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I'm just curious what other people consider to be "within driving distance" when going somewhere. What is the farthest you would drive before saying no and taking a plane/train/whatever else? For me, if I have my husband or another driver with me it would be about a 16 hour drive with each person taking two four hour shifts. I would not want to drive much farther than that. My husband and I drove from Baton Rouge to Denver last summer (23 hours). I do not want to make that long of a drive again.
If it's other Boswash cities and Albany I take a train.
If it's cities outside the Boswash I drive for max 8 hours, like going from NYC to Toronto.
Chicago to NYC distance and greater I fly.
Out here on the west coast, flights between certain cities can be pretty affordable, so my "driving distance" has narrowed to about 6 hours, which is equivalent to a drive between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Anything else, I'd probably choose to fly or take the train if available.
I'm just curious what other people consider to be "within driving distance" when going somewhere. What is the farthest you would drive before saying no and taking a plane/train/whatever else?
Depends on the nature of the trip.
If it's business, where I'll have deductible rentals or taxis etc to use at the other end, then fly... hands down.
Otoh... if it's a pleasure trip and there might be other things to do en route
and I have the time latitude to drive there and have my own car with me once I am, then drive... hands down.
anywhere is within driving distance to me. I've done the cross country drive a quite a few times.
I prefer to say within a days drive (which I mean as an 8 hour day- although I have driven for 20 hours straight)
We do 2-3 single day long car trips from western NC to NJ each summer, to see the kids/grandkid...
10 1/2-11 hrs, we know the route(s) from memory, and we split the drive about 50-50. A plane ride is almost 'all day', door to door, with restricted luggage, and then we are car less or borrowing one, when we got there.
We also did a 13,000 mile, 2 month Road Trip this past summer: 33 states, 4 provinces of CDA, an Alaska cruise in the middle, etc. Done in our 9+ yr old VetteVert. Fabulous trip, and we enjoyed every day of it. Most days were not 9-11 hr drives, obviously. TheCEO drove ~60% of the time. Hammered great 2 lane blacktop roads, saw remarkable sights, met wonderful people, etc.
I would leave on another tomorrow, if winter wasn't setting in for those amazing western states...
But, driving trips are cake, and after ~30 yrs of flying for biz, and under the curerent post 9-11 rules and madness, I only fly overseas, or long distances that require getting somewhere very quickly.
GL, mD
Last edited by motordavid; 11-03-2011 at 01:23 PM..
By myself, at one stretch, I used to do Houston to Mobile, about 8 hours, fairly often without any problems.
I've done Indianapolis to Mobile, about 12 hours, a few times and that was definitely about the end of my limit. It got awfully hard to stay alert towards the end of those trips.
I drive everywhere. I enjoy driving and hate flying... makes it simple.
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