West Golf Road: Fill & Download for Free

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.The “Cross Country USA Road Trip”Ah…. the allure of the open road, friendly truck stop restaurants, seeing nature alongside great cities in the US. Wide-open spaces await you! Meet all of the different friendly kinds of people from the United States.Do NOT do that road-trip.Here are some reasons.(Photo Credit)Let’s take one state, Florida. Rent that car in Miami after hitting the beaches and drive north. Guess what… in 8 hours YOU’RE STILL IN FLORIDA. You’ve seen 47 exit ramps and some ads for Ron Jon’s Surf Shop, golfing retirement communities, and road signs telling you Jesus Saves and don’t abort your babies. You ate at McDonald’s or maybe tried some alligator meat at a weird little place off a highway exit that smelled like bug spray.How about New York City to say Chicago. It's a 12 hour drive if you don't stop. You'll sit in traffic for 2 hours getting out of New York. Then you get to see 2 highways, I-80 and I-90. You’ll see some cows. You’ll drive through Pennsylvania… and more Pennsylvania. You’ll see Cleveland (the “armpit of America”).(Photo Credit)Maybe you REALLY want to do it right and you want to drive coast to coast.Well, take the northern route. It’s lots of I-80. It’s lots of corn and soybean fields. And more corn and soybean fields. It’s Nebraska and Wyoming. And it’s 40+ hours of sitting on your butt in a car seeing almost nothing. If you take 5 and 8 hour side trips, you can see some sites like the Grand Canyon. November to March has snow and the drive could suck.The southern route takes you through places like Alabama and Louisiana and Texas… and more Texas. It’s a bit hot most of the time; expect 100+ degrees F (38+ C) in the summertime. In the east, the heat is jungle-like. In the west, It'll bake you dry. You’ll run into great people most of the time. But don’t be surprised if you speaking a language other than English doesn’t offend Americans around you.To really see America, you need to get off the highways and take some back ways. And doing this adds literally adds 20+ hours to your cross-country drive.There are great places to visit; please see the US.See New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, New Orleans (on a weekend), and other great cities.Visit Yellowstone National Park, the Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, and the Everglades.Hit the beaches in Florida, North Carolina, Corpus Christi, Texas, Miami, West Palm Beach.Go skiing in Colorado. Go snorkeling in the Florida Keys. Go climbing in Utah. Go hiking in the Smoky Mountains.Photo credit: My own :-)But for gosh’s sake… don’t drive to all of them.Fly to a city that’s close. Grab a $30/day rental car. Enjoy $2/gallon fuel (€0.50/liter). Explore in the car a little bit.But don’t do the cross-country trip; there’s not that much to see and you’ll waste days driving instead of being where you want to be..[Edit: Quite a few people are pointing out, if you have a month to see the US, a coast to coast drive can be great. If you have 2 weeks though (what I consider a vacation length), it’s lots of time sitting in a car.And sure, get off the highways like a lot of people are mentioning. LA to NYC is 41 hours… all interstate. Back roads and side-trips add 20+ hours to the drive. So, it becomes 60 hours sitting in a car. But you get to see lots of little towns and can hit national parks and a few select cities.I stand by don’t coast to coast if you’re a tourist.]

Toyota, in Germany, is the invisible elephant in the room nobody talks about, visible to and purchased only by people who have overcome German default sentiments suggesting a VW Golf or Opel Astra or Ford Focus - which are actually not very reliable vehicles, when you look at the statistics of the past twenty years, by comparison to comparable Toyotas.Germans do not consider Toyotas cars, but more a kind of kitchen appliance on wheels that unfortunately makes a lot more sense than domestic alternatives. You cannot impress with a Toyota. In Germany, owning a Toyota is viewed as a sign of defeat, or sacrificing taste and sophistication on the altar of reason and economy.So, in a way, buying a Toyota is something those who are working hard for their money know they ought to be doing, but they will usually only do so at the point where they’ve had enough of the niggles you get with vehicles like VWs and Opels.I think the most common line all German Toyota owners will have is “you know, I used to drive VW/ Opel/ Ford, but it got to the point where I’d just about had it with the car trouble, and I needed something that actually runs.”You will probably next to never meet a German who buys Toyota because of a romantic attachment to them. I guess I must be the only one. I have owned several Toyotas, and while I felt warm and fuzzy knowing that these cars are immensely easy to own, what actually drove me to take that step was childhood memories of walking past 1970s and 80s Celicas, Landcruisers, and Crowns on my way to school, thinking that those were terminally cool and different cars, slightly American, and exotic. And every time you watched a documentary on the West African bubble buffalo or the somersaulting Nile alligator, or something, the vehicles driven by the researchers would have TOYOTA emblazoned on the back in huge letters. These, to me, were the official cars of world exploration, as a little boy. They came with a taste of the Far East, North America, and Africa at the same time.To me, Toyotas are a way of owning a vehicle that comes with a whiff of Serengeti while knowing it will take you to the office by 08:30 without any funny stuff, ever.Those aren’t deer by the side of the road, they’re springboks.

I have lived in both Florida (17 years) and Arizona (25 years).The answer is both are good states. More seniors from the east coast settle on the east coast of Florida and it will feel more familiar to you. People from the Midwest seem to like the west coast of Florida. People from the west tend to prefer Arizona. Arizona is a western state, which means it does have a different feel than the east coast. It might be a slightly bigger adjustment for Easterners. But not much.Possibly the seniors in Arizona are more physically active. If you like to golf Arizona has a huge number of golf courses.They both have good weather and reasonably priced housing. They both have hot summer months that last the same lengths of time. Florida has the threat of hurricanes in late summer. Arizona does not have life threatening weather but with climate change can have dust storms where driving is dangerous. If you are indoors you just close the windows until it passes. I am posting a link to show what a haboob looks like but I want to stress that this is a short term event, not life threatening, and not a big deal, certainly not in the same way that a hurricane is. Any injuries from a haboob are your own fault for continuing to drive in no visibility. phoenix haboob - YouTubeThere is plentiful cheap labor for help in the house or garden in both states. It is helpful to speak Spanish in both states.Florida has no state income tax. However it also has high humidity. It has Amtrak train service to Washington for you and your car if you plan to be a snowbird to the northern states. It may have more senior communities than Arizona. In fact it may have more seniors than Arizona. It is easier and faster to fly to Europe, it has lots of beaches and lots of lakes. It has more and probably better fishing.Florida is flat everywhere and has no mountains. Arizona has more variety in scenery, with both mountains and desert. if you like to travel. It is quick and easy to get to lots of other major cities, by plane or car. However It is a longer flight to get to Europe. But is easy to get to Mexico and the national parks of Utah. And the roads are wider and better with less traffic. In general I would say the quality of housing and living is a little higher. The housing is newer. There are more bike lanes for biking. It is is a long drive to get to a beach. I believe the quality of healthcare is better.I will probably move back to Arizona for my final home. But both are good states and offer a good quality of life.