Belgians visiting USA: NYC, SF and national parks

Lingo tip, ask about renting an RV or motorhome. If you say mobile home it conjurs up images of these.

Whatever vehicles you rent, make sure the tires are in good condition. Nothing is worse than being stuck in the middle of death valley with a flat tire. Or three. Personal experience.

If you are not used to an RV then I'm not sure I would rent one. If you aren't the outdoors type (sound like you are though) you can rent a hotel room within easy driving distance (a few minutes to a few hours) for all the places you mention. Rent a car and you won't have to deal with driving an RV. You could even rent a SUV, buy a pair of lightweight sleeping bags ($20-$30 ea) and food/drink, and spend an easy night outdoors camping between hotel stays.

If you do rent an RV and intend to use RV campgrounds located at national parks, many will require advance permits.

Jovec_sl said:

If you do rent an RV and intend to use RV campgrounds located at national parks, many will require advance permits.

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Not to mention pretty expensive for a nights stay in a park and during summer most of the rv slots are pretty much booked unless you do it in advanced.

To add to the discouragement pile, California roads in the places you are talking about are curvy with extreme elevation changes and massive dropoffs if you fuck up. I wouldn't drive to Yosemite unless I was a very experienced RV driver.

Rent a nice SUV buy a cooler when you get state side and just enjoy your drive. You can find plenty of cheap and clean hotels on the outskirts of places if you are willing to trade 10 min commute time for a 30 min commute time to a park or city.

Those national park websites like to exaggerate somewhat. You might have trouble finding a place to stay during holidays, but typically not otherwise. In terms of driving, once you get out of California everything will be flat and straight. Keep to the interstates, however, as many of the highways in the southwest are almost entirely isolated from the world and will offer no services.

The roads going to an coming from National parks in California can go over some very steep terrain. Unless you are sticking to the San Joaquin valley, the deserts or LA you will be going over hills of varying grades, some pretty damn steep. The big national park campgrounds actually do fill up for most of the summer (Yosemite and the beach parks especially) however there are tons of campgrounds near the bigger parks that sit empty.

If you are still leaning towards renting an RV there are compact RV's you could rent. They are basically full sized trucks with a camper/rv built into them. Cruise America rents themhttp://www.cruiseamerica.com/rent/ou...ompact_rv.aspx. I must admit their decals they spray their RV's with are pretty ugly though.

Alkorin_sl said:

Not just Americans. You should hear my wife (she's Belgian) laugh at me when I try to speak Flemish. I'm sure that I sound out the words about as well as a two-year-old.

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Just both could just settle on the middle ground and start speaking africaans, would make a good laugh or two as well.


Back to OP:
Thanks for not pestering Europe with your "mobile homes" in the summer like so many of your folks do year after year.
Since your not keen on driving one in the US i'd recommend an ordinary rent a car deal, should book them in advance though. Also double check on the tires. (Had a flat tire in northern appalachian region, aka hilly billy mountains once, was no fun also additional bullshit with Hertz to not bill us with the replacement tire)
Its really no hassle to find a good and not expensive motel anywhere in the states.
Also Death Valley is known for having +50?C in the summer and i would not recommend to drive through with (basically) just a tin can on wheels (natives call it "Ford" though).

Question: how hard is it to find a hotel/motel room just outside the national parks? And are reservations needed in June? Staying there for the night and visiting the parks during the day would work fine.

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Reservation need is based on proximity. Keep in mind the American West is pretty damned big. For instance, if you goto the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side of it, you have a town just outside the park entrance and there is another one like an hour away (the hour away one was sketchy lol). We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express outside the Canyon and it was decent rates and like a 1 minute drive to the park entrance. The sooner you book, the better. Just do your research

Just remember that all the kids get out of school in Late June, so many families tend to plan their vacations around late June and going into July (August too, but it's not like how August is in Europe vacation wise). It's also going to be hot as fuck that time of year if you're going to be around Nevada/Arizona/etc, so plan accordingly as well for that (clothes, water, etc). Death Valley isn't a joke either in Summer, esp if you're in a RV.

NYC you can do car rental free pretty much. SF also has decent public transit (when BART isn't striking...have a contingency plan in place!). Driving in SF isn't as bad as NYC, although parking still sucks. You may want to rent a car anyways so you can check out some of the semi-nearby Redwood Forests and so you can avoid taking transit through Oakland ;P

BART won't be on strike for a while. They signed a three or four year contract to end the most recent strike. Renting a car in SF is a really, really bad idea. I can get to a lot of places faster by walking. Traffic is terrible, parking is impossible and expensive, and you don't get to enjoy the city's sights and architecture as much when you're stressing out trying to navigate the hills and Market St.

Just be aware of how far you are planning on driving. Some europeans come over to the states, plan a road trip and are then all like "wtf america is fucking huge".