How do you travel long distance?

[Peggyy1]

Just curious. If you are setting out to travel across the country, do you like to drive long days nonstop, short days every day, or try a couple of days then rest a couple of days, etc.

 

[Oldgator73]

Depends on whether I have a final destination with nothing between Point A and Point B or we have planned stops along the way.

 

[SMR]

We like to do about 250 miles a day.
Usually we plan 2 night minimums unless we are going through an area with nothing to do then we will do an overnight.
DW use RVParky to plan the trips.

 

[msw3113]

We limit daily travel to 6 hours or 300 miles. For us, too many consecutive one-night stands makes for a more tiring trip. While we've got it down to a well-choreographed routine, setting up and tearing down requires a certain amount of energy. We've learned that a minimum two-night stay is often long enough to enjoy a local attraction and recharge ourselves for another travel day. We try to plan accordingly.

 

[Mark_K5LXP]

There's a practical distance limit to single and successive travel days. Setup, teardown, fuel stops, meals, utilities, etc all need some degree of attention if not every day, then eventually. So a 600 mile sprint one day can't be repeated indefinitely, something will happen or need to be done that precludes marathon trips. Maybe with tag team drivers and things arranged just right you can make 'good time' but it will take concerted effort. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do but be okay with failure as an option in the event 'something' derails the schedule.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

 

[RV_Lee122]

I'd say my average is 2 hours a day, I am never in a rush.

When I first started RVing I was trying to make it to reservations in Florida and did an 8 hour day, I pulled into a cracker barrel (exhausted) in Alabama only to see no RV parking signs and had to keep driving another hour or two to find another one. That was it for rushing!

Often I'll only drive one hour per day as long as the stopping point is good and reliable

 

[Primerump]

Pre retirement, we would drive 600 a day, two drivers with breaks...
Post retirement, 250 to 300 a day max, we now stop for a day or two to check out local points of interest then move on.

 

[DonTom]

For me, if I know where I will be next and what day I will get there, then I must be doing something wrong.

I avoid reservations except for when there could be no other choice.

When I left for this trip, I did NOT expect to be in neither Kingston Campground nor Tonopah. Neither place even crossed my mind.

-Don- Tonopah, NV

 

[DonTom]

We've learned that a minimum two-night stay is often long enough to enjoy a local attraction and recharge ourselves for another travel day. We try to plan accordingly.

If I am staying at an RV park, 3 nights is my very minimum, usually longer. I am spending five nights here at this Tonopah RV Park.

If I am going to set up, including unloading my motorcycle and ham antenna etc. I will make it worth the trouble.

-Don- Tonopah, NV

 

[Jackiemac]

It can also depend on how long you have for your trip, and how you're feeling.

We tend to tow for a day to our next destination then usually spend at least 3 nights but often it's longer. We have been known to spend a month in one spot if we are really enjoying it. We have to move to empty tanks if not hooked up but usually there is somewhere nearby.

We drove from Moab to Sunset Campground in Death Valley in one day. We weren't sure if we'd stop on the way but Steve felt good so we just kept going. That's probably been our longest single drive.

Our first year we did lots of shorter stops but that was more tiring. 3 days then on to next destination type of trip.

Once at our location we are often out driving around to see things and to get to trailheads etc. We average about 12,000 in our 6 months.

 

[rjshiflet]

We vary our drives greatly. Sometimes we're in a bit of a hurry to get to our destination and in those cases we will drive upwards of 400 miles in a day.

But, I remember one trip home from almost a month in Florida where we drove just under 100 miles our first day, and about 80 miles the second day. Absolutely no hurry at all.

More recently we went to Tennessee and our first night was 350 miles, second night was 300 miles, third night was 240 miles so it was much more evenly spaced. After three nights, we went another 90 miles further up into the Great Smoky Mountains.

 

[Peggyy1]

We vary our drives greatly. Sometimes we're in a bit of a hurry to get to our destination and in those cases we will drive upwards of 400 miles in a day.

But, I remember one trip home from almost a month in Florida where we drove just under 100 miles our first day, and about 80 miles the second day. Absolutely no hurry at all.

More recently we went to Tennessee and our first night was 350 miles, second night was 300 miles, third night was 240 miles so it was much more evenly spaced. After three nights, we went another 90 miles further up into the Great Smoky Mountains.

You do your driving at night mostly?

 

[Peggyy1]

It can also depend on how long you have for your trip, and how you're feeling.

We tend to tow for a day to our next destination then usually spend at least 3 nights but often it's longer. We have been known to spend a month in one spot if we are really enjoying it. We have to move to empty tanks if not hooked up but usually there is somewhere nearby.

We drove from Moab to Sunset Campground in Death Valley in one day. We weren't sure if we'd stop on the way but Steve felt good so we just kept going. That's probably been our longest single drive.

Our first year we did lots of shorter stops but that was more tiring. 3 days then on to next destination type of trip.

Once at our location we are often out driving around to see things and to get to trailheads etc. We average about 12,000 in our 6 months.

I feel like you are the pro here! We were hoping to get to Yosemite soon, but, I am reading all sorts of things about how crowded it is and how long the wait is just to get into the park. We were hoping we could just drive through the park basically and stop and look occasionally. Can we not do that?

 

[Peggyy1]

For me, if I know where I will be next and what day I will get there, then I must be doing something wrong.

I avoid reservations except for when there could be no other choice.

When I left for this trip, I did NOT expect to be in neither Kingston Campground nor Tonopah. Neither place even crossed my mind.

-Don- Tonopah, NV

You might be a little more adventurous than us! That campground looks amazing!

 

[Larry N.]

It seems to me that people with a trailer seem to feel the need to stay put to a greater degree than most with motorhomes do. I suspect that's because trailer setup takes more time and effort for setup than a motorhome usually does. We had a Trailmanor to start with, which is a hardsided folding trailer, then a gas class A then went to diesel pusher class A.

The motorhomes, for an enroute one-night stay, were pretty simple for setup, and usually didn't take much over 5 minutes if we didn't unhook the toad. All we really had to do, once we were in position, was to extend the jacks and slides, then hookup electric, maybe water, then reverse all that in the morning to be ready to go. Our Trailmanor was more difficult to position, in many cases (taking longer) and took quite a bit more time for setup, so we kinda hated to take longer trips- most were within 200 miles -- though we did get to Branson once (from Denver) and to Palo Duro Park (south of Amarillo) once with it.

With motorhomes we ranged MUCH further, especially with the DPs which we used from coast to coast, though we were rarely gone more than 3 weeks at a crack. Comfort while driving had its effects on all of that, too, and the DPs were far and away the most comfortable traveling.

 

[Joezeppy]

We're still in the working world so our one-day driving is usually only a couple of hours. We do go on a few longer trips - I am the only driver so I usually limit to around 8 hours. I just went back and looked at our travel log from our 2007 3-week round trip to Yellowstone - miles per day ranged from 128 to 837 (4 hours to 15.5 hours respectively including rest stops/breaks). Average was 505 miles/10 hours. This was a "get as much in as possible" type of trip so I pushed the per-day limit more than usual.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

It depends on the situation, but we always tried to avoid the need to cover a lot of miles/hours in a given day. We used to say 250-300 miles or 6 hours but as we aged that dwindled to more like 200-240 and 4-5 hours. Since we were retired and had no deadlines other than ones we set for ourselves, that was practical. But sometimes we wanted to see or do things that required quicker/more travel, so we did it. We found, though, that two such days back-to-back was as much as we were willing to endure without taking an extra day break in between.

 

[UTTransplant]

We have a motorhome, live in Iowa, and we travel almost exclusively in the West. When we leave our home, we routinely do 400-450 miles the first day. Sometimes we do even more! We have driven the possible routes dozens of times, and we know every mile. We just leave early and alternate drivers every 2 hours or so. Once we get to South Dakota or Colorado or similar, we start a 200-300 mile system. We prefer to drive a day or two and then stay put for a while. If we are really sightseeing along the way, we may only drive 150 miles, stay for 3-5 days to sightsee everything in range, then repeat. When we had a trailer (and we were younger with limited vacation time!), we would drive 600 miles to our destination in the Black Hills or Rocky Mountain National Park, etc in one day. Then we would stay put for most of the time before repeating the process to go home. Ugh. Retirement does have some benefits.

 

[8Muddypaws]

We don’t rush. 200-300 miles a day. (Max 6 hours) usually we have reservations at our next stop so there’s no stress about getting there before everybody else. We’ve discovered some real gems on our treks through Northern California, Oregon, and Arizona.

But ONE TIME we had reservations at an RV park in Salton Sea. We pulled in and decided there was no way we were even going to spend one night in that dump. It turned out that the place was a mismanaged as it appeared to be and they ‘lost’ our reservation. We went on and stayed in a casino parking lot.

 

[DonTom]

But ONE TIME we had reservations at an RV park in Salton Sea.

Have you checked out the SS NRA (National Recreation Area)? You usually will not need a reservation and it is full hook ups, but it can get busy on some weekends,

See here. The only place I would stay at SS. The rest of it is a dump as you discovered.

-Don- Tonopath, NV