Monday, April 25, 2011

Moving route and car rental

So, a bit more than a week ago, my father and I went to CAA (like AAA in the US), so we could get a TripTik for when I move to the USA. If you don't know what a TripTik is, it's this awesome map thing. They break up your journey into many pages (for mine, it was about 20 pages), so you could get a closer look at your route. So, we told the lady where my starting and end points were and what highways I wanted to take. While we were there, I got a huge map of the USA as well as two TourBooks (have listings of motels) for Indiana/Illinois/Ohio and Michigan/Wisconsin. I'm thinking the first night I'll be stopping somewhere in Ohio, and then the second night somewhere in Wisconsin. We then went last Thursday to go pick the TripTik up. A few pictures (click them to enlarge):

This is what I got on the first trip to CAA.

The package I received for the second trip.

A view of one page of my route in the TripTik.

The route I'm taking from Burlington, Vermont to South Dakota.

I'll actually be renting a car from Vermont, not Canada. I found the cheapest price was to rent from Vermont and then drop it off in South Dakota for about $400 from National Car Rentals. Every other company I looked at was around $800, whether renting from Vermont or Montreal. There were actually very few companies that had an option of renting in Canada and crossing the border and dropping it off in the USA. That's why I decided to rent from Vermont. My dad nicely agreed to drive me and my stuff down to Vermont :) I'll actually be reserving my car at National either today or very soon!

~Lindsay

P.S. Only 7 more days and 16 hours to go till my interview!

6 comments:

  1. Plan your hotels ahead of time. Booking online you can save up to half the cost. Plan on about 500 miles a day max if you are by yourself!

    Bring toll money (american coin!) for the toll roads between chicago and cleveland, and be ready for a boring drive!

    I would have rather gone thru Toronto and Detroit then south thru NY, but im sure the car thing was your big reason for that?

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  2. Mareks, there's no cars available for my dates and locations.

    Blake, I would book online for hotels, but I have no idea how long I can go in one day. And I don't want to book something and then have plenty of time to still drive further, or something happens and I don't make it near the hotel. The hotels in the TourBooks I have are only about $75 or less, so I'm willing to pay full price, since I have no idea where I'm stopping 100%. And I just don't want to book and waste the money.

    And yes, I calculated it would be about $30 in tolls, and I have a pouch full of coins that I've collected over the years.

    Yeah, I decided to go through NY since my car rental is in Burlington, Vermont. I didn't want to have to pick up a car in Detroit since that would mean more driving for my dad both there and back again, and I didn't want to ask that of him.

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  3. They also take credit card at the toll stations now, I had completely forgotten about that.

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  4. Really? I haven't gone on a road trip in about 5 years through the USA, so I had no idea. You're sure about that? It would definitely be easier to charge it to my credit card then have to worry about having enough American change. I'm going to have to look into this...

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