Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get to Seattle from San Francisco without flying? Bus, train, car rental - which would be a reasonably-priced but pleasant way to get from A to B? This won't be a sightseeing trip but we would like to fit in an overnight stop at Eugene, Oregon.

Amtrack's Coast Starlight goes out of Oakland or Martinez each night en route to Seattle. Get a sleeper compartment, the train stops in Eugene, but I don't know about layovers. Should be less than $800 round trip from Oakland for 2 with a sleeper that includes all meals.

Ok, thanks. Anyone else?

We did one way car rental Seattle to SF 2 years ago - got rid of car as soon as we got to SF. We found airport to airport rentals cheaper than city rentals - easy to pick up car when we arrived in Seattle but then husband dropped us off at hotel and then trecked to SF airport to return car and then returned without it to hotel.

This gave us opportunity to see what we wanted along way - we mixed sight-seeing on smaller roads to some time covering larger distances faster on the interstates. We determined where we would spend the night by stopping someplace interesting. Stopped 2 places only - Portland and some place at northern Calif border near big trees (but I do not remember name)

For family of 4 it was much cheaper than flying (we did not factor in hotels since it was a vacation and if we did not sleep in a hotel on the way we would have slept in one someplace else!)- if you are going alone, probably cheaper to fly, but that omits stop in Eugene

Thanks Gail,
Just two of us are going. My husband (a former pilot) and I are not afraid of flying. He has a couple of health issues that make us want to avoid it.

Do you happen to remember the cost of the car rental or what company you used? I'm a little concerned about hidden costs that are sometimes mentioned on this board. Thanks for the tip on going airport to airport.

Sorry, don't remember cost or company of car rental - but I am sure it was one of the big well-known brands (Hartz, Avis, etc.) As far as hidden costs, several we checked with had additional cost for driving car out-of-state of Washington - but most did not. You will pay something extra for one-way drop off charges, but it was only $10-20 - we thought it was incredibly cheap but the rental agent explained that it was cheap because both cities do a lot of car rental business and would not end up with a glut of cars if we did one-way.

As far as other hidden costs, I know we got unlimited mileage. Additional driver fees were waived since it was spouse of renter (most do that now - didn't use to be that way). The killer charge is always CDW - but we were covered twice on that, with our own car insurance plus credit card we used had coverage, so that would cover the deductible.

A new charge we have encountered lately is "loss of use" charge they threaten to soak you with if car is damaged. That means they can say car is out of service for 10 days for repairs and so they charge you what they would have made for those 10 days if car is wrecked.

If you have a few extra hours for detour, go see Mt. St. Helens. If your husband is a former pilot let me venture that you are old enough to remember the volcano eruption. The visitor's center is great - not hokey at all - and they are allowing the mountain to naturally heal itself with regrowth as an ongoing natural experiment.