Greetings,
Weeks after the first proposed itinerary, there were some iterations and changes made to max out our time during the trip. Max proposed a second itinerary, which he called the improved itinerary, and that’s what we’re using right now.
Transportation
I will be flying with United Airlines from Chicago to LA on the December 22, 2 days earlier than the others and leaving on January 9, 2016, a few hours later than the others. My main reason is I want some time of solace for photography. Traveling in groups can be hard and challenging as different people would want to do different things. I was 4th to buy my ticket and that’s after days and days of thinking whether I should travel alone before the official trip. When I was ready to book my ticket, I kept hesitating and finally pulled my trigger when United Airlines has a pretty good price; $216.20 to be exact. I’m glad I hesitated as the rest of the time I was checking, only Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines had a good price. However, both of these airlines require you to pay every single baggage you have except for your personal item. And I just checked the price again and the cheapest tickets go for $118. Oh, well.
Of course, I need to get from Iowa City to/from Chicago and I’ll be using the Greyhound bus to get there and return. I haven’t bought my ticket yet but will do so by next weekend hopefully.
As I am planning to go to SF before the official trip, I also need to figure out how to get there. I’ll most probably use Greyhound bus as well.
As for ground transportation, Ameer and Fatin have arranged our main transportation. Like before, we will be renting a van which comes with a just-about-enough 3000 free miles. All of this costs $1457.57, excluding tolls, gas, and hopefully not etc., or $182.20. I think this is much expensive than the ones we have for Florida. We might need another transportation to go to Yellowstone and Ameer is looking into that.
Accommodations
Douglas and I looked for places to stay in each locations. We used Airbnb to look for apartments and such, TripAdvisor for reviews and hotels hunting, and good ‘ol Google search for camping grounds. Here’s the link of the summary of what we agreed upon. Our main priority are San Francisco, followed by the beach house in LA, accommodation in Hollywood, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and finally Page.
We will be camping in Zion National Park and either near Havasu Falls or in Mather Campground in Grand Canyon. At first, we were unsure of the decision to camp since none of us have a proper camping gear but I managed to find a good rental places for both of this places. The one in Zion works perfectly for us and relatively cheap: $28.50 per person. The one in Grand Canyon however is rather expensive: $67.75, and this is due to the fact that the minimum rental period is 3 days so that depends on how you see it. As for the gears, I suggested we renting the following:
- Sleeping bags
- Sleeping pads
- Tents
- Stove (optional I suppose)
Again, I’m not sure if camping in the winter is a good idea but why the heck not. It will be a darn good experience and memory one way or another. However, I camped once in a near freezing temperature with just a sleeping bag and a tent and I got sick for a week. The story will be posted soon in the photography section.
Since I will be arriving earlier than the others, I will probably stay in a hostel in SF and couchsurf in LA.
Activities
The people responsible for this have not started anything yet so I have nothing on this. However, Doug and I were thinking of planning the activities too. So far, what we have in mind are the following:
- Hiking
- Bungee jumping
- Skydiving
- Kayaking
- Flying fox-ing (Zip-lining)
- Hot air ballooning
Obviously all of these depends on how cold it will be and Doug and I probably will talk about this this weekend.
Food
Again, something the responsible people haven’t really done much research on but hey, you can just Google places to eat on the spot so no big deal!
So that is that. Everything is coming together nicely. 50% of the group is doing their job and another 50% seems like they don’t give a damn for now. Everything sounds expensive and it definitely is. My budget is about $1800 but I’m not even close in collecting that figure. I’ll hopefully manage.
Thanks for reading!
Faris
farisiraf 