There’s much to love about taking any sort of road trip with your family, but when you’re considering a trip across the United States, you’re bound to have the experience of a lifetime. This long journey is one you’ll hopefully always look back fondly on. But of course, if things are going to run smoothly, you need to be prepared. This is not a short drive, after all.
For a cross-country trip, you’ll want to make sure that you’re fully prepared for the time it will take, the resources you’ll need, sleeping conditions, and more. This will involve ensuring your RV is in full working condition, you’ve figured out all the supplies that you’ll need along the way, and that you’ve thought ahead of any problems that you might encounter.
Here are some useful tips to help you calculate the time for your road trip—including pit stops—along with advice for how to make your trip as comfortable and enjoyable as possible:
How Much Time Do You Need?
A trip across the US is certainly an extensive journey. There are multiple ways you can drive across the country depending on where you start from, so in order to know how much time you need, you should consider your starting and ending points. Google Maps can help with this.
For example, if you were going to drive from Seattle to New York City, then you’d be looking at around 43 hours of driving along I-90. A trip from Los Angeles, California, to Jacksonville, Florida, would have a journey time of around 35 hours. So there can be big differences in the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B, even if each route goes from one end of the country to the other.
The average drive from one coast to another is around 44 hours and encompasses between 2500–3500 miles. If you were looking to make your trip as long as possible, then you should make the trip from the Northern tip of Washington State all the way to Maine—this is the longest cross-country route at about 51 hours driving time.
Detours and Stops
It’s important to remember that the amount of time you would spend in the car is only the starting point when it comes to the length of your trip. A road trip is all about the journey, not the destination.
An RV trip is all about having fun, and that means that when it comes to trip planning, you’ll want to pick the most fun route, or at least include some fun stops along the way. If you were driving from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, then a stop at the Grand Canyon might be on your itinerary. In this case, you should factor in that you’ll need an additional 3 hours. During the planning stage, take a look at all the potential stops, and figure out roughly how much time you’ll need.
As well as stops along the way, it’s wise to plan for other stops such as unexpected weather conditions. Be aware that in certain areas, such as mountain regions, the weather won’t always correspond with the season. There can be heavy snowfall in the Rocky Mountains region of Colorado well into spring, for instance.
You’ll also want to calculate sleeping time into your trip. Of course, you want to make sure you can actually sleep during the periods you’ve set aside for rest, and an RV mattress can be terribly uncomfortable. A cross-country trip may turn into a nightmare (a waking one, at that) without a comfortable place to sleep.
At Tochta, we build custom RV mattresses that can be tailored to your size and comfort needs. That way, you aren’t forced to use the springy, tough mattress that came with your RV just because you can’t find a replacement that will fit the space. You can choose from a variety of different materials, layers, cooling features, and more to ensure your cross-country trip is as comfortable as possible.
Check out our online custom mattress builder today to get started so you can make your trip one for the books!
