Boulder, CO to San Francisco, CA

[Ferretdm]

I am a student at CU Boulder and me and some friends want to take a roadtrip to California. It would be a very short trip...we would leave thursday afternoon and return sunday night. I know the drive is approx. 17 hours...so we would leave thursday afternoon and drive around 8 or 9 hours, then stay somewhere...and get up very early (around 6) and drive the rest. My question is...is there a faster route (we dont care about scenery while driving there) to San Francisco?

[Mark Sedenquist]

I am a student at CU Boulder and me and some friends want to take a roadtrip to California.

How soon were you thinking about embarking on this adventure? Welcome to the Great America RoadTrip Forum! The fastest possible route is I-80 and if the roads are open and reasonably dry you can expect this journey to take every second of 22 hours (one way). (The 17 hours shown on Google assumes that you will hit no inclement weather, never need to stop for fuel or food... So, if you leave Thursday and drive nine hours and sleep for 5-6 hours, you will still need to drive 12-13 hours on Friday. Hopefully, you will be able to get some sleep on Friday, since you ought to leave town on Saturday in the late afternoon to hope reach Boulder by Sunday evening. But if we have another winter storm closure -- all bets are off.

Here are some must-read tips to engage in such a speedie run!

Mark

[Ferretdm]

we were thinking of leaving either thursday the 21st or the 28th. I guess I forgot to take into account having to stop for fuel, etc. It's just up in the air right now but we just want to get away for a weekend and california sounds the best (me and one of my friends are from there). I was also thinking Arizona but that wasn't as appealing to everyone else. What would be the ideal layout or plan of such a quick trip?