I’m going to be driving from Los Angeles-ish (Santa Barbara, specifically) to Austin. I’ll be driving by myself and am more interested in getting there quickly than seeing neat stuff.
Should I plan on doing it in two days or three? In both cases, where should I stay the night? If two days, Las Cruces and El Paso look like about the halfway point. If three, Phoenix or Tucson for night #1 and somewhere too small for Mapquest to show in zoomed-out view for night #2. Does that all sound about right? Suggestions are, as always, appreciated.
I’ve done Dallas to LA (and the reverse), and LA to Austin (one way only). I’d recommend pushing it and doing it in two days. The scenery isn’t that great, so it doesn’t really deserve a longer trip. I agree that El Paso is the natural breaking point. What we did in the LA to Austin trip was to drive till we were tired, then start calling ahead to hotels to make sure they had a room. As I recall, we petered out around El Paso.
Three days is really too long, unless you don’t have a lot of endurance. Two days is about right; one day is insanity.
Well, I drove from Raleigh, NC to LA in 4 days, so I don’t think it should take 3 days to drive from LA (or Santa Barbara) to Austin.
When I did it I stopped and saw some friends in San Antonio (relatively close to Austin), stayed the night there, and stayed the next night in Tucson. I was in LA the following afternoon, so Tucson was considerably past the halfway point. If you want to make it more even, El Paso is probably your best bet.
I’ve done that stretch a few times. Two days. I stopped in El Paso. It’s a good place to stop.
If you leave Austin for home and still have daylight left at El Paso, you might want to push it to Tuscon. It makes the second day of driving feel really short.
I tended to be able to drive longer headed west because the time zones change in your favor.