When I was looking for a puppy, I drove out to see a breeder. I told myself that I was just looking and not going to get a puppy. This was in the days before I had the internet and google maps. I thought it would be a 3 hour drive. It turned out to be a 6 hour drive. I looked at the puppies, talked to the breeder for about an hour and turned around and went home to think about it. After three days of talking non-stop about how much I liked his dogs, I realized I wanted the puppy he had for me and drove there and back again (6 hours each way) the following Saturday.
I was up bright and early the next day… new puppy and all, lol.
I’d probably travel as long as 4-5 hours, maybe 5-6 if I were taking an Amtrak. I’d probably have kids with me and my husband, too, and that’s all that the kids (or I) could stand. I enjoy spending time with my husband and with my kids, but they’ve been finding ways to piss each other off since my daughter was 8 months old and she started putting her foot in my son’s space because she thought it was hilarious to tick him off.
I used to do Boston to New York pretty regularly. That’s about 4 hours. I’d say 4-5 hours is about the upper bounds of a Fri-Sun weekend trip. It works better going to NY since you can get there by 9 or 10 if you leave work by 5 and that’s still pretty early.
Let’s see, girlfriend was 2½ away in the winter, but 4 hours in summer. Did that every other weekend for 3½ years.
There have been a handful of 600 miles in two days, one 600 miles in a day* (caught a ball game with friends, turned around & came home), 1300 miles in 3 days (Canadian MLB tour before the Expos moved) - all solo.
3 trips to Albuquerque, towing a balloon in a trailer, with others (only two of us the first time. 4 going out, 2 returning for most of the trip twice). 30 hours to get there, stay for 48 & come home chasing the other two whatever way the wind blows. (picked 'em up in Kansas & West Virginia, respectively)
I’m not a big fan of cruise control but never, ever rent a car w/o it for a long trip. Even 5 minutes an hour in enough to rest the driving leg muscles. Stopped to get dinner & the right leg just started to twitch once it relaxed.
It’s not possible for me to go more than say 200 miles from my house on a weekend trip without getting on a ferry. It takes longer to travel 100 miles here than it does in the US though typically.
I live about 450 miles from where I grew up, so I’ve done that weekend trip many times. Obviously, it gets a lot better as soon as I take a Friday or Monday off, but even with literally the weekend, it’s not terrible. Usually I have done the Friday night to Sunday night haul when there was something specific I needed/wanted to do, a family event or a reunion or a hockey game.
It’s one of those cultural difference type things with the US, that people will drive such long distances and it’s no big deal. The longest I’ve ever been in the UK is Stirling -> London -> Brighton -> Glastonbury -> Brighton -> London -> Stirling (ish, there’s a few other stops), and that was over a 10-day period. What is that? About a thousand miles, maybe?
I did Chicago to Sioux Falls (570 miles) a couple of times. Leave 3 or 4 on Friday and be back to Chicago 48 hours later. I also did Chicago to Grand Isle (via New Orleans) in a 3 day weekend (1,000 miles one way) for the sake of doing it- well we spent a couple of hours at Mardi Gras and in the French Quarter as well. But it isn’t unusual to drive between Seattle and San Francisco on a whim for us, so apparently we like to drive and see things.
We’d routinely drive to my inlaws place when they were just 500 miles away…4-5 times a year. Now they are 1500 miles away and I haven’t the stamina to break it into 2 days, so it is 3 days drive once or maybe twice a year. We would fly but the airfare for 4 of us plus a car rental is close the cost of gas and accommodations.
During summer in college a friend and I drove from Hamilton Ontario to Banff Alberta then came straight back. We stopped at campgrounds to save money. We drove 500+ miles each day and it took us 11 days to get out and back. One day we drove 725+ miles as we crossed 2 time zones and picked up a couple hours of daylight.
Come to think of it, I had driven one-way from Edmonton to Hamilton solo a couple of years earlier. I guess I don’t have a problem driving long-distance.
For a weekend trip I would not drive more than 3-4 hours unless there were freakin’ rainbows and unicorns at the end. That way I can leave after work Friday, enjoy the destination for all Saturday and most of Sunday before driving back Sunday night.
When I was in college I drove from Virginia to Illinois to surprise my fiance (now wife) for Valentine’s day. That was about 9.5 hours each way. And I didn’t have brakes for the last few hours of the trip back to Virginia, so it was pretty exhausting. Now I won’t go more than 5 hours a for a weekend trip, and I won’t like that much either.
1200 or 1300 miles total for a weekend isn’t out of the question, but that’s a long trip and I haven’t done that in a while.
I’ve also done a few 1,000 miles in 24 hours motorcycle rides (Iron Butt Association, long-distance motorcycle riding). A couple of times, my wife was a passenger. We have helmet-to-helmet intercom. I’m planning another such ride now, for this summer.
I’ve gone from the Triad Area (High Point), NC to Cape Hatteras after work on a Friday and came home on Sunday (Google Maps states 336 miles, but I believe it was longer then as they’ve improved and rerouted a few roads since then).
We left around 5:30pm and arrived at the hotel at 1:30am. I was worn completely out!
A few times last year I drove down to San Francisco (about five hours) to visit my girlfriend, leaving my house on a Sunday afternoon after work and returning on Tuesday in time for my noon work shift.
Leaving on a Friday and returning on Sunday I’ve taken weekend trips driving from Milwaukee to Minneapolis and back (337 miles each way), Milwaukee to Louisville and back (394miles each way), and Milwaukee to Windsor and back (378 miles each way). Those were 3 day weekends I had, so I had all day Friday and all day Sunday to drive, only really enjoying my destination on Saturday.
Not exactly a “weekend trip” as I was only driving and sleeping when I could, but some years back I had to drive from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, pick something up, and then drive it to Charlotte, North Carolina, then drive back to Milwaukee. I left Milwaukee on early on a Friday and was back in Milwaukee late on Sunday.
Six hours is about the limit for a regular weekend trip. Eight hours for a long weekend. One of our favourite spots is Radium Hot Springs, which is three hours from Calgary - we’d do such a short trip like that without blinking an eye. Our longest car trip to date was Calgary to Chicago and back in about ten days - 2568 km or 25 hours each way.
(As an aside, I find it odd that you guys all give distances in miles - I always think of distances in hours, as in, Edmonton is three hours away from Calgary, Saskatoon is six hours away, etc. I’m finding myself trying to convert miles into hours so I can understand what you’re talking about.)
Our longest car trip to date was Calgary to Chicago and back in about ten days - 2568 km or 25 hours each way.