Say you have friends or relatives that lives some distance away. The distance is driveable, but you need or want to do it often (say weekly). What is the longest (in miles or time) that is reasonable to you? I’m not talking about occasional trips, like a day at Disneyland that you only do once or twice a year, I’m talking about trips you make often. And let’s say that you need to be home nightly, so staying with them or getting a hotel room isn’t really an option.
What is your personal limit?
I think if it was weekly, and I had a good reason for going, I could manage 3 hours (each way). I think it would depend on the reason a lot more than the distance, though.
Hmm… Well, wake up at 7a, leave by 7:30a, arrive in time for lunch (say, 12:30p), stay for dinner (around 6p or so), leave by 7p, get home by midnight. Five hours each way. I’ll agree with Garfield and say that it would greatly depend upon my reasons for going. I do make a near-weekly trip bringing a friend to see her mother who is, at present, confined to her bed in a Veteran’s Home. It’s about a 1.5 hour drive each way, and I do it gladly. Would I bring her that far every week to see her boyfriend? No, I wouldn’t. But I would be willing to drive her 10 hours a week to see her mother, no question.
I have the great luxery of living within 20 minutes (one way) of my own mother, and I have no friends, so this isn’t something I need to think about very often. 
I’ve driven Sydney-Canberra-Sydney in a day often to visit friends. It’s a round trip of about 600km.
My parents are 250 miles away, I usually only go up if we’re staying at least overnight but have made the trip there and back in a day for birthdays or their anniversary.
I’m trying to think of how far I’d be willing to go on a regular basis, say if I had a longish distance relationship. If most of it were freeway and not surface streets, I’d say maybe 150-175 miles would be a doable day trip on a weekly basis. I’d renew my library card and stock up on books on tape first though.
I don’t like to drive.
Someone I’m dating, I have a 45-minute maximum.
If it were to see someone close to me who was dying, two hours.
I’ve done DC and back in a day – that’s about 2-1/2 hours – but that’s usually to see my brother, who I don’t get along with, so I don’t want to stay over.
2 hours is about my limit. I’ll drive to San Diego on a regular basis, but not San Luis Obispo.
I would say that three hours one way would be doable on a weely basis. We already travel over 2 hours each way to visit my wife’s family in New Hampshire very often and it isn’t a big deal.
well, my grandmother lived about 80 miles away and that was easily doable in a day. My dad says that anything longer 100 is irksome. I would tend to agree.
My inlaws live an hour away, and we visit weekly whenever possible. My stepmother (and my father before he died) lives 2 hours away, and that’s kind of a stretch. That four-hour round-trip is more than I’d want to do weekly, but I’d certainly do it monthly.
My sister lives three hours away. There have been a few times when I’ve made the round trip twice in one day due to emergencies, etc.
Three hours is my limit, though, for regular day trips. If it were a regular weekend stay - arrive Saturday, leave Sunday afternoon for example - I’d stretch it to maybe five hours.
For regular day trips, 2.5-3 hours would be about as far as I could take without getting really sick of it. If it was weekly I’d still probably get sick of it.
2 hours is about my limit. My butt starts to hurt if I sit in one place too long.
My sister is 5.5 hours away and I visit her over a weekend easily. Drive over on Friday PM or early Saturday and back on Sunday. My mom is about 2 hours away and I visit her often in a day or even in an evening. When she had her breast cancer surgery I was fortunate to even be able to “commute” from that distance and be with her a lot.
But then I actually like to drive alone. Nice “thinking” time for me. I love my solitude. If I don’t get some on a regular basis I get cranky and when life gets busy drive-time is an ok way to get it when all else fails.
In 1970 something a friend of mine drove Canberra-Sydney-Canberra to watch Casablanca on TV. This was before the freeway, the Razorback bypass and obviously the VCR. Probably 8 or 9 hours return in those days.
My family still live in Canberra and I sometimes go down for one day although usually I hang around for a few days.
About an hour each way, and I love driving. (my last vacation involved about 200 miles a day, and I loved it)
But knowing that I have to go there every week, much more than that and the friend or relative has “taken up too much of my free time” that could have been spent in the car, going somewhere else. (Assuming a casual visit, no one sick/dying/etc…)
Gimme the right conditions (say, a quad of shrooms or something), I’d probably drive for 24 hours straight, just for the fuck-sake of it. I like driving. I like driving without having to give a crap about anything but driving. I think it’s swell, especially with a crazed companion to record the journey, and a loud CD to play.
On a weekly basis, no more than an hour, and I like to drive.
Dang, you drive 1.5 hours each way, and you just ate up 3 hours of your Saturday. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
That’s a long bike ride, taking in a movie, reading a whole magazine or pretty good chunk of a book, going to the country for a hike.
That’s a trip to home depot and the associated home repair.
That’s putting together a big meal.
And, 3 hours each way? No way. Driving can be enjoyable but a 6 hour chunk of my time sitting in the car? Would you take a 6 hour nap on a saturday?
My inlaws are 1.5 away and we do it for niece birthdays, special occasions, some random things, but nowhere near every week.
On a weekly/semi-weekly basis, about 3 hours each way. But considering that I drive an hour (58 miles) to and from work every day… YMMV.
I am going to agree with Trunk - no more than an hour, and that’s for special occassions only. In fact, BIL and girlfriend moved a bit more than that away and we have to go there for Thanksgiving - I’m reconsidering going at all.
Frankly, I hate driving, I hate traffic, I’m a terrible passenger when Mr2U is driving because I am paranoid as hell, and we don’t have all that reliable of a vehicle, so I try not to tempt fate.