On this page you can find details on how to travel around Southwestern USA – when to go, what are the prices, etc. Technical details, but super important when you travel around!

When to go and for how long? 

We went there in the second week of September and that was really good moment. Sun is not so strong anymore, but still we had almost no rain at all and temperature was high enough to wear shorts almost all the time. The only disadvantage is that in September there are still many forest fires, so it may be that some places will be not accessible during that time. That’s why I would start your trip not directly at the beginning of September, but wait for second or third week.

Way of travel depends on the exact place you are travelling:

• Camper. It’s the best way when traveling between nature parks (Yosemite, Grand Canyon). It gives you a lot of agility as you can really sleep wherever you want. We took 25 feet camper from Cruise America. It was perfect for 4 people, but with some squeeze you could also put 5th person there (but with much less comfort). If you want to travel by 2 people, then 19 feet camper should be more than fine. It was also quite cheap way of travelling as you don’t have to pay for the hotels and additional car rental. We paid around $2,000 for everything for 7 days, including camp sites, fuel and full insurance. Few important insights:
  • Do maintenance every time you have proper camp sites. Empty grey water, fill in fresh water, charge electricity. Thanks to that you will avoid surprises when you are in places without such facilities like in Yosemite campsite.
  • Don’t book places upfront. You will always find some place to stay and you give up on the agility by making upfront booking. The only exception are national parks – campsites there need to be booked as much in advance as you can. We often did trick to sleep in the night very close to the national park, wake up early next morning and drive additional hour to the park itself. It worked really well.
  • When you look for place to stay try to put “RV park” in google maps. Alternatively try “Campsites”. But never ever go to something called “mobile houses parks”. This is not place for RVs! (RV is different name for camper).
  • European driving licenses do not allow to drive vehicles above 3,5 tons. 25 feet long camper is heavier than this. At the same time using typical US driving license you can drive camper without any problems. So it’s a little bit question whether you can drive camper using normal European driving license. We contacted rental agency and they were ok with this and we checked internet forums and people there also said it’s fine. But until today we are not really sure what police would say if they would stop us. I think in 99% it would be fine, but there is always risk in such things.
• Car. It’s the best when you go between cities or to some spots that are a little bit distanced from the city. Fuel is super cheap in US and average car rental won’t be expensive as well. If you want something really fancy like Ford Mustang then you have to pay additionally, but it’s really worth to mix it and take Mustang only for some days. It’s also about security – stealing stuff from cars is very often in US and having Mustang attracts potential thefts. So especially in the city it’s better to keep some low profile car.
• Uber. Public transport almost does not exist in US, so in the cities it’s better to use Uber. It’s way cheaper than in Europe and you can also use “pooling” option that joins you with other people and make trip really cheap (plus give you a chance to meet some local people). For example in San Francisco we paid 2,5 EUR per person for pooled ride that was 30 minutes long.
• Bikes. In San Francisco you can try to travel by bike. It’s really fun when you go next to the water, but when you enter the city you loose most of the fun as there are hills everywhere and quite heavy traffic. So instead of enjoying the city, you will be concentrated on survival. I think it’s way smarter to take bikes for just few hours and go through touristic path than try to move everywhere by bikes.

What to take for photography? 

Most of the time I was using 10-24mm f/4.0 and 16-55mm f/2.8. First one was very useful in national parks, second one in the cities. To be honest I didn’t miss at all telephotos and my 35mm f/2.0 prime that I took with me was not used even once.

Where to sleep really depends where exactly you are travelling:

• Camper. It’s the best place to sleep in national parks. Otherwise it’s really hard to get spot there and even if you get spot, you will pay quite a lot for it. Remember to book campsites in Yosemite in advance. And remember that sleeping in the Walmart parking or gas stations is not the best idea unless you will get approval from their managers. If you would not ask for permission you may wake up in the morning by cops visit. To find the best place to sleep on your way just search google maps. You will always find something nice as long as you are not in the city centre.
• Grand Canyon. It’s hard to book spot in advance there as most of the places are first come first served basis, but you can use our trick. We slept in the forest where camping is allowed and you can stay there for free. It’s around 50 minutes to Grand Canyon from there, so you can wake up in the morning and drive there still before most of the tourists. Link to this place – https://goo.gl/maps/KqNmFzZk2v92t
• San Francisco. It is very expensive city, so either you take AirBnb if you have more people or you go for dormitories in hostel. We slept in HI San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel which costed around $40 per person per night in 20 people dormitory. It was really nicely located and hostel itself looked cool, but many things were not organised very well – you have to have locker for your box, wash your dishes in the morning and showers were really badly organised. But all in all I think it was okey place to stay thanks to very nice people working there and cool location.
• Napa valley. If you will decide to go there for wine tasting you will find out that most of accommodations are quite expensive. Fortunately Lukasz found really nice motel that had reasonable pricing – Wine Valley Lodge. I can fully recommend this one!
• Big Sur. It really depends how far you will drive during the day, but I think San Simeon is in the perfect distance from San Francisco / Napa Valley to make the stop. We slept in hotel Sands by the Sea and we were really happy with that choice.
• Los Angeles. we just went for AirBnb. Try to get your accommodation in Western Hollywood as it’s close to main touristic spot, cheaper than Beverly Hills and it’s quite safe.
• Las Vegas. You can go for sleeping in big casinos but it is really expensive. If you want to go for something cheaper you can either go for Hooters Casino (I know how it sounds, but it’s one of the cheapest casinos hotel on Stripe) or the motel we stayed in (Travelodge by Wyndham Las Vegas Center Strip). Latter option is of much worse quality, but it’s close to everything and really really cheap in comparison to other places.

Prices vary between places. For example San Francisco is much more expensive than small city in Utah. And every state has its own sales tax. That means that the price you see on the shelf is not the price you will pay as you will always have to add sales tax and it will be different in every state. In California for example it’s above 7%. Plus in every place where you get service tip is expected. And it’s not that you can give tip. You HAVE to give tip unless waiter just destroyed your new jeans with hot coffee. Even if the service was rather bad – you still should give tip (but of course lower). Few important tips how to give tips:

• Normal tip is between 18% – 20%. If the service was nice you go to 22%, if it was bad you go below 18%. The lowest tip we gave was 10%.
• You don’t round up the sum. You calculate it precisely from the bill. Most of the restaurant makes it easier for you and give you table with amounts already calculated for your bill.
• You should calculate tip from net amount (so before sales tax).
• Process of tips can have 3 forms:
  • One is that you just leave cash. In such case you give money, waiter goes with cash and brings you change from which you leave tip.
  • Second is that you are asked for tip when you pay, directly in the terminal. That’s quite easy – you just add how much you want to add.
  • Third one is the most typical one – you will pay for your bill with your card and then you will get receipt in which you can indicate how much tip you want to leave and how much in total it will be together with your bill (it’s a little bit stupid that you have to calculate it yourself, but I guess it’s to protect from scams). You don’t have to make second payment with your card in such case. They will change authorised amount by themselves few days later. IMPORTANT – never ever leave empty space for the tip part. It may happen that someone will fill it in for you. If you don’t want to give tip – make it explicit there.

When it comes to prices, some examples:

• Flight return tickets from Amsterdam – 550 EUR/ person
• Entrance to one national park – 30$ per vehicle (if you are going to visit several parks, you should buy annual pass card)
• Fuelling tank of normal sedan car – 30$ full tank
• Universal studio entrance – 110$
• Laundry in Las Vegas / San Francisco – around 20$ for normal weight of 2 people
• Dinner in Mexican bar next to the road – 14$ / person
• Dinner in Mexican restaurant in small city in Arizona – 24$ / person
• Dinner in good Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles – 29$ / person
• Dinner in good restaurant in San Francisco – 40$ / person
• Campsite for your camper for one night – 30$-35$ per vehicle
• Hostel in San Francisco – 40$ / person for 1 night (in 20 persons dormitory)
• Renting normal sedan car for 4 days – 180$
• Renting Ford Mustang for 1 day – 200$
• Renting camper – around 2000$ with fuel, campsites and full insurance.
• Uber 30 minutes drive in San Francisco – around 15$ (if you use pooling it’s even cheaper)
• Helicopter flight over Grand Canyon – 244$ / person

In total we spent around 3800 EUR for the whole trip including absolutely everything. It is quite a lot, but we were really not saving at all – we tried to get as much experiences as we could in that time regardless of the costs. So you can easily cut on spending by not going to helicopter flight or by cooking more in camper or not renting Ford Mustang.

What to eat?

US is not the best country for people who enjoy high quality food. Unfortunately everything has sugar, palm oil, corn syrup and many other disgusting ingredients. It’s really hard to find healthy food. At the same time if you give yourself a little bit break from healthy food you can eat a lot of “iconic” and tasty food. We solved it by running time to time during the trip to balance all the bad things we ate 😀 Some points on what you can try out in US:

• Burgers and steaks. This is really typical US food. We ate quite a lot of them and most of the time they were really ok.
• Mexican food. Nowadays it is probably even more popular than burgers and it is really typical American food. Most common dishes are burrito, enchiladas (my favourite!) and tacos.
• Breakfast. American breakfasts are quite heavy and usually include some bacon, eggs and pancakes. Especially the last one is very iconic. Remember to ask how pancakes are served so you don’t get ones that are just dry. Most popular place for breakfasts in Southwestern USA is Danny’s chain. It’s unhealthy, but very tasty!
• Coffee. In US almost everywhere you will get filtered coffee. In restaurants, gas stations, shops – everywhere except of Starbucks filtered coffee is the king. And if you get coffee for breakfast in restaurant you will get as many refills as you are able to handle (that’s pretty cool!). At the same time coffee in US = Starbucks. They have it everywhere and people do not even say “Where can I buy coffee?” but rather “Where is the nearest Starbucks?”. In many gas stations they also use coffee from Starbucks (filtered one!)
• Refills. If you order in restaurant any soft drink, you are eligible for refills. It means you can drink as much as you want. It’s quite funny to think that on the top of your breakfast consisting of eggs, pancakes and sausages you can still add 2 litres of cola…
• San Francisco. It was one of the few places where we really had a chance to eat healthy and tasty food. We visited two restaurants, which I can fully recommend: Firefly (it was super tasty!) and El Techo (food was quite good, but the atmosphere even better). But I guess you can find way more nice restaurants there!

How to pay?

Almost everywhere you can pay by card. As always it was good idea to use Revolut as on average you get 2,1% lower price than when using normal ING card. Unfortunately sometimes prepaid card is not enough so it’s good to have at least one “real” credit card, especially if you are going to rent a car. SUPER IMPORTANT – person who makes booking must have credit card for renting the car. It cannot be that you are booking and your friend has credit card – in such case you cannot even transfer reservation, so they will cancel it and reopen it for the person that has credit card. That mens that this new reservation may be more expensive than your reservation made weeks before travel.We took with us around 300$ per person in cash and that was just fine. It was quite rare that we needed to use cash, but still it’s good to have some buffer. Especially because in some states our Revolut cards where not working perfectly we needed sometimes to use that cash buffer (or to have second card). And in casinos in Vegas you can’t play without using cash. Remember also about allowing swiping of your card in your online / mobile banking system. In US in many place they will ask you to swipe card instead of paying with chip or contactless.

How to make reservations?

Some things you don’t have to book in advance, but for many attractions and places you must think ahead:

• Camping spot in Yosemite – you need to make it weeks ahead.
• Alcatraz.
• Antelope canyon – there are several companies, but still it’s good to have tickets upfront. We used Antelope Slot Canyon Tours.
• Accommodation in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Bear in mind that in Las Vegas you can often get good deals if you book just day or two before (if there are still a lot of places of course).
• Helicopter flight over Grand Canyon – we booked it only day before, but you won’t always be so lucky with it.
• Car rentals – you can get much cheaper prices if you do it well upfront.
• Any NHL / NBA games.

What doesn’t have to be booked upfront?:

• Entrances to National Parks. You can buy them at the spot.
• Accommodation on the way / campsites – there is always some place where you can find good spot.
• Movie studios – we had no problems with booking tickets one day before, but it may be a little bit cheaper if you make it more upfront.