The United States are perfectly suited for road trips
This year I spent my birthday driving a rented car on Highway 75 heading north from Tampa, and on Highway 10 stretching from Lake City and Tallahassee further west. It was a good day: sun, smooth roads, unfamiliar signs and billboards along the roadsides, McDonald's, identical shopping plazas with the same set of establishments: a pharmacy, Starbucks, a grocery store, a café, a cheap clothing store. Churches of all kinds and sorts – it seemed that in the US, for every thousand people there is a distinct variety of belief or cult.
There are many Harley Davidson motorcycles, whose owners ride with legs spread wide, as if on a horse. Sporty Japanese motorcycles, popular in Europe, are almost never seen.
What a foreigner needs to understand before renting a car: a low price from a little-known dealer is most likely a bait. On the spot, they will tack on such mandatory insurance that the price will increase fivefold. On the other hand, well-known dealers sometimes do have cheap offers (most often for the weekend), when you can rent a car for $8-9 per day.
An important point: cars from dealers are by default not insured under either comprehensive or liability insurance. In Europe, when renting a car, the client pays their 15-30 euros per day as stated on the dealer's website, and that's usually it: no further markups. In the US, however, responsibility for any scratch larger than a dime falls on the client. In some states – for example, Texas and California – the client can, at their own risk, decline insurance and pay only for the car rental. In California, once, tired and in the rain, I did hit a fire hydrant while parking, and the dented bumper of my Nissan cost me $500. The hydrant was unharmed.
In Florida, they won't rent you a car without insurance because it's prohibited by local laws. So the actual cost of renting a car in Florida for a foreigner always ends up being at least twice the dealer's advertised price.
There are four ways to deal with this situation, besides the obvious "resign yourself and pay":
• first, drive to another state and rent a car there;
• second, give up on the car trip and travel by bus or train (if the goal is to see the surroundings, rather than just get from place to place, which is easiest by plane);
• third, buy a used car – if you're planning a trip of several months, spending $3,000-4,000 on a car makes sense;
• fourth, borrow a car from local friends.
In that case, you'll most likely get an old school Toyota belonging to a daughter or son who has gone to study at a university on the other side of the country. Possibly even a manual, as happened to me in California. This is practically the only chance in the US to drive a car with a non-automatic transmission. Driving on the steep hills of San Francisco with a manual is very exciting.
For US citizens, the car rental situation is different, as I understood: most have insurance on the driver, not the car, provided by the bank and tied to a credit card. So for locals, renting a car is cheaper.
Keep in mind that they may refuse to rent you a car if you provide a debit card instead of a credit card as a deposit.
If you pick up a car in one city and drive it to another and drop it off there, the rental amount will increase by another $100-500 – this money is charged for returning the car. In reality, they probably won't do that, but will leave the car where it was taken, because often when renting, they give out cars with license plates from another state.
The price of gasoline at gas stations is indicated per gallon (about four liters) and roughly corresponds to our prices. This year in Louisiana and Mississippi, the price of gasoline was just under two dollars per gallon, in California about four. Gasoline was not more expensive than California prices anywhere, even in New York.
In the US, there are a lot of words everywhere. They try to flirt and joke with the traveler from every sign and every fence. The goal, probably, is to make you laugh, slow down, come in and buy something, but this kind of advertising doesn't cause irritation. On the contrary, it relaxes you. You're driving and see a sign at a roadside bar: "Our beer is colder than your ex's heart"!
Churches also advertise themselves and God. Around Christmas, when Santa Claus was supposed to bring gifts to children who behaved well and not to those who behaved badly, one church in Georgia had a sign that read: "I also keep a list, and it's longer! God." Another church's sign urged: "Pray, it still works."
No traffic cameras were noticed, although Florida residents assured they exist. The average speed of traffic on the highway is usually 5-10 miles above the maximum allowed.
The roads in the US are good, but the distances are gigantic. So it makes sense not just to drive from one point to another, but to stop along the way at interesting places found in advance on the internet. This could be the US Air Force beach at Tyndall Air Force Base, one of the most beautiful and deserted beaches in the world, with white sand dunes and emerald sea. Or some event in a town along the highway: a retro car meet, a barbecue meet, a redneck biker meet – well, you get it... Or an interesting restaurant worth a 50-kilometer detour.
If you don't drive recklessly, you can cross America from coast to coast several times and never interact with the police. At the same time, on Highway 10 I often saw law enforcement officers pulling over cars for speeding. I don't know about northern states like Illinois or Montana, but in the southern states on Highway 10 there were more police cars than in countries like Finland, England, or Sweden (you could add "combined," and it would be true). Comparatively, the number of police officers lying in wait for violators was similar to that in Poland.
On the other hand, on the entire five-hour drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I didn't encounter a single police officer at all, so different states vary noticeably in this regard.
Some gas stations don't accept debit cards. When hitting the road, you should always have a credit card and some cash on hand. There was a case: after two months of travel, Sberbank found it suspicious that I was paying with my card in the US and silently blocked it. I almost ended up in the middle of nowhere (specifically in King City on Highway 101 in California) with an empty tank at ten in the evening. Later I had to call the bank and prove that I was me, and the card needed to be unblocked. Hence the moral: you should have many different bank cards with you!
One last tip: preload a road soundtrack of your choice into your player. Outside big cities, car radio mostly broadcasts sermons and country music. On the other hand, that's very American. Authentic.
Mariam NOVIKOVA.
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