Thanks for the AAA recommendation. I have a Honda Care contract, which includes 24hour roadside assistance. (maybe I was a sucker for buying it, but it sounded like an okay deal at the time). I have never used it, but maybe someone out there may have a comment about it.
Thank you for all of the recommendations, especially the one about the sunscreen!
Hey, take your own car and have fun!
Took my mom on a 6 week, 10,000+ mile driving trip out west in 1990 and followed it up with another driving trip the next summer for 9 weeks driving 15,000+ mile road trip through 13 western states. Did it in a car I bought new in 1987 and that was an Olds that was far less reliable than a current model Honda. No reason whatsoever to not drive your own car. We didn’t even have a cell phone back then but did have AAA membership.
Couple of suggestions for items to ALWAYS have in the car with you:
*Water
*Snack food such as granola or peanut butter/cracker sandwiches
*Map
*Cell phone w/ charger
*Phone numbers of your accomodations and any emergency contacts
*List of your accomodations w/ driving instructions such as exit ramp, etc.
*Light weight jacket – amazing how cold the desert gets even in summer after the sun goes down!
*Medicines you normally need AND a separate list of those complete w/ prescription numbers in case emergency refill is needed
*Windshield scrubber/squeegie like at gas stations AND some good glass cleaner and paper towel for removing mutantly large dead bugs splatted on the windshield between gas stations – Don’t forget to clean your headlights whenever you clean the windshield!
*Sense of adventure, curiosity, and fun!
On two lane highways out west the law REQUIRES driving w/ headlights on at all times even during the day. It helps oncoming drivers see your car and avoid head-on collisions when passing.
Until you get used to passing, give yourself FAR longer room than you think needed just to be safe.
If you go hiking on trails in the national parks, be sure to check in at the visitors center/ranger station for current info and to register that you are hiking a particular trail. This is a wonderful safety measure. Besides, the 10 minutes it takes will provide you a wealth of interesting info about the area you’d otherwise miss out on; park rangers are your friends!!!
If going to Grand Canyon, it’s well worth your time to explore some/all of the many, many other national/tribal parks and monuments all around Flagstaff, AZ. North Rim of Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater and lava beds, Waputki, Tuzigoot, Montezuma’s Well, Montezuma’s Castle, the red rocks area around Sedona (not part of the national parks system), Monument Valley (Navajo tribal), Zion, Bryce, Cedar Breaks, Meteor Crater (not part of the national park system). And, of course, there is a ton of other fascinating places between Birmingham and Grand Canyon.
Have the time of your life!!! Happy motoring and exploring.
Marnet
WOW!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of that down. This is really wonderful!
Now, if only I could convince my mother that not only is taking such a road trip a good idea, but also that she should come with
me! (like your mom did!)
Oh well, there is always next year!
For both your sakes, hope she will go on good fun driving vacation with you. It is a wonderful, unique experience. My mom and I had the time of our lives and joked about it being the traveling mother daughter slumber party!
Perhaps you could acclimate your mom over the coming year with multiple short day trips of increasing length and then graduate to several weekend driving get aways. Take the so called one-tank trip on weekends. She might become more comfortable with the idea of a longer driving trip and in your car (well maintained of course!) once she regularly experiences a variety of shorter trips closer to home and her existing comfort zone.
Good luck and have a fun, safe trip!
Marnet
P.S. Like others strongly advised, wear a wide-brimmed shade hat out in the high desert country as well as sunscreen. Drink lots of water. The humidity is low and you’ll get dehydrated very easily compared to the lower elevation with higher humidity you are used to in Birmingham.
P.P.S. Get a good tire gauge and check the pressure of tires yourself. Nasty trick a few dishonest folks have when they see a tourist with out-of-state license plates is to deliberately damage a tire or let air out of it while supposedly checking your tires, just to sell you a tire or two! It’s very, very easy to check air pressure yourself and add air if needed.
And when you are pumping gas, ALWAYS lock the doors while you are out of the car and don’t leave any purses in the car, have purses on/with you. Just use common sense about keeping valuables out of sight in the trunk, your purse (if a woman), etc. with you and the car locked even if out of it for only a few minutes. Keep your head up, eyes open, senses alert and you’ll be quite safe and fine.
Jasst; the nicest thing you can do for your car is to take it on a long trip to blow out the cobwebs, so to speak. Cars are like people; they need vigorous exercise to keep them from clogging up!!
All other posters have given you good advice that your short trip driving demands more frequent oil changes, such as every 6 months.
To go to the Grand Canyon only requires routine checks, such as tires, fluid levels, etc. as others indicated. And you don’t need spare gas or a full size spare. When I travel, a cell phone and my AAA card are my best friends. Should you get a flat tire (not likely), and have to change it, carry and old blanket in the trunk and a pair of gardening gloves.
Years ago I made a 7000 mile trip pulling a camper around North Amercia, in a 10 year old Buick station wagon. My only problem was a failed spark plug wire which I replaced with one from Wal-Mart at $15 plus tax.
Jasst, your mother is not crazy; she is probably overly concerned for your safety. So, please explain to her that a team of expert mechanics, one automotive engineer, and others who have travelled extensively by car, think your Civic is a great car to take on this trip; both for you and for the car!!
Skip the mechanic…NOT needed on a car this new. Changing the oil before the trip might be a good idea since you may need it changed while on the trip if you don’t.
I don’t understand the bringing extra fuel! What is that for??? I’ve done a lot of traveling in this country and have yet to find a place that doesn’t have gas stations. Plus gas is dangerous to transport…and it takes up space. Skip the gas.
Full size spare…I wouldn’t. It won’t fit where the donut spare does and it will take up precious space in the trunk. The tires only have 2800 miles on it. Chances are you won’t have any tire issues. Just make sure they’re properly inflated. I’d up the pressure a little above what’s recommended. Maybe 3-5 lbs more since you’ll be adding weight for a long period of time.
Renting makes no sense to me. Maybe if you had a 15yo car with over 250k miles and it was giving you some issues. But this is a fairly new car with and excellent reputation. There will be 0 loss in value for taking this trip. How could there be??
Don’t worry about short drives. Just use the severe schedule listed in manual on time and the car will last you a long time. The car will last you the same amount of time as a car driven under optimal conditions but more mileage.
A car is there is there to serve you. You do not serve except for the basic maintenance listed in your manual. Life is too short to worry about your car you will likely dump or get totaled before it really is ready for the scrap yard.
I can understand the reasoning behind adding a full sized spare. Suppose you are driving across Alabama at 8 PM on a Saturday night and you get a flat tire. The miniature spare is only good enough to get you to the nearest tire store, which in many cases won’t open until Monday morning. You certainly don’t want to keep driving without a usable spare tire. If you have a full sized spare and a miniature spare, you can mount the full sized spare, keep traveling, and still have the smaller spare in case of an emergency. Then when Monday rolls around, you can get the flat tire fixed at your convenience.
Adding a full sized spare can make a huge difference on a long trip.
My recommendation is to contact a rental agency (or several and compare prices) via the internet and estimate the cost of the rental plus and estimate of the cost of fuel plus the cost of a rental insurance rider to your existing auto insurance policy.
Estimate the cost of operating your own vehicle. The government recommends $0.50 per mile.
Compare the numbers and other variables that you will be considering. Make the best dicision.
Enjoy the trip.
Thank you for the advice and the nice comment about my mother. 
And, I will try to reassure her.
This decision is about MARGINAL COST! Only the incremental cost of operating the vehicle needs to be considered. With such low mileage, the trip will be beneficial for the car.
So, take only the fuel used plus one oil change, and compare it to renting a car.
The 50cents a mile is along term figure for compensation purposes.
I did check the rental price. The best rate that I could find for a 10-day trip was 330.38 with Avis. The claim is that it would include unlimited mileage, but as I recalled in another discussion thread it was pointed out that sometimes even if the contract says “unlimited mileage”, one has to use that mileage within the same state in which one rented the car. So, I called and asked, (for verification purposes), and one customer service rep said there were additional fees, but could not tell me how much they were, and another said there weren’t any. I’m not sure which representative to believe.
And the truth is that I am leaning towards using my own car for all of the reasons everyone has mentioned.
“I am leaning towards using my own car for all of the reasons everyone has mentioned.”
If you are only “leaning toward” using your own car, then we must all have done a very poor job with our responses.
To capsulize the situation:
*You will not harm your car by taking it on this long road trip, as long as you change that condensation-diluted motor oil prior to the trip.
*You will actually be doing the car (and yourself) a favor by giving it prolonged high-speed, non stop-and-go driving.
*You will pay far more for a rental car and gasoline for that rental car than it would cost you to use your own car.
There is no logical reason for renting a car, rather than using your own car for this trip!
Oh, sorry, VDC, I was just trying to be polite to the person who suggested, after everyone else had suggested differently, that I should consider thinking about renting a car. I thought it was just a nicer way of putting that there was no way in hell I was going to rent a car at this point.
I’m glad that you are making the right decision. Enjoy the trip!
Let me add one more advantage to taking your own car: you are used to your own car. My wife recruits graduate students for a university and goes on the road quite often. She would much rather take our Toyota 4Runner and be reimbursed for the mileage than take one of the university’s vehicles. She likes the seating position in the 4Runner much better than she does the seating position in a car. The university fleet has three different makes of vehicles: 1) Ford Taurus; 2) Chevrolet Impala; and 3) Honda Civic Hybrid. BTW, when she does use a university car, she prefers to be assigned to one of the Ford Taurus cars because of the seating position. However, she much prefers to drive our 4Runner.
RELAX, ENJOY YOURSELF! What is “peace of Mind” worth?
Sometimes renting makes sense for some individuals.
We have rented cars for tips before, even though we have had fairly new cars at home. Necessary trips that are long on miles and short on time (like 700 miles in 48 hours) when nothing but snow and freezing rain were in the forecast, are examples of “peace of mind” rentals, and you might want to drive a “tank.” We have rented cars for 90 bucks for 2 days, unlimited miles, recently.
What if someone rear-ends your car and pushes you into another car or you need warranty transmission work in Broken Springs, Nebraska? This stuff happens. You will be making another trip to pick up your car and you might be renting, anyhow.
We took a week long 3,000 mile vacation trip in a very, very, reasonably priced rental sedan. We did some sight seeing and inadvertently got down a mountain two-track that was fading out as we travelled. When loud clunks and scrapes were heard under the car, I was not extremely stessed-out. There was a lot of snacks and beverages consumed in there and I didn’t have to stress as much about my young son’s eating in the back seat.
I would have used up one oil change on my own car. When I told the clerk at the rental agency that the steering wheel was shaking when braking (I accidently over-heated the brakes in the mountains), she looked at a piece of paper and said, “That car goes out of service soon, anyhow,” to the tone of “Have a nice day!”
I had “peace of mind” and didn’t have to schedule an oil change or brake work (which could be warranty or costly) while unwinding from my vacation.
Do the math, as has already been suggested.
Check with your own car insurance agent about coverage. I believe I am covered on a rental car up to 14 days in the states and not in Mexico at all and something like a 100 miles into Canada.
I will say this: I have never regretted renting a car or thinking “Man I wish I had taken my car for this traffic tie-up, detour, door-ding, sand/hail storm or to watch a coconut bounce off the hood.” Next trip, I will consider renting, again.
Although your post contains a bit of pessimism–“What if someone rear-ends your car and pushes you into another car or you need warranty transmission work in Broken Springs, Nebraska?”, you do have some valid points.
However, if you read the entire thread, you will see that the OP’s car gets very little use on a regular basis, and is used essentially for just very short trips–in other words, the worst type of service for a car. Thus, a long-distance trip would actually be beneficial to the car, and as the OP states that he/she is planning on keeping the car for the long term, a road trip like this would help to keep this almost-new car running well.
As to “warranty transmission work” on a 1 year-old car with 2800 miles on the odometer, I think that this possibility is rather remote.
I appreciate the points you make. S–t happens. I realize that. It could happen anywhere. Some people fail to respect their belongings, the belongings of other people and the rules of the road. My car may get dinged. A hail storm might put huge dents in it, a sand storm may erode the paint. I think I don’t have to worry much about coconuts. But that said, I would rather drive a car that is safe–one that I basically know where it has been–it’s mechanical history (as far as I know it)–than a car that has been driven by someone who may have overheated the brakes on the last trip and which may go out of service any day now (or should have gone out of service last week)? I love my car; but I love living more and not taking risks that may harm other people. And even if there will be some stress involved because I will have to be (on your assessment) perhaps even more conscientious because it is my only car and a new car, so much the better for myself and other people on the road.