Maximum miles and time frame for road trips?

[MrsHaloFIRE]

To me success is really long driving days. Or extremely short. Mediocre length days just suck. Youre still tired but you didn't get one diwn the road. Drive for 9 or 2. We are about to do about 6 a day for 4 days bc of the baby. She's 6 mos. Prayers welcome.

 

[Sunset]

We just returned from a trip to the Smokey Mountains, it was crowded and it's not even high season yet! By crowded I mean, there was no parking anywhere in the lots or along the roadside very often, meaning we would skip some site/trail and then hope to catch it another day or on a return route. We were there for 8 days so were not panicked about missing something 1 day.

As for the driving, I realized on this trip I've gotten out of driving "shape" , until about 10 years ago I used to drive for 15 hrs (800 miles).
Then we broke that down to do 400->450 miles per day.

On this trip, maybe because we haven't driven far in 2 years, I found doing 6 hours (330 miles) per day was long enough ! Especially as it rained the 2nd day for 300 miles.

It's making the decision to fly and rent a car more appealing as long drives use up days of our life.

 

[skyking1]

I did 400 miles and 11 hours of time away from home today, that is plenty long. It was for a good cause

 

[FreeBear]

I went through Zion 30 years ago and remember thinking that I'd hate to break down out here. There's no one around.

I visited Arches in mid 2000. Very pleasant. Only seemed a little busy on the traditional evening hike to Delicate Arch, although certainly not crowded. I wondered why such an amazing national park wasn’t more crowded. Well,I now hear that you need a reservation to drive in, not to camp, just drive in!

 

[COcheesehead]

I visited Arches in mid 2000. Very pleasant. Only seemed a little busy on the traditional evening hike to Delicate Arch, although certainly not crowded. I wondered why such an amazing national park wasn’t more crowded. Well,I now hear that you need a reservation to drive in, not to camp, just drive in!

There are traffic jams in downtown Moab.
What once was a cool, adventure town has now turned into a tourist hell.

 

[JackJester]

Many full time RVers, and those that are retired and take long RV trips adhere to the rule of 3s: First, limit your travel to no more than 300 miles in one day. Second, arrive no later than 3 p.m. Finally, stay at your destination for at least three days.
Slow down and enjoy. You're retired.

 

[2017ish]

Many full time RVers, and those that are retired and take long RV trips adhere to the rule of 3s: First, limit your travel to no more than 300 miles in one day. Second, arrive no later than 3 p.m. Finally, stay at your destination for at least three days.
Slow down and enjoy. You're retired.

These are all good ideas. Internationally, I would amend 300 miles to 5/6 hours of driving.... (3p.m. isn't as important when driving an econobox--as long as you make reservations by noon!)

We try to stay at least 2 nights at any destination on international driving trips, but sometimes fall short... In the US, we weren't so diligent, but once we start doing domestic again, we will continue our efforts to do so.

Hopping every night is disruptive, and makes it difficult to do laundry. Overseas, with only carry-on luggage, we are better. But in US, we can throw more luggage in the car, which makes us profligate with the quick stops....

 

[skyking1]

Many full time RVers, and those that are retired and take long RV trips adhere to the rule of 3s: First, limit your travel to no more than 300 miles in one day. Second, arrive no later than 3 p.m. Finally, stay at your destination for at least three days.
Slow down and enjoy. You're retired.

We are angling towards that. I still go 400 or more on 'mission' days, when the goal is to get somewhere and especially when travelling though country you have either seen many times or has little interest for us.
Once we pull the trigger and hit the road, that will be the plan. We have a Boondocker's Welcome lifetime membership, as we were launch hosts when they started out. Boondocker's was purchased by Harvest Hosts so we have a lot of options to stay comfortably on the road.

 

[pacergal]

We usually do not drive more than 10 hours in a day, no more than 2- 2 1/2 days in a row.
I grew up with cross country family trips in the summers, 6 in the car, both parents smoking, long days starting at 4 am. Kind of made me dread car trips.

Now, with DH bad back, multiple days driving is not a good plan. And I am OK with that!

 

[finnski1]

I visited Arches in mid 2000. Very pleasant. Only seemed a little busy on the traditional evening hike to Delicate Arch, although certainly not crowded. I wondered why such an amazing national park wasn’t more crowded. Well,I now hear that you need a reservation to drive in, not to camp, just drive in!

Yeah. I just made a reservation for our visit in the beginning of May.

 

[RobLJ]

I used to drive by myself 870 miles from Houston to the Colorado cabin; leave at 6:00 am and pull in around 8-9:00 pm. That was when I was working. It was an easy drive when done with my wife to help drive.

Now we're retired, I usually go 600-700 miles/day with her if we're going somewhere far away. An easy drive is 300-400 miles. But I like long drives, looking at the geography and taking routes I haven't driven before. We took 4 days to get to Texas from Reno before Thanksgiving to see my aged mother, but that was in a convoy with my son, his family, and his mother-in-law. That left time in the day for sightseeing and getting to the campground before dark. I really enjoyed the side-trip through the Malpais because of a wreck on I-40; always wanted to go there.

My wife's hiking friends all think we are crazy; they don't like driving more than 200 miles.

 

[GaryInCO]

I drive 900 miles to visit family in Iowa, usually 1-2x/yr. It's not a scenic drive, just beat-feet across Nebraska and get there as fast as I can. When I had DW and kids with me we had to make lots of potty stops, but I have a cast-iron bladder. I'll drive the whole 14-ish hours with one gas stop in the middle. That was never much fun and it's getting less fun as time goes by.

I'm easing into retirement, and I don't plan to do many more deathmarch drives like that. I had planned on doing a lot of international travel, but cancer and Covid have put a kink in those plans. So this summer I'm picking up a new Tesla Model Y. People say it's a very relaxing and stress-free way to travel, especially if you let the car do most of the mindless work of driving. I plan to road-trip around the country, mostly camping out in the back of the car. I hope I enjoy it.

 

[meleana]

I saw Ronstars post about his trip to AZ .. I think it was around 3900 miles in 19 days.

How much driving do you like to do on a road trip? A neighbor just did a mini snowbird trip and somehow ended up driving over 9000 miles..

The nearest warm weather spot is at least 1500 miles from here, I find myself not enjoying the driving part. Add in some driving around at your destination and it seems like all you do is sit in the car.

Any tricks or solutions you do to make the driving more enjoyable?

We don’t like driving beyond about 6- 8 hours in a day and we tend to just want to get to our destination because once there we will be doing a lot of sightseeing and driving and then when time to go home have to drive all the way back.

Any place that involves more than that one day on the road, we would rather fly to and rent a car. But right now I heard car rentals are outrageous and, of course, gas is expensive. And then there’s the wear and tear on the car if you take your own car on a very long road trip.

We haven’t traveled outside our state since the pandemic began except to nearby states ( one 3 hours to get to and the other 1 1/2 hours). Until I feel there will be no more COVID restrictions at the last minute, we feel we will just take day trips and vacation in our own state.

 

[Sunset]

Just before Covid hit, two years ago, we flew to Miami to catch a short cruise to try out Celebrity, then stay in FL for our timeshare week, and fly back.

Normally we drive down and back with a total of 4 hotel stays to ease the driving there and back.

It was so refreshing to not have the long drive there and back, and the largely wasted 4 days of travel time, and the wear and tear on our car.
Saving the 4 nights in hotels largely paid for the airfare.
The car rental was ~$250 but I saved more than that by not buying gas for the 2,400 miles of travel. Now that would be at least $384.

The only downside was not taking our guns to use the FL range (which is really nice and well run, and cheap).

 

[Rambler]

I used to drive up to 750-800 miles per day pretty easily. I’m not comfortable doing that anymore. I try to keep car/truck driving days to about 500 miles or less, and RV driving days to 300 +/-50. When we go in the car/truck, we are trying to reach a destination. When we go in the RV, it is more to enjoy things along the way. As far as total trip length, we’ve probably done maybe 3000 miles, on an RV trip spanning multiple states in a large loop. As far as car/truck trips, we go up to 1000 miles each way. Beyond that, and it just becomes more time/cost/frustration efficient to fly, but we miss seeing things along the way, and we miss our dogs, that go everywhere with us when we drive.

 

[ArmchairMillionaire]

For me, it’s not about max miles but about how much time I want to drive in a single day.

If I’m driving everyday, then I try to stick to around 4 hours: head out in the morning and arrive in the afternoon.

If I won’t drive the next day, then I’ll drive 6-8 hours in a day, preferring to stay closer to 6 than 8.

I usually only do longer drives if I plan on not driving the next day, but a lot depends on route.

DW doesn't like to go more than 6 hours of highway driving in a day. We've done longer but she's not happy with it.

So if we're on a road trip. I try to book hotels within a 6-hour drive of where we spent the night. If it takes us 8, 10, or 12 hours to get there, she's fine with that as long as we can stop at shops along the way, get something to eat, sightsee, etc. She just doesn't want to drive for 8, 10, 12 hours just to go farther in a day.

So, 6 hours away it is... Happy wife, Happy life!

 

[rodi]

I like chuckanut's reference of a ratio of fun-time to windshield time. This has been a negotiation between my sister and I - she keeps suggesting camping trips that are 400-500 miles away - and wants to only stay 2 nights... so only 1 day to enjoy the area... I pushed her to 4 nights on our most recent trip - so we had 3 days to enjoy/explore the area.

We're going on a road trip, van camping, in a few weeks. All campgrounds are booked for 2 nights or longer... All driving is 6 hours or less. That way we can explore/get to know the area of where we are stopping. We've talked about doing longer trips - but the driving required is keeping us from biting the bullet on that.

 

[geezee1957]

Just returned home to Alaska from Arizona. 3907 miles. We did stop in Vegas for a week though ?

 

[Gearhead Jim]

Being retired from an airline, DW and I get free passes in unused seats, which are frequently-but-not-always available. Great for international.

For travel in the US/Canada, for the last 20 years we've used a series of Corvettes, because that's much more fun. And gives us a car to drive at the destination. Because we usually take the more scenic/twisty roads, our daily miles limit doesn't mean much. Instead, we try for about 6 hrs of twisty roads or up to 8 hrs of interstates. Or only a couple of hours if we have good places to enjoy. Leisurely stops for food/fuel/scenery. We try not to have long days back to back.
That works for us.

 

[Gearhead Jim]

I drive 900 miles to visit family in Iowa, usually 1-2x/yr. It's not a scenic drive, just beat-feet across Nebraska and get there as fast as I can. When I had DW and kids with me we had to make lots of potty stops, but I have a cast-iron bladder. I'll drive the whole 14-ish hours with one gas stop in the middle. That was never much fun and it's getting less fun as time goes by.

I'm easing into retirement, and I don't plan to do many more deathmarch drives like that. I had planned on doing a lot of international travel, but cancer and Covid have put a kink in those plans. So this summer I'm picking up a new Tesla Model Y. People say it's a very relaxing and stress-free way to travel, especially if you let the car do most of the mindless work of driving. I plan to road-trip around the country, mostly camping out in the back of the car. I hope I enjoy it.

We have two friends who took road trips with their Teslas. They like the car to drive, but found the charging experience annoying, especially out west. We took a trip in SW Texas just before Covid and I had to plan carefully just to find gasoline, charging would be almost impossible if you want to get off the big highways.

One friend and his DW drove Chicago-North Caroline-Chicago at a leisurely pace. They said it's doable but they won't repeat. Too many charging stations in shady parts of town or closed or broken or busy.
In a few years that should change, but for now they use the Tesla only locally.
Best of luck, whatever you choose.

 

[street]

^ I’m sensing that Yellowstone and Glacier are going to be crowded this summer. Sedona was crowded a couple of weeks ago. A local told us that Sedona is now getting 4.5 million tourists a year.

I just heard on the new here in Montana that Yellowstone set a record for attendance in 2021 at 4.86 million. The record year broke was 2016.

Glacier is going to be a busy place this year and they figure both parks will break records in 2022.

 

[a60dan]

We prefer driving over flying, and I prefer the train over driving.

When we drive, 500 miles is my current maximum, all daylight driving.

We are planning a Route 66 trip for May with a travel trailer, and ended up with an average of 70 miles/day. That's the result of targeting 150-200 miles maximum in any one day, and planning a pattern of two 1 night stop, followed by 2-3 night stop.

Lots of things to stop & see along Route 66:
Google My Map

We still haven't planned the return trip and estimate total miles of 5-6000 over 2 months.

 

[coveredbridge]

500 miles per day is my max. With a couple fuel/rest stops and a lunch break it's pretty much a full day (9-5). I do ALL the driving because I can't stand DW's driving. One thing I've found that helps break up the monotony is DW brings a word puzzle book and we work the puzzles together while on the road. It helps me stay awake and alert while I'm behind the wheel.

 

[Ronstar]

We prefer driving over flying, and I prefer the train over driving.

When we drive, 500 miles is my current maximum, all daylight driving.

We are planning a Route 66 trip for May with a travel trailer, and ended up with an average of 70 miles/day. That's the result of targeting 150-200 miles maximum in any one day, and planning a pattern of two 1 night stop, followed by 2-3 night stop.

Lots of things to stop & see along Route 66:
Google My Map

We still haven't planned the return trip and estimate total miles of 5-6000 over 2 months.

Great trip! I like your map. I live near Rte 66 in Illinois and drive portions of the route frequently - you may want to include the old gas station in Odell Illinois on your list of attractions. And maybe take the original Route 66 (route 4) between Springfield and Staunton Illinois.

We've driven the entire route except for a small portion just east of Los Angeles - parts at a time as part of several road trips.

Have a great trip!

 

[Ronstar]

I just heard on the new here in Montana that Yellowstone set a record for attendance in 2021 at 4.86 million. The record year broke was 2016.

Glacier is going to be a busy place this year and they figure both parks will break records in 2022.

Glacier has an additional pass required for this year - a pass for Going to the Sun road. We are going during the end of July. I agree - it's going to be busy.