Hi all, I would like to first thank everyone in this thread who helped plan and gave valuable advice for my trip in Dec14 - Jan15. Especially Shiny Things who planned the road trip which was the most enjoyable during the trip!
Hey, no worries; glad to help!
And now i'll be going to LV again from 28 Mar - 13 Apr which is this month and would like to plan another road trip, LV > Yosemite > SF > LV. Unfortunately, I understand Tioga pass is closed and I would have to take the route "I-15 south to Barstow; Highway 58 west to Bakersfield; take Highway 99 north to Fresno. In Fresno, take Highway 41 north into Yosemite National Park."
Is the above route a scenic one? If not, are there better scenic routes available to Yosemite? I'll most likely be staying at Yosemite for 2 days before heading to SF for another 2 days. Is it better to drop the car at SF and fly back to LV?
Unfortunately that route is the opposite of scenic. Barstow and Bakersfield are the armpits of California. The only good thing about that drive is that you can do it and get it over with in one solid day, which leaves you more time in Yosemite.
Death Valley is sort of on the way, so that's good for a side trip; and the Mojave Desert to the south is pretty but it's a bit out of the way.
Your other option is much longer, but it might be worth it if scenery is what you're after: drive north from Las Vegas to Reno (good driving if you're a speed freak); then take I-80 over the Sierras to Auburn; then take CA-49 south through Placerville, Jackson, Angels Camp, and Sonora to Groveland, which is the north-west entrance to Yosemite.
If you do this, make sure you stop in the cool little town of Truckee, right up the top of the Sierras - there's an absolutely fantastic taco joint called
Marg's Taco Bistro just over at the west end of town, and a
phenomenal haute-cuisine restaurant called Stella that gives you NYC- or SF-quality food in a tiny little mountain town.
I-80 is the best path over the northern Sierras in winter, as well - it's regularly maintained, so you'll never be held up for long even if we do get a miraculous late dump of snow this year. If it's really not snowy, you can even cram in a trip to Lake Tahoe - at Truckee, turn south, then drive around Lake Tahoe to the casinos at South Lake Tahoe, then take US-50 down to Placerville and rejoin CA-49 there. US-50's a lot more winding and scenic and pretty, and it's a ridiculously easy drive - I drove up there back in January and there wasn't even any ice on the road. I didn't even have to carry tyre chains (though no promises it'll still be chain-free when you get there).
I would like to bring an electric kettle over to US during my 2 weeks holiday.
cause I drink a lot of water per day and would really prefer to drink warm/hot water. but I understand the voltage is different. So will the kettle i bring over from SIN work in US?
Probably not - your 240-volt kettle won't work on US-grade 110-volt - but anyway, don't bother. Every little roadside motel will have tea- and coffee-making facilities, which'll include a kettle or a coffee-maker (pro tip: coffee-makers are fine for boiling water, just leave out the coffee pack and you'll get hot water).
Or you can buy a kettle at Walmart or Home Depot for like eighteen bucks and carry it around for two weeks.
Either way, it's a hell of a lot easier to buy it over here than it is to shove an enormous bloody kettle in your luggage (which incidentally will make the baggage scanners freak out). Wasting all that luggage space is going to cost you zillions in excess baggage fees and lost space.
car rental between states requires additional charges ~USD200 -_-"
anyway we are visiting antelope and grand canyon from phoenix because our friend stays there. After grand canyon, we are on our own. so only looking for 1 way from grand canyon to vegas.
One-way GCN-LAS basically doesn't exist. There's one incredibly dodgy-looking service called "Bungu Bus" that goes from GCN to LAS, but when I google that name the top three results are all "Bungu Bus sucks, don't use it!"
Seriously, rent a car and suck up the one-way fee. It's worth it to be able to stop over around there and take a photo or explore the sights; it'll save you a huge amount of time touring the South Rim of the Grand Canyon; and it'll mean you can stop over at cool little spots like the Cameron Trading Post, or the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, or the Glen Canyon Dam and Horseshoe Bend around Page.
