Driving Across the Country in a Single Weekend | 2,300 Miles and 32 Hours behind the Wheel

Having driven across the country in a single weekend, not once, but twice in year, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Having said that, I don’t think there is a better way to get from one side of this country to the other. Contradictory, I know, but it’s one of those necessary evils that accompany the decisions any van dwelling person has to make. That decision is a simple one, how would you like to spend your time? Most of us would answer with the obvious response, “Doing the things you love to do in places that you want to be.” Well, like all good things? it comes with a compromise, and that might involve 18 hours straight of driving. Worth it? I’d say so. 

With two cross-country weekend drives under my belt, and at least two more coming this year, I don’t see any way around the long haul. It takes anywhere from 30-35 hours to drive the 2,300 miles from our home in Utah to the east coast to visit our family or a place like the Outer Banks. No way around it, and that does not include the time stopping for gas, food, bathroom breaks, or even to sleep. So that breaks down, in my experience, to a Friday night of driving at least 8 hours after work. Followed by an entire Saturday, from 6AM to Midnight on the road cruising across the midwest. Then, ultimately finishing the drive on Sunday, starting at 6AM and reaching our destination that evening. Needless to say, it’s a long time to be behind the wheel of a car, let alone a big van that sticks up over 12ft tall and is pretty much a giant sail in the crosswinds along the highways. The reason we push so hard is pretty simple, on a weekend we can easily go 8-18 hours at a time because we don’t have work. But on a normal work day, we can, at max, really only drive 6 hours or else we are burnt out for the next day at work. At that rate, it would take 5 straight days of driving after work to cover the same distance, and that sounds much worse than sacrificing a single weekend.

We’ve driven across the country in the van for a few reasons, but mostly for fun at the moment, so this is all by choice rather than required. Last December we headed eastbound to kick off a 2-month road trip that started in PA & NJ for Christmas, followed by the rest of January and February in Savannah, all over Florida, and eventually into Texas. This is all to say, it didn’t make any sense to fly or drive Courtney’s Jeep Renegade since we were going to need the van to sleep in on our trip. And the same can be said for the last drive to the Outer Banks, where we were going to be camping there, as well as up in Pennsylvania over Labor Day. So is the van the best tool for the job, frankly, no. At 12mpg on the highway (better mpg’s on county roads), it would be much smarter to drive anything else or even fly, but, as I mentioned, we use this rig to eat, sleep, and work inside of so we are able to do all of this traveling without taking a day off of work. 

As for logistics go, when it comes to driving across the country, it’s pretty simple. You drive until you can’t drive any longer, then my wife and I swap roles, or if it’s late, we stop at a truck stop and sleep in the back for the night. With our reduced efficiency from building out the van, I.E. extra weight, we only have a range of about 300 miles per tank, which rounds up to about 8 fillups over the course of a weekend. Admittedly poor efficiency, but is the perfect opportunity to get out, stretch, and also take the dog for a walk. After our first non-stop trip last year, where we just ate gas station food along the way, we learned from our mistake and planned ahead to make sure we had all the appropriate snacks and quick food to make in the van. Being sedentary for 30 hours and trying to feel good about a truck stop Pizza Hut snack is just impossible. I owe all that planning and prep work to my wife and it worked out much better this last time around, feeling exponentially better by the time we hit the east coast. But late night soda is still a must to power through the 10PM-12AM shift behind the wheel, and I haven’t found a way around that just yet.

I know for most a 4 hour drive is already long, and people get bored and annoyed during a trip like that. We are in the same boat, but there’s something that happens when you start cresting over 5hrs driving on a highway, and time sort of starts melting away. You get settled into a rhythm, and the states just begin to fly past the rearview mirror as the hours tick away. Sure, we blow through 30-song playlists without even a thought, and 2 hour true crime podcasts fly by too. But for most of those 30 hours, since you don’t really take a break, is spent talk or just thinking. A lot of thinking. I guess that’s the good thing that I like about driving, because I physically cannot do anything else, so I stop worrying about what I should be doing or what isn’t getting done, and I can just let my thoughts go. 

Tips to get through a weekend drive across the country are far and few between. It’s a very tough drive, much better if you can split the drive with 1 or 2 other people. Try to stretch, walk around, and do calisthenics as much as possible during your gas stops. Do you best to not eat shitty food, no matter how badly you want it when you stop at the gas stations. Try to plan ahead what you want to listen to, otherwise, you’ll just listen to the same stations or artists over and over again. Definitely bring extra jugs of water in the car to stay hydrated. When it comes to lodging, make sure you call ahead, because we’ve been burned in the past when a small town just so happened to be hosting a Chris Stapleton concert as well as a rodeo the same night and everywhere was booked. Last but not least, enjoy the drive and appreciate all the parts of this beautiful country we call home. From the peaks of the Rockies to the flatlands of Iowa and the woods of Appalachia, it’s all so unique and different. I can’t wait for the day that my car will have auto-pilot and we can just sit back and relax, but until then, there’s no getting around it, so try to enjoy it!