How is this drive in March? Doable? Easy? Bad idea?

Barring a ridiculous amount of rain, this trip is pretty easy. It gets a little boring in the middle, but the scenery is interesting. Downtown PHX to downtown LA is about 370 miles, so plan on about 5 hours, give or take, depending on your exact departure and arrival locations.

I've done this drive a couple of times. Not bad, especially if you have XM radio or CDs to entertain you. The biggest annoyance is slow-moving trucks passing other trucks in the left lane, since the speed limit in rural California is 70 for cars and 55 for trucks.

Be sure to leave both LA and Phoenix with a full tank of gas, since fuel is considerably more expensive in the rural areas in between the two cities. You'll find the cheapest gas at the Towne Avenue exit off the 10 freeway in Pomona (about 25 miles east of downtown LA) and around 71st Avenue off the 10 freeway in western Phoenix.

Except that if you leave LA on a Friday afternoon it may take 2 or 3 hours just to escape LA county.

Stimpy is right about traffic out of Los Angeles. Not just on Friday, but any weekday afternoon getting out past San Bernardino is a potential nightmare.

In March, no problem with tire tempertures. Its a great 5 hour trip. If you make this trip in the summer, stop half way to let you tires cool down.

fridays are brutal. if you can get out of town by 2, you should be fine. 3 can also work, but if you don't make 3, i would strongly advise you to hold off until 8. it took me 3 hours to get from newport to hollywood on halloween 03 and i thought i would be ok leaving at 3:30. ever since, i've regarded friday afternoons with considerably more respect/fear

On the way to Phoenix, we are breaking up the trip. We will be in Disneyland on a Friday for the entire day. We'll stay probably until it closes. From there, we will be staying in Riverside in a 3 star I pricelined. Saturday morning, we will leave early to head over to Indian Wells for the tennis tournament. Both of us have always wanted to go and found out just over the weekend that we'll be passing right by them en route to Phoenix. So we'll spend the day at Indian Wells and then drive to Phoenix. I'm sure it can't be that far to Phoenix from there.

Now the way back to LA won't be as relaxing. We will leave after the Friday 1pm baseball Giants game ends at Scottsdale (3 or 4pm)? We'd like to miss the Phoenix rush hour and then perhaps have dinner in the Palm Springs area before heading back to a hotel at LAX which I haven't yet received an accepted bid from Priceline.

Which is why I added the caveat.

Ooh Analise, there is a very good outlet mall on I-10, on the north side of the interstate just before you get to Palm Springs. Sorry, can't remember the exact exit number. It's a "Prime Outlet Mall" with stores like Brighton, Coach, many others. It's always an automatic stop for me on an L.A. roadtrip. You can google it for more info.

If you are a Costco member there is a Costco with gas station in the Palm Springs area, again just off I-10, I always have to look up the exit at the Costco website.

Oh that's great Dianne. I assume that there will be billboards for it on I 10 as well. :-:

The Amapolla Restaurant in Blythe used to serve terrific food. Have no idea if it's still there (the Amapolla or Blythe, for that matter).

Most significant hazards for right-coasters are (1)being bored to death by the absence of anything, and (2)laughing oneself silly at seeing a roadrunner.

I had to look at the atlas to see where Blythe is. Thank you for that recommendation.

As for the hazards to which you speak concerning we right-coasters (I like that term), the first will hopefully be resolved by satellite radio. National won't guarantee any at LAX but I'm hopeful they'll still have the vehicles in their Emerald Aisle. As for the desert, well, I need to see greenery. I don't now how people can live without it. Yet with all of the rain the Southwest has endured, I'm hoping the landscape might be remotely lush. As for the second hazard, I have never seen a roadrunner without Wile E. Coyote. What's my chance at seeing one? In Blythe?

Blythe is actually a convenient place to stop en route from Palm Springs to Phoenix. Except for the Amapolla, it's a horrid place.

I spent some time there on business and saw more than a few roadrunners. Because it's so flat, it's not hard to spot them. And their profiles are exactly like the cartoon; there will be no doubt in your mind that you've seen one. They have to run like hel| to get up enough speed to get off the ground, and even then their attempts at flight are less than elegant.

So far, the only Emerald Aisle vehicle with XM satellite radio is the Pontiac G6. Good news is that LAX has had lots of G6s on the Aisle recently, so you shouldn't have a problem getting one. The Buick LaCrosse also has XM, but it's tagged as a full-size so you'll have to pay an extra few dollars a day.

Both are nice cars.