The rental was a little white compact that smelled like pine air freshener and had about 18,000 miles on it. Wes walked all the way around it in the lot in Fayetteville with his phone flashlight before he'd let me sign anything, taking pictures of every scratch. The man at the counter was patient about it. That's how our May trip started, three days after we thought it was off.
On Tuesday, May 12, the CR-V started humming from the front right wheel, louder the faster we went. Wes knew what it was before he even jacked it up: a wheel bearing. The shop could fix it, but the part wouldn't come in until Monday. We had a Beaufort, South Carolina weekend planned for Friday, a motel already booked for two nights, and a hum that wasn't going anywhere.
Why we rented instead of cancelling
I sat at the kitchen table that night and did the math. A compact rental for three days from Fayetteville was $164. Cancelling the motel inside its window would have cost us part of the deposit anyway, and we'd have had nothing to show for it. I also spent about an hour on the phone the next morning with our card company and our insurance agent asking what would and wouldn't be covered on a rental. That's its own post, coming later this month. The short version is we turned down the counter's collision waiver after hearing both answers, and I learned about one gap I hadn't known existed.
Wes drove his truck to Fayetteville Thursday after work and I followed him home in the rental. Friday morning, May 15, we were on I-95 south by six.
Live oaks and the waterfront
Beaufort is about four hours from Fayetteville, the last hour on two-lane roads through the Lowcountry marshes, which I loved. The town sits on a bend of the river, with an old downtown along Bay Street and a long waterfront park with swinging benches facing the water. We sat on one of those benches for most of an hour Friday afternoon and watched the swing bridge open for a sailboat.
Beaufort's oldest neighborhood, the Point, is a few blocks of big white houses with deep porches under live oaks so large their limbs rest on the ground. You can walk it in an hour, and it's free. We walked it twice, once Friday evening and once Saturday morning when the light was better.
Our motel was a plain chain place on the road into town, $86 a night before tax, $188 for both nights. Breakfast was included and the parking was free.
Saturday we drove out to Hunting Island State Park, about half an hour east across the marsh. Admission for the two of us was $16. The beach there is wild in a way North Carolina beaches mostly aren't. The ocean has eaten into the forest, so whole dead trees stand and lie in the surf, silver and bare, and you walk around them on the sand. The lighthouse stands back in the trees. We walked the beach for two hours, found more shells than we could carry and ate a cooler lunch at a picnic table in the shade.
Saturday night we had a shrimp supper on the water for $38. Ice cream and two coffees over the weekend added $16.
What it cost in the end
The rental got about 36 miles per gallon on the highway, better than the CR-V. The whole drive in the rental, from the Fayetteville lot and back, with the trip out to the island, came to 560 miles, or about 15 gallons. Gas was around $3.25, so $49.
- Rental car, three days: $164
- Gas for the rental: $49
- Motel, two nights with tax: $188
- Hunting Island admission: $16
- Shrimp supper: $38
- Ice cream and coffee: $16
- Total: $471
That's well over our target, and the $486 wheel bearing repair isn't in there because it would've happened whether we went or not. Take out the rental and it comes to $307, which is about where we aim.
I'm glad we went. If the bearing had gone out on I-95 halfway to Beaufort instead of in our carport, it would have been a much worse weekend. Wes's view is simple: the hum gave us three days' notice, and he'll take that every time.
