Booked for July 22
 

So having had various holidays cancelled I have bitten the bullet and booked for next year. I’ve never done the West Coast and it was planned for this year but obviously didn’t happen. I have had a trip to Canada cancelled 3 times, so now I’m adding that onto the west coast trip which saves some money. The original trip was for myself and DS16 with my 2 brothers and one girlfriend. Now we are adding my mum on as my dad passed away in February and also an extra girlfriend. So 7 of us in total.

So mum and I are traveling to Vancouver on 25/7 then going to Vancouver island on 27/7 to see her friend ( the whole reason for the Canada trip) on the 30/7 we will fly to San Francisco where we will meet everyone else. So far our plan looks like this:

3 nights Holiday Inn Fisherman’s wharf paid for with points.
We will then leave SF head to Walmart and maybe meet another of my mums friends for lunch then head to a hotel near Yosemite for 1 night.
Next morning we will get up early and head into Yosemite for 2 nights in the Yosemite Valley Lodge ( booked).
Then we have 2 nights where we will travel down through Death Valley and surrounding area.
Arrive in Vegas on the Sunday for 6 nights.
Fly home from Vegas.

I know 6 nights is a lot for Vegas but it’s where my brothers love to be, they love the casinos and have been a few times. I’ve been once for 2 nights, so happy to explore, shop and have pool time with my mum and DS.

We have 4 flights booked with avios points and a fly drive through BA so if there are problems next year there will be minimal cancellation fees.

Any thoughts on my plan, any ideas of where to stop after Yosemite but before Vegas? We were going to spend one night travelling down, but didn’t want to arrive in Vegas for the Saturday night as the hotels are expensive. So we have decided to do 2 nights and do more stops on the way. We have the car for a week when we leave San Francisco, I’d like to go to the Hoover Dam and maybe Red Rock Canyon before we drop the car off.

My uncle is also planning to fly out for the time we are in Vegas, I just need to sort his flights at some point.

We drove to Vegas (from Yosemite) via Death Valley but we ‘spent the day in Yosemite’ before stopping at Bishop which is a cheap to stay out town.

If you wanted to drive on further, you could stay in Death Valley?

Because we chose to do Death Valley on the way to Vegas, Bishop worked for us but if we’d had more time available and had left Yosemite a bit earlier, I would have stayed in Death Valley probably :)

Thanku, I’m thinking we will still spend the leaving day in Yosemite and travel towards Death Valley, so Bishop is definitely a possibility. I’m also trying to keep the hotel costs down so being outside Death Valley would help with that. We could then have the day in Death Valley and travel an hour or 2 the others side for our second night.

Bishop was one of the cheapest hotels we had. It was years ago now but it was I think as cheap as $35 for a perfectly acceptable motel - we checked in, had dinner at Denny’s across the road, picked up a load of snacks, water and stuff in a grocery store and went to bed early as we left at 6am the next day, so we just needed somewhere clean and tidy :)