I’m spending Christmas this year with my family back in Albany, New York, where I plan to pick up my car (I miss it very much. I haven’t seen it since I moved to college in early August) and drive it home. Well, I’ll actually be driving my grandmother’s car home, because hers has air conditioning and mine doesn’t have a steering wheel at the moment… but at any rate, I’m driving across the eastern end of the country. I don’t have a definite date yet, but it’ll be AFTER Christmas and BEFORE the weekend of January 5th, as I aim to spend that weekend - my birthday - with my sweetie down in Texas, and classes start the following Monday. So count on this being on or a day or two after New Year’s.
I have two choices of route:
The Easternest Way: I’ve only done this halfway before, so I need to get more explicit directions from my sister, who uses it semi-regularly
This will take me down along the Hudson River, into Pennsylvania, through Amish Country - around the area my dad grew up, which is near Nazareth and Hershey and all of those towns, through a bit of Delaware I think, Maryland, and Virginia. If I go this way, I can spend the night with my aunt in Appomattox, VA. Then it’s down south some more, through the Carolinas, possibly the upper corner of Georgia, finally across Alabama and back to Mississippi. This way is longer and it involves traversing the treacherous Route 6 in Virginia to get to my aunt’s house - extremely curvy and up scary mountains that would be easy to fall off, even if they are pretty and remind my mother of the Waltons. But, I get a halfway-there house and possibly more presents if I stop to see my aunt. 
The Westernerish Way: I’ve driven this route before.
This’ll involve cutting long-ways across New York and Pennsylvania, then down through the lower right-hand corner of Ohio, all the way through Kentucky and Tennessee - routing around Nashville, where I almost got lost once because my directions cited a road that no longer exists - and then again through a corner of Alabama and back to Mississippi. While this has the advantage of taking a bit less time (I managed to make it in under 14 hours, although that was to Buffalo, not Albany, so make that 18 hours to get there from my hometown), I don’t know if I can drive that long all at once, and I don’t know anybody along the way where I can stop to rest, like I can with my aunt if I go the other way.
(I need to drop my junk back off at the dorm before heading west across Lousiana to get to Gunslinger, so all roads lead to Mississippi for me.)
Any advice from people who’ve taken a similar trip? Offers of visits and food if you live along one of my possible routes? Anything?