The birth of a road trip
In October 2009, a group of friends and I flew into San Francisco, rented a car, drove to Los Angeles, acquired another car, and drove to Boston. After Boston we took a bus south to New York City and from there went on to Washington, DC.
Our journey looked like this:
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| ©Burzum |
Before our (pretty long) drive I had never gone on a road trip let alone visited the US, so the idea of driving over such a large expanse of land was both very exciting and a little daunting. The great thing about travelling nowadays, though, is the wealth of information that’s available for the taking. As long as you know how to search for the information you need, you’re almost guaranteed of finding it.
Like most road trips, or trips in general, the route we eventually took wasn’t pre-planned. My friends and I knew that we would be flying into San Francisco and flying out of DC, but we hadn’t entirely decided what was going to happen in between. We knew that we would be stopping in Los Angeles, Austin, Memphis and New York City, but other than that, the route was still very much a mystery.
It was only when we were in LA that our route was finally mapped out. I still remember that day; three of us were in our hotel dining area, either on our laptops or having coffee when the fourth member of our group came across a website called Auto Driveaway. This company does something rather interesting- it relocates or delivers vehicles from anywhere in the US to another location in the country. Vehicles, whether they be trucks, bikes or cars, are transported across the country pretty regularly for various reasons. Maybe a large national corporation wants to transport a company car from one branch to another, for instance, so it contacts Auto Driveaway.
But the really special thing about this company is that it doesn’t transport the vehicles – you do it. You do the delivering. The company connects customers who want their vehicles delivered with people who don’t mind driving it to the collection point. It was that link, that connection, which allowed us to figure out our route.
We found out from Auto Driveaway that there was lady living in LA who wanted her Jeep delivered to her daughter in Boston. It was like magic. We looked at our map, saw the great distance in between and took less than five seconds to say yes, we would so love to drive this lady’s car all the way to Boston.
Which we did. At the end of our road trip, we drove a total of 5,380 miles (8,658 kilometres) through 14 states.
© 2012 – 2014, Anis. All rights reserved.
Wow! Like, really wow! I’ve always wanted to travel across the States and Canada (NY – LA – Vancouver – Toronto) using flights & trains but to drive across the States is really something.
Looking forward to reading more about this trip!
It was a great trip, something I’d love to do again! I still have so many stories and ideas in my head, so it’s a little overwhelming. I’m not sure how to start telling them but I’ll get there 🙂