Also, if you’ve never driven by yourself for a long stretch of time, just be aware that you will probably experience some decline in your mental functioning. After driving 12 hours with one other person in the car a few years back, I felt like I had lost 40 IQ points and could barely communicate with other human beings. Trying to order food at a rest stop was embarrassing. (Even driving with a van full of friends – for 14 hours – put me and my friends in bad shape toward the end there.) Just be prepared that driving by yourself for 8+ hours at a time, even with music/audiobooks to entertain yourself with, is going to mess with your head.
Why drive? At 4,000 miles round trip and driving a car with 30 mpg, ($3.75 a gallon), you’re going to spend about $500 in gas. You can get a round trip ticket for a lot less than that.
I love driving and frequently do long drives. Unless you are used to it you’re in for a very lng couple of days. Typically I drive in the neighborhood of 100 - 150 a day and when I do my quarterly 1000 mile trips I get sore after about 3 hours. I suggest taking a couple of trips to wram up for that much sitting.
Aside from that I find that I generally average 70 mph with gas and restroom breaks whne I’m really pushing it and upper 60s if I’m not focused on hauling ass. My record is 73 mph so I think planning your trip around 80 is going to be rough. That being said it looks like you could realistically do your drive in 30 hours not counting sleeping time. Depending on what you plan once you get there I’d modify your driving plan to make sure you’re fresh. I do my drive at night and normally can get by the first day on a quick nap but I crash hard that first night.
The only tips I have are try not to pee as long as you can the first time because it goes down hill rapidly from there and you’ll get dehydrated unless your drinking a lot. Secondly don’t be afriand to pull over and sleep. When you’re doing a drive like this it’s not always possible to make it to the next town especially once you get past Denver so if you feel yourself fading take the next exit lean back and just sleep until you get uncomfortable and that will refresh you enought to make it for a while even 15 minutes.
All that being said I’ve never done multiple days in a row although I did 24 hours from LA to houston once so I have no idea how much rest you’ll need to want to get behind the wheel the next day.
I’ve driven the Denver, CO to Bellingham, WA route so many time I can do it in my sleep, but I’ve only done it twice all the way through. It’s about 1400 miles and took me 22 hours to pull it off. Both trips I timed, and was with 15 minutes each time. Have a good ipod or mp3 player with lots of music, books, or pod casts, pull over and sleep when you are tired, just 45 minutes to an hour will do wonders.
Oh, and sunflower seeds. It is virtually impossible to fall asleep while eating sunflower seeds.
As always, YMMV.
It took me and 2 other people 40 hours of straight driving to go from Vegas to eastern Indiana. But they (it was their car) wanted to go a little north so they could drive through michigan. But I slept poorly the couple of nights before that, so that didnt help. Make sure you sleep well the night before your trip.
Driving is very tiring on the body, at least for me (esp my back). But I don’t do long drives very often. I can drive 2-3 hours with no problem, but not 15.
If you get low back problems you may want to look into something called a tush cush, which elevates your seat and takes pressure off your spine. I thought you were fairly heavy, and that may be a problem on a long drive. It is for me.
Another vote for “don’t kill yourself trying to cover as much ground as possible in as little time as possible.” I’m another who has done great long drives, and both you and your car have to be prepared–you, for long stretches of sitting; and your car, so you don’t break down in the middle of nowhere. (See this thread, which describes a very lucky break I had in the wilderness north of Lake Superior last year.) And having driven I-80 from I-94 in Indiana to where I-76 peels off for Denver, I can attest that the middle of Nebraska might as well be the middle of nowhere.
Excellent suggestion!
I have driven across the country 3 times, and up and down either side of the country numerous times. I loved each of the trips for different reasons. But, I have to question why you feel the need to drive on this trip instead of flying. Economically, it is probably a wash. But, really, if you have a limited time to stay some place. Wasting 4 (at least) days on uncomfortable travel is terribly inefficient. If I am taking a trip and I have to drive to get someplace far, I like to use the road trip portion as an additional fun part of the trip. Not just a grind to get from A to B. And, if I don’t have the time to do that I’ll try to find another way to get there.
Bring along a little cooler filled with drinks and sandwiches so your stops can just be for the bathroom and gas, instead of waiting in line for food and paying a premium.
Bring along granola bars, beef jerky trail mix, whatever snacks you enjoy that won’t tap your energy. It keeps your energy up, as well as the chewing gives you something to take your mind off the boredom of the drive.
Make sure your car is really well checked out. Driving through Colorado gives a pretty good test.
Invest in bluetooth headset for your cell phone. Sometimes calling someone up for a conversation is good for keeping you awake. (Although, I guess that could be asking for trouble since even hands free talking on a cell phone is supposed to hurt concentration. The roads out there can be so empty, I think it would be ok.)
As mentioned lots of music, books on tape, podcasts, whatever you enjoy listening to.
If you have a chain of hotels you especially enjoy drop in on a local one and grab their national map. That way when you are coming to the end of a day’s driving you can check to see if that chain is in the area.
Yeah, I wouldn’t speed significantly in Ohio. The whole state is ridiculous. I’ve lived in Vegas for 6 years - do you know how many cops I’ve seen taking speed on the side of the road? 1? 2? I can’t even remember to be honest.
I flew into the Akron airport and took a 40 minute car ride back to Cleveland, and along the route were 13(!) cops taking speed. There’s apparently no one working on crimes. I’m not exaggerating at all.
It’s not a round trip - I’m getting a good deal from a family member who can’t drive anymore, so I just need to get it home.
Ive done this route many times. I make it to North Platte Nebraska (from around Cleveland) on the first leg. I leave in late afternoon on Day 0, drive all night and drive all morning and get to North Platte around noon the next day on Day 1. Spend the day in North Platte sightseeing, relaxing, resting at Buffalo Bill’s, and then go to bed early. I get up before dawn the next day and do the second and last leg driving in the daytime all day arriving at final destination in the evening of Day 2.
Nothing to it.
(But yeah, as someone else said, why drive? unless you got a reason for it. There are so many cheap flights to Las Vegas from everywher. It is easier to fly to Las Vegas as your own personal hub and then rent a car and go where ever you want.)
Check the OP’s location…looks live Vegas is home.
I’ve driven from Dallas to Seattle, which is almost exactly 2100 miles. I made the trip in around 34 hours. I’m not familiar enough with your route to give you any road-specific advice, but as for the actual driving part, here’s what helped me the most:
Obviously, you’ll want to take advantage of small towns for re-fueling, since you can breeze through them in the times it take to fill your tank.
Stop every three to four hours, or whenever you’re starting to feel the tedium, to stretch your legs and do a couple jumping jacks. Take a quick lap around your vehicle. It sounds embarrassing, but a little cardio goes a long way toward revitalizing yourself for another long stretch of empty road. Driving non-stop is enervating, and you’re going to feel much better after working your limbs a little. For the first third of my trip, I tried plowing through the entire thing without stopping, which was a mistake. Things got a whole lot more bearable after I started doing some light exercising / stretching every time I felt like I was going to slip into a boredom-induced coma.
One of those '65 corvettes left in a barn, when the son went away to Vietnam, and it’s only got 150 miles on it?
Simply driving from point A to point B doesn’t qualify as a road trip in my book. The OP’s trip is just a long drive. Road trips involve doing things along the way…the journey is the destination. YMM, of course, V.
Ah, sorry SenorBeef. I didn’t know you were based in Vegas. I guess I could have figured it out by looking at the location! But, all the Browns talk made me think you must live in Cleveland. Now the trip makes plenty of sense.
My personal record is 700 miles in 12 hours, mostly due to construction in the Smokies and a wreck outside of Knoxville that added an hour to the trip.
My ass was numb and tingling for like two days afterward.
Sadly you have to expect the unexpected. A 6 hour trip I’ve done countless times, on this past weekend became and 11 hour ordeal.
You can find out about construction ahead of time. If you can avoid those corridors great. I didn’t look for it and ended up crawling through some lane reductions. Then traffic stopped completely due to a rollover accident with injuries. No way around it.
When I went to college 18 hours from my home I would break the trip up into three 6 hour chunks, and had very little residule effect. Now I must stop much more frequently or my joints will freeze up like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz. And even with those frequent stops, if i drove 18 hours in one day I would need a day off to recover.
I will just echo a lot of the advice here and say that the most important factor is going to be knowing yourself and your limits. I learned to drive long (boring) stretches of 95 and 80 growing up. Personally, I can last much longer if I start in the middle of the night and drive into the day. Even with a crazy long sleep, I get tired around 9 hours in if I start in the daytime and drive into the night. The longest I have done in two days (sleep break in between) was 12 the first day and 10 the second. I felt fine but I also restricted my break time to evening hours and drove middle of the night into morning. Bring snacks and music. Finding stations in the middle of the nowhere can be a pain.
To echo what other people said, don’t do that unless you have to. I have driven between Boston and Louisiana or Texas a few times by myself. It is 1700 - 2000 miles depending on the exact route. I always wish I added more time. I am a good endurance driver but I have worn myself out to the point of being a danger to myself and other drivers before. I tried to do it in two days my first try and got within 2.5 hours of my destination and knew that I wasn’t going to make it. I was hallucinating so I just got the crappiest and closet motel I could find and slept quite well. The difference between 2 and 3 days for a trip like that is huge in your enjoyment and experience. The former is a stressful cannonball run. The latter is ambitious but easily doable.
Huh? I’m a little confused by the first statement. The stuff that’s in your bladder is only going to go one way, out. How often you empty your bladder has no effect on how fast your kidneys filter and excrete water and other things, as the ureter is the point of no return unless you have a serious health problem. The rest of your post is right on.
There’s a lot of good advice on this thread, and the most important IMO is to not push yourself to get somewhere on a deadline if your brain is trying to doze off or zone out. It’s just not worth it to run off the road or into another car because you fell asleep or lost focus on your driving - take a nap, take a walk, stop and do something else, stop and get a motel room and try again the next day.
I am probably a wimp, but I would probably take at least 3 days for 2100 miles if driving by myself. For me, even 700 miles a day would be doable the first day (say 10 hours including pit stops, etc.) but each day gets progressively harder. It’s not just about the physical aspects (keeping your car in the lane, etc.), it’s about the mental exhaustion from having to concentrate solely on something that both is boring at times (especially in lonely, homogeneous parts of the country) and requires constant vigilance lest some animal or other driver try to commit suicide on your bumper and take you out as well. JMHO.
I’ve done Canada - Mexico down the 5 (or close enough) in one trip. That’s something for the young and foolish. That’s 1266 miles in 16 hours, more or less.
Yes, I sped.