driving around 5 and a half days Good thing I have like 40 days to do around 7,800-8,000 miles which at 30mpg(US) should be 260-270 gallons(US) which I believe is ~$890(USD)?

Gas is $3.50 - $4 a gallon, so your gas price range is more like $910 - $1080, and that doesn't include driving AROUND, just point to point.

You probably want to budget like $1500 at least for gas.

Also I live between NYC and Boston so let me know if you want to stop by and meet Mrs. Icky and Icky Jr.

Fun fact: car rentals in and around the NYC metro area cost more than car rentals anywhere else. Put off renting until you need to drive.

That... is a @#(!load of driving.

Good advice. I'm in Central Pennsylvania and I can rent a car for $800- $1000 per month. You have to rent by the month to get the good price. If you are arriving in NY, you can go up to Boston, then across NY state to Niagra Falls and cross into Canada there to get to Toronto. Then keep heading west to Detroit. The scuttle butt is that it's harder getting into Canada than getting back into the U.S. Maybe that's just the opinions I've heard..dunno.

It is a lot of driving. You could fly from city to city, but you would have to wait on "stand by" for cheap tickets.

Hsharp will be here for 40 days and 40 nights....I wonder how much it's going to rain?

I'll be driving from San Francisco to Detroit June 11th - 17th.