I’ve driven from Minneapolis to Kansas City once, to St. Louis twice, and Chicago numerous time. Wondering if I’m unusual or if covering that distance alone is common. Now that Southwest is in town I am flying more, but I’m still thinking about driving to Chicago at least once more.
how many hours is that? I usually judge driving distance by hours. The longest stretch in a car driving I did was 9 hours, but 6 is usually average on a road trip.
For example it is 6 hours from Memphis to Branson, MO, a distance of approx 290 mi.
Looking your routes up on google maps shows our driving tolerance is pretty equivalent. 
When I was in grad school in Minneapolis, over two years I drove to and from Chicago every other weekend to see my boyfriend.
We’ve been happily married for some time now, and for several years we’ve been driving from Chicago to Boston (1000 miles) once a year, to visit friends there, usually driving it all in one day. We also drive yearly to Traverse City, MI (about 6.5 hours) for a vacation stay there.
I usually don’t drive much more than about 700 miles in a day (11 hours or so)
But I once did New York City area to Denver in 2 days. 18 hours the first day, made it to the west side of St. Louis and the next day 14.5 hours to Denver. I should note the first few hours of the second day was driving in a snow storm so that slowed me down a bit.
It depends on whether the road trip is destination oriented or one where half the fun is meandering.
On the former, I’ll drive up to sixteen hours solo or twenty four with two or more people sharing the wheel. I drive from just east of Nashville to Houston (13-14 hours, 875 miles)solo at least once a year.
OTOH, my BFF and I have been known to find rooms or a campground fifty miles from home when we were rambling around middle Tennessee or southern Kentucky and made a lot of stops at interesting places.
I’ve done a couple of 3-month, coast-to-coast-and-back roadtrips, and many others of various lengths. I love being out on the open road with something new or different to do or see every day–where I can wake up and flip a coin to decide which way to go. I try to keep my drive time on any given day to less than six hours, but I’ve put in a few 12 hour days–usually on the last day to make it home. I’m heading out for 18 days next month for a trip to Zion and I can hardly wait.
I’ve driven the trip between Rochester, NY and Houston, TX a few times. I did it solo for the first time this year.
When I was twenty I drove for four days from central MN to Tacoma WA near where my (new) husband was stationed in the Army.
When he was discharged we took a 7,000 mile road trip down the west coast, across the southwest to Texas and then back to MN. That was leisurely and took about two months.
Since then we’ve ridden motorcycles numerous times to and around the Black Hills, SD and back, about 2,000 miles.
I road a motorcyle alone back from southern Missouri once. That took about two days.
Others have included shorter jaunts “Up North,” to Wisconsin, to friends in Iowa and No. Dakota, Denver, CO.
And our last road trip was last summer, down the Great River Road to Louisiana and straight back through the center of the states. I’m not sure of the mileage but it was cut short due to the heat wave in July.
Planning another for this summer. Glacier National Park, probably.
Love those road trips! Now that we’re both retired we can take our time.
Traffic, weather, and road condition make a big difference here: 12 hours on mostly open interstate in good weather during the day? No problem. But a crowded interstate in the dark when it’s rainy and there is a great deal of construction? After about six hours, I feel like I’ve been beat with a stick.
the most I’ve driven (time-wise) has been about 5 hours. Detroit-to-Indy, Detroit-to-Chicago, Detroit-to-Oakville, etc. my biggest problem is that I evidently sit on my tailbone and it’s literally (as in literally) painful for me to sit in a car for more than about 30 minutes.
We drove from Sacramento to Aspen for a wedding. Google maps makes is 1059 miles; we made the trip in 2 days.
We also drove to Sierra Vista, AZ a couple years ago The trip down was three days, via Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Flagstaff; we made the trip back in 2, stopping in Palm Springs for the night.
And we take at least one trip to Disneyland every year…that’s a 6-8 hour drive depending on traffic.
One of these days we’d like to visit some friends in Fairbanks…I’m figuring it’s about 5 days one way
We used to drive six hours to visit my grandparents. Now it’s three hours to my husband’s parents, four hours to his sister, and nine hours (including lunch) to my parents.
That trip to Fairbanks sounds like a lot of fun.
I’ve got a long-time friend who was a long-haul trucker. His idea of a vacation is getting in his camper or car and driving unmentionable distances. A couple of years ago he drove all the way up to the Arctic circle.
Then something happened - can’t remember what - and he didn’t get to his final destination by a matter of miles. Was it Point Barrow? Guess it’s the farthest point north you can drive in North America. So the next year he made the trip again to say he’d finished it.
I have another crazy friend who took off after work on a Friday, drove down to New Orleans, sat and looked at the coast and then turned around and came back for work Monday morning. Said she just wanted to see if she could do it.
In college I once, with one friend, drove from OKC to Victorville CA, straight. One the return we drove from L.A. to OKC straight. About 24 hours of straight driving.
I could do that now if I had about 6 friends.
The longest I’ve ever driven in a day – alone or otherwise – is between my old home in West Texas and my grandmother’s house in Northwest Arkansas. I used to do that quite often back in the day. It was about 600 miles, I believe. Took maybe eight hours, as it was not interstate the entire way. West Texas to San Antonio was about the same – I was not alone on that drive, but I think I did all the driving.
The longest single drive over a period of days was from West Texas to Los Angeles, with a detour up to Las Vegas after seeing the Grand Canyon. During a visit to the US with the wife. I did all the driving.
The last few summers, I’ve driven from Lethbridge, Alberta, to Toronto and back again–about 2000 miles one-way. I do the trip alone, so I may not go as quickly as I might if I had a co-driver. But that’s okay, as I’m not in a rush; and I enjoy stopping in various places as well–northern Ontario has some spectacular scenery.
I have made many 1000 mile trips (Indy to Orlando, Louisville to RI) non-stop, about 16 hrs.
However, years ago I fell asleep at the wheel. Once in TX, the other near Toronto. In both cases the car went off the road - hit nothing - no injuries. very very lucky.
greed i reckon. I get paid 56 cents per mile to drive my car (even thou they would pay for flight & rental car). I look at it as a nice second tax free check, sometimes over 1000 per week.
I made the mistake of telling my insurance company how many miles I drive a year (45k to 50k) and they more than doubled my rate.
plus a wheel barrel full of speeding tickets - which I still fully believe the point system should be based as a % of total miles driven. This would make me candidate for driver of the year; now I feel I am public enemy #1
I guess our record is about 3 weeks of meandering thru the South along the gulf coast (pulling the camper). We managed to hit all the high points (Disney, Keys, etc.) IIRC we clocked nearly 3000 miles. Another roughly equal trip was Santa Fe, Boulder, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Dinosaur nat’l Monument, Arches Natl Park, Monument Valley, Navajo Res, Grand Canyon, Pipe Spring, etc. We just wandered for weeks hitting every Natl park we could find. I believe that total was about 2500 miles.
Solo, I routinely cover the 750 mile round trip to my deer lease. Once I pulled my boat round trip from DFW to Seattle. Our limit for weekend trips is about 350 one-way, though.
As we age, we seem to be altering the ratio of days driving to days at destination. I’m getting less willing to spend half the trip behind the wheel.
I regularly make a 750 mile round trip to see family back up in the north east of England. 5-6 hours including a rest break.
Luckily we’ve been doing that we our kids since they were born so they are little angels on long journeys. This has meant we aren’t shy about going off on long car continental car journeys (we live about 20 minutes from the Channel tunnel) and have regularly driven to Austria, Germany and Italy in one hit (700-750 miles and 12-14 hours in total)
Honestly, sit them in the back with crayons and DVD’s and they are happy as Larry. We (and they ) much prefer it to flying and it is so, so, so, much cheaper.