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Road Trip USA 2014

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Our Harley!

This is our Harley - a Softail Heritage Classic.  Nearly 1600cc of muscle and lots of chrome and leather!  Sadly we will not be able to do our road trip on this bike but we will be doing the Route 66 element on the same model.

More Suggestions

I received a great email from Alison (@thebeegarden), who recently completed a road trip along part of Route 66.  She has very kindly taken the time to write and give us a load of suggestions for places to see, eat and pass through.  Thank you Alison, if you read this - we are very grateful.

All of the ideas she has given us we plan to take on board, in particular her suggestion to travel from Santa Fe to Albuquerque via the "Turquoise Trail".  I looked in to it last night and it looks like a great route - one we would probably have never even known about if she hadn't told us about it.

The only problem is - it just makes us even more impatient to get started!!!!!!

Tablet or Notebook?

We have a dilemma!  We have been thinking about the best way of keeping in touch while we are away next year - we are going to be very tight on space as we will have to be able to carry everything we need in 2 saddlebags (panniers) and a small back pack (for the first 3 weeks at least).  That's going to be a challenge - we've never been light travelers!!  Why not just use a smartphone? I hear you say.  Well that would be a possibility, however, we need to be able to run our business (Razay Holiday Cottages) and September and October are key months for taking bookings, so we can't afford to be out of touch for those 2 months.

We could just take a laptop, however, our laptops are quite bulky and heavy, so a tablet or notebook would be better and easier.  However, where do you start?  iPad seems to be the favourite/popular option: small, light, loads of apps, etc but they are expensive and it would seem there are much cheaper options on the market.  On the other hand, a notebook can be small and light and be the ideal cross between the tablet & laptop.

We had a look at some options in the shop yesterday.  The iPad Air looks great - it's light, small but could it be too light, too small - would it stand up to the rigours of the journey (and beyond - we would need it to last a good while!).  We also looked at the Microsoft Surface Pro, which looked just the job.  It comes with Office fully installed (which we use for our business) and has a good size screen, good graphics, etc and has some very good reviews.  On the downside, it is quite heavy and probably works out more expensive than the iPad, although it has Office installed which is worth a bit I suppose.  Plus you can add keyboards, etc.

Decisions, decisions.  It's very difficult.......

Planning

If anyone out in internet land is planning a road trip, particularly Route 66, there is loads of info available on the old world wide web.  In fact, there is probably too much!  Some of the places that I have found good info from I have listed on our "Useful Trip Info" page.  My favourite so far (and I have by no means exhausted the available material) is probably Billy Connolly's Route 66 series, which we watched when it was broadcast and have since acquired the DVD (Jilly bought me it for my birthday).  It is an excellent watch, particularly if you like Billy Connolly and his sense of humour.

Talking of his sense of humour, I remember watching Billy's series "World Tour of Scotland" and in one episode he came out with a brilliant line, which still makes me chuckle.  Talking about a particular hotel, he said something along the lines of: "The hotel was fantastic - the towels were so fluffy I could hardly get them in my suitcase!"  Well, I thought it was funny, anyway!

I was recently contacted on Twitter by someone who has just got back from a road trip including part of Route 66 and they have offered to email me with some of their experiences and recommended sights and places to visit (thank you @TheBeeGarden).  I hope that more people will do that, as I think there can be no better recommendations than the first hand experience of others.

Karen Brown's World of Travel has been a really good source of information for the Pacific Coast Highway part of the trip - an excellent guide, as is Jamie Jenson's Road Trip USA Pacific Coast Highway.  The only problem with his book is that it is written travelling from North to South and we are going the other way!

Accommodation Booked!

All the accommodation is now booked!  There might be some fine tuning to do over the next few months but the beauty of Booking.com is that nothing has been paid out, all the reservations are "free cancellation" (up to 24 hours before arrival) and amendments can be made at any time on line.  I'm amazed that even this far out, some locations have hotels that are sold out already.  I have a feeling that some, especially smaller hotels, just don't accept bookings that far in advance, so I will keep an eye on some of the ones we wanted but couldn't get in to.  I've got some pretty good deals as well (I think) - for example, 2 nights in Las Vegas, just off The Strip, for less than £70!  And, in case you're wondering, it is not a "dive" - it looks nice, has a pool, free parking, free breakfast and has good ratings and reviews.  We'll see.

The only problem is - what do I do now?  Flights are booked, Harley is booked, Mustang is booked, hotels are booked, route is pretty much planned......  there's still 9 months to go!!  However, we will be gradually moving out to France over the summer next year, I have some courses still to do to prepare for life in "Civvy Street", we have next summer's season at Razay to prepare for, the house here to pack up, etc, etc.

Can't wait!!! :)

Suggestions

To date we have had 300-odd page views of the blog.  I don't know whether that's good or bad but it must mean that some people are reading it!  For those of you that are reading and following (we have 6 followers so far, but 2 of those are Jilly & me so we don't really count!) I hope you are enjoying what you are reading.

If any readers/followers are Route 66 or Pacific Coast Highway veterans (or even if you've just been along parts of the routes), we would be happy to receive suggestions for things to do and see - particularly unusual sights that might be slightly off the beaten track and not on the normal "touristy" route.  Feel free to use the comments box to comment or suggest things.

This time last year I put a message on Twitter or Facebook asking for opinions on whether to rent or buy a Harley.  A very kind lady called Tonya from Springfield , Mo, responded and sent me a very long and informative email giving me lots of info an the pros and cons of renting and/or buying.  Everything she said made excellent sense and it was primarily because of her that we decided to go down the rental route.  I would like to publicly thank Tonya from Springfield, Mo for her advice.  I hope we shall be able to visit her and thank her in person next year.

And while I'm on the subject of thank yous, I would like to thank those kind people who are currently following this blog.  I hope we can increase the numbers!

Flights Booked!

Well - we're committed now, definitely going! I booked the flights today: London to Chicago on 7 September 2014 and then Seattle to London on 22 October 2014.

J J J

I'm a bit miffed, though, as I was hoping to be able to use my air miles that I've saved up for umpteen years now. Annoyingly, perhaps typically, the dates I wanted for flights had no air mile flights available. I sometimes wonder whether there's any point in collecting miles, as you never seem to able to use them for flights when you want them. The only points system I've ever had any benefit from is Holiday Inn - in fact a lot of our hotel accommodation has cost us nothing but points, which has saved us loads o' money! I'll have to see if I can use the air miles for hotel bookings, at least they won't be wasted then.