Hiring a car

Have spent a good deal of time today looking at car hire options and wondering whether to book ahead or leave it to chance. In the end I decided to reserve. I selected what looked like a good deal, and found the same deal charged differently depending on how I approached the website. It appears that you get a worse deal by prepaying, despite what the website implied, and I ended up making the same booking twice in two different ways...I've cancelled the first (more expensive by almost 3 hundred pounds!) one and am awaiting the repayment on my poor wornout credit card. Now I feel depressed and stressed. Have I got it right or am I being tricked. the inconsistencies leave me feeling uncertain. Why do I feel as though Iam a chicken waiting to be plucked ... or fleeced ... or something!

Planning and thinking

A few weeks ago we used the gift of a good old fashioned book token to purchase the Lonely Planet guide to the USA and a Michelin road map. Today at last, we spread the map all over the kitchen table and started studying it with the LP guide book on hand. There's too much to see and do. We should have planned to visit for 6 months. It looks as though we'll choose to set out from Tucson one April Friday morning to take the 6+ hour drive to Albuquerque as a starter. This will give us a chance to get a flavour of some of the interesting places along the way to Gallup. Then we'll set off for Canyon de Chelly and the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (do they like the word "Tribal" there - I think it has pejorative connotations?). After that, we shall try to spend 2-3 days in the Grand Canyon area, and follow that up with a day or so at Bryce Canyon. Then we'll belt along to the general neighbourhood of Salt Lake City en route for Yellowstone, where we might be able to spend a few days before driving like the clappers until we get to Chicago. Car hire options were investigated today as well, and look reasonably promising.