St. Paul, Minnesota to New York City, 1240 mi, approx. I left around 3 P.M. CDT, and arrived around 11 A.M. EDT. The fun part was the hallucinations in Western Pennsylvania. I also don’t quite recall the sun coming up, but I assume that’s because it was hidden behind the mountains for a while :D.
I had good reasons to keep driving - I was fleeing a fiance I had just broken up with.
Sua
Longest drive where I did all the driving:
A bit more than 1,091 miles. Vancouver, WA to Tijuana, Mexico. Left Vancouver at 12 noon and arrived in Tijuana about that time the next day.
Spent some time there and then drove from Tijuana to Las Vegas (approximately 330 miles). Spent the night and most of the next day there and then drove back to Vancouver (1,032 miles)
Total for the three day trip: 2,453 miles. All of it done by me (my companion did not - and still does not - have a driver’s license).
On another trip a friend and I shared the driving to get from DC to Vancouver, WA in about 70 hours (2,809 miles); the friend then had to continue alone to Tacome (about another 150 miles).
I once drove a rented U-Haul from Hope, BC to Nagagamisis Provincial Park in northern Ontario in four days. Total distance: about 3200 km, or about 2000 miles. The most I ever drove in one day was probably about 900 km.
Of course it’s not just the distance that counts, it’s the conditions. We don’t have any stinkin’ 8-lane interstate highways through the Rockies in Canada; we make do with a winding two-lane highway with nice steep grades. I think my favourite part of that trip was just after I left Roger’s Pass, and I had to find low gear in an unfamiliar truck on a steep downhill grade in the middle of a crowded highway, just as it started to rain and my visibility dropped to squat. Plus, I was dumb enough to make the trip on a long weekend, so I was sharing that narrow, steep, winding road with every RV in creation. Fun fun fun.
Leave it to an ex-trucker to win a mileage contest, here goes:
(These are all non-stop and include a LOT of Ephedrine)
Frozen vegetables fron Pict-Fresh in Ogden,UT to Food Lion in Greencastle,PA, (approx 2200 miles)
Deadhead (empty) from Greencastle,PA to Benton Harbor, MI.
Columbus, OH to Bismarck, ND
Grand Forks, ND to NYC (and delivered that day)
Keep in mind these were all straight runs. My company had a habit of accepting loads that need to be delivered yesterday.
I drove 483 miles, from Baltimore, MD to Dayton, OH. Took around 9 and a half hours, which would have been less but for the myriad construction sites on I-70.
Well, it took more than a day, but I once drove from Chapel Hill, NC to Richmond, CA, in about 52 hours. It was about 3000 miles, so I was driving about 1400 miles per day.
It was about two months into a major depression due to my (now ex-) wife leaving me, that I took it into my head to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was quite, uh, empowering.
I’ve driven Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, VA and back twice, solo. That’s about 960 miles for each round trip.
My wife and I drove from Columbus to San Francisco in four days (a little shy of 2400 miles). We split time at the wheel, but we had two grouchy cats riding shotgun the whole way, so that’s gotta earn us some bonus points.
Some of the earlier posts absolutely boggle my mind. I get the impression that someone would be posting about his nonstop, solo drive from New Brunswick to Guatemala, except that he fell asleep outside of Wichita and is now memorialized by one of those little wooden crosses along I-70.
bibliophage, you must have been exhausted to have stopped between Cleveland and Ashtabula. There’s nothing there except my and pldennison’s home town. And since pldennison and I left, there’s no longer any point in going there!
Euclid, OH to the state recreation area near Valley City, ND: 1,065 miles (I’d have made it to Jamestown, but I spent some time wandering around Minneapolis/St. Paul with their roads torn up for construction.)
On the same trip, coming home from Seattle, I got my car from the mechanic in Kallispell, MT after having its alternator replaced, drove through Glacier National Park, stopped at the top of Logan’s Pass and hiked down to Hidden Lake and back, drove out to Havre to see some friends, left their house intending to cross Montana and sleep at the rest stop at Williston ND, but discovered no trees and lots of flies at Williston, so continued on to the state park east of Fergus Falls, MN: 1,050 miles in 32 hours (including a 6-hour mountain hike and a 4-hour visit with friends).
One other long trip (I’ve done lots of trips) was a spur-of-the-moment decision to see the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin in D.C. I got off work one Sunday afternoon in Detroit around 6:00 and saw in the paper that the blossoms were out. I was not scheduled to work until Tuesday at noon, so I grabbed my camera, drove to D.C. 11 hours/530 miles, walked around the Tidal Basin, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and other places on the Mall for five hours, drove up to Philadelphia to pay my respects to my old boss who had transferred there, 3 1/2 hours/140 miles, then took the northern route across Pennsylvania (since I didn’t have enough cash to take the Turnpike), 13 hours/640 miles. (27 1/2 hours driving plus several hours doing other things; 1,310 miles).
(These were all in the days of the 55 mph speed limits.)
That was just as far as I could go. Actually, it was about 50 miles farther than I could go. I almost got into two accidents driving through Cleveland because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I stopped at a rest area between Cleveland and Ashtabula and slept in the back seat for 5 hours before driving the remaining 720 miles home.
It doesn’t really count, since my BF & I traded, but we went from L.A. to Houston in 20 hours. Boy, was my dad surprised when we showed up at his house about 10 hours earlier than he expected (he thought we’d stop halfway for a rest or something).
Sacramento, CA to Seattle, WA all in one day. Dunno how many miles.
Started at 7am or so, got there 9:30 pm or so.
Drove by myself with all belongings. 2 short stops only for small meal and restroom breaks. Had to open hood up at stops to help cool engine. Drove 70mph max. By 8pm I was so sleepy that I changed lanes without looking once and almost hit a guy in my blind spot. My CA plates did not make him like me any better.
I’ve made this trip about 10 times.
About 1400 miles - Lincoln, NE to Reading PA - in 24 hours (with a one-hour nap at a rest stop somewhere in Ohio).
65mph speed limits all the way to the PA border, and then 55 mph for the last 300 miles – (^&*)^ing Pennsylvania Turnpike!
Oh to be young and strong again, and able to survive on Dr Pepper and plain cake donuts…
jr8
“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.”
– H.S. Thompson
This is in longer than 24 hours, right?
Memphis, TN, to Boston, MA, in 22 hours, on I-84 most of the way. I think it’s roughly 1300 miles.
Done in a Hyundai Accent which gets over 40 a gallon - more than advertised, I’ll note.
Los Angelos to OKC in 24 hours. I think that’s about 2000 miles. (actually they are on different planets)
Ok my friend Ron and I traded off so I only drove for about 1000 miles. This was in a Nissan Sentra '85. For some reason this was better than paying 30 bucks for a motel room.
From New Mexico, somewhere near the border with Texas, to Austin, TX, averaging 80 mph, and it took 10 hours. West Texas is nothing but sand and sky, so time really flew. As soon as things turned green and hilly, i became more aware of the passage of time and got tired.
About 850 miles, from Pocatello Idaho to La Habra California. I used to drive this in my Datsun 1200, taking about 18 hours. One time it took 33 hours because I developed a bit of food poisoning on the way back to Pocatello. Drive, barf, sleep. Drive, barf, sleep. Ad nausem. (I was a poor grad student at the time and couldn’t comprehend the idea of stopping at a motel.)
last year, i took a greyhound (does this count?) from boston to florida, non stop driving for 28 hours or so. sitting next to a crazy old lady that kept offering me bananas and fried chicken feet. absolute hell, i would never do it again. i flew home after that, i couldn’t deal with it a second time
I notice I’m the only one here who’s covered a great distance on a motorcycle.
I’ve also noticed many people seem to interpret the OP as “the greatest distance driven without sleeping,” which could be more than 24 hours, which would be more than a day. That’s How I interpreted it, anyway. It took me more than 24 hours (about 31) to ride that Yamaha from New Mexico to Florida, though I did not stop to sleep anywhere along the way.
St. Louis to New Orleans. Unsure of the road miles, but it took 18 hours with stops for sights and all.