[Purple-banana]

my recommendation to anyone wanting to do the COTA event would be to tie it into a two week visit to the states. Just do the three days in Austin for the race and base yourself somewhere more interesting before / after. 

If I may add, Mrs Banana and I hired an RV from San Francisco for our Honeymoon a couple of years ago. My only regret is that we handed it back and came home! (We stayed in the south west, only venturing as far east as the Grand Canyon, but boy oh boy, I wish we had stayed longer and gone further).

The big rental companies have depots all across the country & Canada, so it wouldn't be difficult to pick an interesting route taking in Austin along the way or starting and/or finishing there.

(Incidentally, we swapped the RV for a convertible Mustang for the last few days and did the Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego back to San Fran, which was cool and good to tick off the bucket list, but we both agreed hitting places like Yosemite or Death Valley with the RV were so much better)

[morini]

If I may add, Mrs Banana and I hired an RV from San Francisco for our Honeymoon a couple of years ago. My only regret is that we handed it back and came home! (We stayed in the south west, only venturing as far east as the Grand Canyon, but boy oh boy, I wish we had stayed longer and gone further).

We've done the West Coast a couple of times on hoildays (once with two young kids in tow) and I worked for a Silicon Valley company for 9 years so have spent a fair bit of time there on my own. Personally, I wouldn't combine a trip to COTA with the West Coast, I think that would be stretching it time wise to get the best out of your trip (unless you can do three weeks or more). I'd concentrate on the South East and also avoid the RV's (but that's just me, I never was one for camping! I like my creature comforts too much).

Another option I wish we considered was to double up and do COTA / Mexico in the same trip. Problem with that is the WAF though. In my experience theres only so far you can push it before they flick the unhappy / insane bitch switch.