travelling to and around america

[mrsbrown]

I'll get more explicit:

Can people tell me their experiences of the best way to travel to and around the US?  Taking into account the places I want to go?

I spent a lot of time onlne this morning and I know some of the places you can get to by plane, but is there a better way?

Comments

[damned_colonial]

You will probably hear that Amtrak sucks. I have ridden it quite a bit and didn't find it to suck significantly more than Australian regional/interstate rail. It used to be that Amtrak had horrible delays because they had to wait for freight trains to go past, but someone recently told me that's changed, which meshes with my experience (a handful of long-haul Amtrak trips that came in exactly on time, over the past few years). Perhaps someone knows for sure.

To be honest, if I were you in the US northeast and doing Pennsic, I'd consider renting a car.

If you are visiting San Francisco you can get around here entirely by public transport and walking (the city is only about 10km x 15km total). But if you want to get outside of SF itself, especially if you are going beyond BART in the East Bay or Caltrain towards San Jose (both of those being metropolitan rail services), you might want to rent a car.

[enrobso]

Despite your forebodings, it seems that the consensus is that Amtrak doesn't suck.

And I think between us we can solve this lady's transport problems. I've never had the good fortune to spend time in the Bay area, but I know NYC like the back of my hand...Oh, I'd never noticed that freckle before.

You cover the West Coast, I'll cover the East Coast. I've already got agents on the ground.