Is about 500 miles doable in a day?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Where are you overnighting?  Walmart?  CG?

You might make it all right,but how miserable will you be?  A first trip is full of anxiety anyway.  That can wear you out.

It would have to be an absolute emergency for me to agree to that trip.  And that is what planes are for.
 
kinda depends on where you're going.
If you're trying to get to New York, driving day-time business hours, that could be a real challenge with all the traffic.
If you're headed to West Texas, or Montana, it's just a really long drive.
And if you have two competent drivers, anything is do-able.
I would not want to try it in MY rig, but If I really had to, I could probably pull it off.
 
Every winter, we pull our 5er 1455 miles to Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. We do it in three days, with one night in southern Kentucky and one night in southern Georgia. I'm now 77, and I do all of the driving. When I get older, we might have to slow down, but it can be done.

Joel
 
I just drove to Marion NC from PA 597 miles. Heading there I left on Friday evening and stopped for the night at the Walmart in Winchester VA so the ride would be manageable on Saturday, about 7 hours.
Different story coming home as I drove straight through leaving around 7:30 am and with fuel stops and rest stops was home by 7:00 pm. As long as it is still light out I have no problem driving and can't seem to break up a 10 hour drive into 2 segments.
This being said I drove truck for years and now travel as a Sales Manager almost daily.
Joe
 
Thanks for the replies. It is sort of a time constrained trip. We've only got two weeks to spend there before we have to be back.  We're going back to MO to visit our mothers.  We're planning on overnighting at the Good Sam  campground at Caruthersville MO.  About the longest I've pulled anything was about 4 hours (TT) and seemed to do all right with that.

But I  know from longer trips, the tiredness seems to increase faster than the miles towards the end of the day.

We're still not 100% sure that we'll take the 5W since it is sort of time constrained.  Just exploring possibilities.  Thought it'd be a good test to get an idea of what we might be able to do in a day for future reference.

Thanks
Dan
 
For myself, I can run 600-700 miles in a day. Of course I use to drive an 18 wheeler so this is about what I can do. 
 
We do a 1000 mile trip every winter in 2 days to go on vacation, but we only have a week to squeeze it in (I drive every mile).

Looking forward to retirement when we can make that a 3-4 day trip!

A couple of things that can make it really tiresome is bad weather and heavy traffic.  We?ve canceled at least one trip knowing that the weather was going to be bad and two days wouldn?t be enough to get it done.  So, like the others, if you can avoid it, it will be a better trip if you can stretch the drive out.
 
One thing we always try to do is get on the road the day before and get maybe 4 hours in.  You can knock maybe 250 miles out from 4-8.  Set up in a stop over and be in bed by 9:30.  You can get up and hit the road early and have 375 left each day.  Might not make the overnight you were planning though. 

I did one day of 789 miles.  Took me days to recover.  I didn't want to do it but the CG we were going to overnight in was near Washington DC.  Our overnight "neighbors" looked like they enjoyed some of our country's finest illegal substances on a regular basis.  I pulled in looked at my wife and we didn't have to say a word.  I went to the bathroom and we drove the rest of the way home. 

That is an extremely rare occurrence in our RVing.  However, I enjoy CG's that don't attract or promote "seasonal"camping where the "seasonal" means weekend partying and the CG is just a place to get drunk.
 
KandT said:
.  However, I enjoy CG's that don't attract or promote "seasonal"camping where the "seasonal" means weekend partying and the CG is just a place to get drunk.
Click to expand...
I agree 100% with the seasonal campers, usually snobby to people passing through and riding around on their fancy golf carts all day and night. Just came from Mountain Stream CG outside of Marion NC and the place did not allow seasonal and the folks there were all friendlier than any CG I have visited that had mainly seasonal campers. One CG we used to frequent has less than 5 sites available of their 100+ sites
 
I won?t say you can do it but I?ve done it. If we are just stopping for the night at a rest stop or Walmart i don?t want to stop until late. Maybe around 11 or 12. We don?t stop at a CG for just one night.
 
ReadytoRVDK said:
Wasn't sure which board to put this on.

This is going to be the first long trip with our 5th wheel.  Our destination is about 1000 miles and we'd like to try to do it in two days if practical.  Google maps shows the first planned night stop  at  497 miles and 8 hrs.  We've driven the route in the past and the speed limit for the majority of that distance is 65. It's also 95% 4 lane, US Hwy .  I'm guessing roughly about a 10 hour day (500 miles / 60 mph + 1.5 hrs for stops)

Is this doable with decent weather conditions? No high winds or rain.  We both travel fairly well, stopping every couple of hours to stretch.
Click to expand...

depends on many factors..
vehicle, drivers, route... etc

we are youngsters in our 60's.. and quite often drive 600 to 650 a day, that's two drivers swapping out at 2 hr intervals or so or for a fuel stop.
it's not that stressful if the diving is shared. I would certainly not do 600 on my own, perhaps a max of 400..



 
Oldgator73 said:
I won?t say you can do it but I?ve done it. If we are just stopping for the night at a rest stop or Walmart i don?t want to stop until late. Maybe around 11 or 12. We don?t stop at a CG for just one night.
Click to expand...
Agree we don't usually stop at a CG for just the night.
Great Horned Owl said:
Every winter, we pull our 5er 1455 miles to Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. We do it in three days, with one night in southern Kentucky and one night in southern Georgia. I'm now 77, and I do all of the driving. When I get older, we might have to slow down, but it can be done.
Joel
Click to expand...
LOL!
It's definitely not for us, but we have friends that travel like that all the time. When we travel with them we agree on a spot for our overnight stay and meet them there on our schedule. So, yes it's doable. As to seasonal campers we've never had a problem with them. Especially on your schedule only staying for an overnight. I have nothing to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that most full-timers have been seasonal at some point. By seasonal I mean staying a month or longer in one spot.
 
We're all different and what works for one will not work for another.  When I was in my 20's, I could do 500+ miles in a day.  But even then highway hypnosis was a problem.  Today, I'd be hard pressed to do more than 300 miles.  Your personal experience pulling long distances is your best yardstick.  Keep in mind that 1000 miles covers a lot of territory and weather conditions can very considerably.  We traveled from Grand Junction CO to Rawlins WY a month ago and went from relatively calm and sunny to strong winds and rain.  Suggest you identify some stopping points if and when the weather isn't agreeable. 
 
My tolerance limit was hours rather than miles.  At the end of 5 hours my back was screaming Stop!! and I was in the passenger seat, not driving.  Margi
 
Like others have said, it is doable but we don't like doing it very often.  Back when we were racing we would do it quite a bit but I try not to nowadays as much, although we still do on occasion.

Where my wife and I still work full-time if we are trying to get to a rally or destination by a certain day/time then we will push a little more.  A few years ago at a rvforum Texas rally we pushed nearly 700 miles in a day in about 14 hours only stopping twice, once for fuel and once for a sandwich and to stretch my legs.  Last fall coming home from an FMCA Gathering in South Dakota Chrystal and I drove 650 miles from Spearfish back home to Utah in one day as I wanted to have a day to clean the coach and Jeep and get everything parked before having to go back to work.

When we travel with the in-laws I really try to keep it to under 300 miles in a day and when it is just the wife and I we will usually go 400~ish in a day as a general rule.

Mike
 
We used to run between Port Saint Lucie and Springfield pretty regularly and did it in two days.
There are some good roads along the way. That helps.
Hauled my in-laws' TT back and forth a couple of times. It was a lot longer days, but managed it in two.



 
While I have a 5th wheel and it has been a long time since I had a motor home ((I had a 30' class C about 35 years ago), I don't quite understand those folks who can drive 500 miles per day in an auto, but only 300 to 400 miles in a motor home or towing.

The seats in the motor home are at least as comfortable. Steering requires no more effort. Cruise control works about the same. Where does the difference come from?

Joel
 
It depends on the chassis and how stable it is.  In the case of my coach the constant attention to steering, counter acting wind gusts, passing trucks, etc. causes much higher level of fatigue than driving a car.  With the car driving straight down the highway, I may do 1 small steering correction every 3-5 seconds, with the motorhome it is closer to 1-2 times per second when there are gusting cross winds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 740 (members: 23, guests: 717)

Forum statistics

Threads
132,151
Posts
1,391,112
Members
137,875
Latest member
jasondenman
Back
Top Bottom