2017 travel

As I explained before, thanks to a friend, I contacted the company HitTheRoad.ca, which does car relocation services, and they put me in contact with this canadian couple that was moving to Los Angeles from Toronto, and it was more convenient for them to find somebody to drive their car through the US than any other options (drive it themselves, ship it, sell it…). So basically I drove their car (a Subaru Impreza) from Toronto to Los Angeles. I had some conditions: The whole trip had to be done in 9 days, and I had a limited number of kilometers (shortest route + 15%). Gas was expensed, too. Even though 9 days is not that long to drive about 4,000 km (2,500 miles) -even more because I wanted to do a detour via Indianapolis, this way of travelling had a lot of pros:

• It was free, so much cheaper than doing it by bus / train:
• It’s also faster than the bus;
• It’s easier to move around the cities with a car, especially in the US, indeed in some cities the public transport is not that good;
• It allowed me to stop where I wanted on the way to take pictures.

So I decided to go with it! And here is how it went.
Jan 22: I picked up the car in the station of Appleby, Ontario, and drove to Indianapolis (785km, 490mi). It took one hour to pass the border, I had to explain to the customs that I was not importing this Canadian car, just transporting it, it would eventually return to Canada; I also had to explain that it was not a job, I was not getting paid (in which case I would have needed a work visa). No photos that day.

Jan 23: I didn’t drive, just visited Indianapolis with the friend I was visiting.

Jan 24: I drove to Chicago (about 3 hours, 290km, 180mi), and had the afternoon to visit the city.

Jan 25: I drove all day, and stopped when the night came, I was near Lincoln, Nebraska. Total 870km, 540mi, it was the longest day of driving of my trip. The crossing of the Illinois and Iowa states was long and there was not much to see, a lot of long and straight highways. But I still took some pictures.

Jan 26: I drove to Denver, Colorado (760km, 470mi). I arrived around 3pm so I had some time to see downtown, and I went to my friend’s house in the evening. I stayed with a colombian-american couple I met in Mexico 3 years ago.

Jan 27: Didn’t drive, I slept in the morning and did some visit with my friend Jorge in the afternoon, and then we had some drinks with Jorge and Marie in the evening.

Jan 28: I drove from 10 am to 5pm, and arrived just at the beginning of Utah (I stayed at a motel in a city called Green River). 550km, 340mi. I saw the Colorado mountains, some beautiful sights of the rockies.

Jan 29: I drove through beautiful Utah, stopped a lot at view areas to take pictures, and arrived in the afternoon in Las Vegas. 650km,400mi.

Jan 30: I spent the day walking around Las Vegas, and lost (only) 40 dollars playing Blackjack.

Jan 31st: I drove to the airport of LAX, washed the car (it was dirty due to snow in Iowa) and handled it to the couple. They tipped me $50 🙂 I spent the afternoon at the Hermosa beach and went in the evening to the house of a friend of Marie’s (my friend from Colorado).

Some pictures of Los Angeles taken on feb 1st as well:

In conclusion, it was a great way to travel the US! And I thought that 9 days would be short to do the whole trip. In reality it was not that short, and I like to drive so it didn’t bother me. And I had 3 full days in which I didn’t drive (In Indianapolis, Denver and Las Vegas). So all in all, no regrets at all to have chosen this way of travelling the US!
Next to come: San Diego, my last stop in California and the US, and then Mexico!