Best route to take during last week of October from CA to TN in a Subaru? (packing, movers)

[HikingFairy]

Hi all,

I'm very grateful for the help thus far. We're moving from Southern CA to Clarksville, TN, driving cross-country in our AWD Subaru with our cat in a large mesh carrier that includes her litter box. We're mapping out pet-friendly hotels along the way.

We're planning to drive 8-10 hours a day, getting there in 3-4 days.

We are looking for clean, comfortable places to stop for bathrooms, a grocery store with good fresh veggies and produce. We're packing a cooler of essentials and food/snacks for the road.

I'm kind of thinking that although the drive through Utah/Colorado might be kind of cool and pretty, I'm not sure if the elevation through Grand Junction/Denver would lead to blocked/closed highways/roads or slowing of speed limits due to weather conditions.

A lot of people have mentioned I-40, so that's what I've been doing my research on.
My only concern is how long between bathroom breaks...

Option 1: I-40, averaging out to 8 hours per day:

Day 1: Southern CA to Winslow, AZ or similar
Day 2: Winslow, AZ to Amarillo, TX
Day 3: Amarillo, TX to Fort Smith, AR
Day 4: Fort Smith, AR to Clarksville, TN

Option 2:

Day 1: California to Utah
Day 2: Utah through Colorado to Kansas
Day 3: Kansas to Missouri
Day 4: Missouri to Tennessee

Trying to stay on the highway through major cities along this route, while having more options to stop at smaller cities and get groceries/bathroom breaks.

Option 3:

Are there smaller cities to stop in that are 10 hours apart if we decide to do the drive in 3 days?

Thank you for all the help thus far. It has allowed me to start putting hotels together and making phone calls.

TIA

[FlurryCat]

I would recommend I-40. No real high passes/elevations likely to get snow that early in the season. No major construction or big cities with rush hour traffic to upset the schedule. There's a big modern travel center/truck stop right along the highway pretty much every hour or less. Plenty of smaller towns with motels and services if you're between cities (you could push a couple hours past Winslow and stop at Gallup, NM.)

Most of the Comfort/Quality Inn chain is pet-friendly and a few steps above Motel 6 at a reasonable price. Call ahead to check for pet room availability. My cats and I can vouch for the Quality inn in Tucumcari, NM. We stayed at 3 other very nice small-town Comfort/Quality Inns, but not along I-40 (we were driving Boston-Phoenix and didn't hit I-40 until OK City).

My cats wouldn't use the small litter box I had in the car, but I brought their big one from home for the motel rooms and they were good with that.

[kab0906]

Yeah, stay on the southerly route just to avoid the mountains.

Some holiday in express hotels allow pets. Free breakfast, too.

[HikingFairy]

Thank you FlurryCat, excellent point about major cities.

Great to hear that there are modern travel centers/truck stops along the way every hour or less! Huge relief.

I typed into google "bathrooms along the I-40" and a list of rest areas by state popped up, but some may have been closed due to Covid and have hopefully re-opened. I tried to contact each state individually for updates but no one answered.
I was about to start googling cities and seeing how far apart gas stations were.

If there are places to stop every hour, that brings a huge sigh of relief!

Thanks for the additional tips on where to stay and how the large litter box worked for your kitties also!

[FlurryCat]

Even if you're between travel stops, every little town with an exit will have a McDonald's and a gas station. Every town with a decent motel should also have a Walmart or similar along the main strip for groceries.

Comfort/Quality Inns also have free breakfast, with yummy waffles (it's their thing), fruit, pastries, eggs, bacon/sausage, etc. And excellent coffee (and I'm a coffee snob).

I was worried about the cats because they hate the car, and then seeing them not use the litterbox all day, but once they got in the motel room and we freed them, they were completely normal. They didn't eat in the car either, not even treats, but they gobbled their breakfast and dinners in the motel rooms. We never left the cats loose in the room if we were out foraging, in case a maid or maintenance guy opened the door. If we were in though, we put the chain on the door and gave them the run of the place.

I used a large mesh carrier for each cat and set them facing each other on the back seat with the front open. Carriers were belted in. The cats wore a harness (I spent a month before the trip getting them used to the harness) and were on an elastic car-safety lead clipped to the carrier that was long enough for them to move around the back but not get over or under into the front. They didn't really leave the carrier in the car much, mostly just sat and stared at each other.

We did 5 hours the first evening after the moving van left our house in Boston, then 4 ten-hour days to Phoenix. The cats were a bit weirded out by the new house and didn't leave their carriers the first night, but after that they were fine and suffered no ill effects from the trip. Odd that they had no issues being in a strange motel each night but the new house scared them. Maybe because it was much bigger than the old house and completely empty and echo-y for two days until the movers got there.