Nashville road trip

[Abbey0134]

My husband and I are going on a three week road trip from Nashville to New Orleans and back again via Atlanta. I'd like to use GPS on my phone and to be able to make calls home etc, but don't want to rack up extortionate costs. Has anyone got any advice on the best way of doing this please?

As we don't know who your contract is with or what it consists of have you considered contacting your provider and asking them, or at least going on their website and looking at their roaming information?

I'm sure someone will have a better idea, but I know with Hertz they can offer a wifi device with unlimited 4G for the duration of your rental - it might just be if you join their Rewards scheme, but perhaps through your rental agency?

We went last year and did Nashville, Memphis and St Louis. The cost to hire a satnav was extortionate (about 17 dollars a day I think). I downloaded lots of maps to my kindle from Mapquest and we managed by using this (offline of course). We did get some recommendations to just buy a cheap satnav when we got there but decided against it. I kept my roaming switched off and if I needed to contact anyone I just used messenger when we were somewhere with wifi. Enjoy!

Presuming the roaming plans offered by your network aren’t up to scratch (3 is pretty good for example) then I’d leave calling friends/family to when you’re on WiFi in your hotel- first thing in the morning is a good time to call given the time difference anyway. Then either hire a GPS with the car or buy one on your first day from a big box store like Target or Walmart which should be about $150 which might save you money if the daily hire rate is quite high.

@juneau, thanks, I should have said. Our provider costs are prohibitive. I read somewhere about getting a payg sim,

When I go over to the USA I just pick up a SIM- I can't think what network I go with bug I think it's T-Mobile - just make sure your mobile is unblocked

You should be able to rent a GPS with your car (many already have them fitted as standard) - that would be better than incurring roaming charges anyway. What I do when we go to the US (which is often - DH is from there), is I switch off data roaming when we leave the UK and unless I need it urgently for something while we're there I leave it switched off. Then I used WiFi wherever we're staying for communication, browsing, etc. The only other alternative is to buy a data package, which can be expensive. I certainly wouldn't use my phone as a GPS.

In the past we've rented a Satnav for the car, downloaded maps to phone to use offline for walking and used WhatsApp when have WiFi for contacting home.