From SF to New Orleans and back in 8 days

[monja79]

Hello!
I am brand new to this forum and boy am I glad I found it. I am a huge road trip enthusiast, albeit not so experienced with longer drives. (longest I've done in one go was Tuscon to San Francisco).
My boyfriend, my dog and I are looking to drive out to New Orleans as we've always wanted to go there but don't want to leave the dog behind... :)
This is the rough itinerary I prepared so far - would LOVE your opinion, in case this is a bit *too* crazy and ambitious in a total of 8 days? (I can't take more than 5-6 days off work unfortunately)
Thanks so much in advance!

1. Leave SF early Saturday morning
** approx. 14 hour drive**

2. Reach Tuscon late Saturday night, sleep Saturday + Sunday night (my dad lives there)

3. Leave Tuscon early Monday morning

4. Drive through Arizona/New Mexico, find somewhere to stay Monday night

5. Drive through New Mexico/Texas, stay in Austin Tuesday + Wednesday
** approx. 16 hour drive between Tuscon and Austin, if kept on a straight line**

6. Leave Austin early Thursday morning
** approx. 8 hour drive**

7. Reach New Orleans Thursday afternoon, spend Thursday + Friday night there

8. Leave New Orleans Saturday morning

9. Reach Vegas Sunday night, sleep there
** approx. 28 hour drive between New Orleans and Vegas**

10. Leave Vegas early Monday, reach SF Monday evening
** approx. 9 hour drive**

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

Your travel times look as though they have come straight from a mapping program and are not realistic for these distances. Computers do not allow for human needs such as bathroom breaks and the need to eat, rest and stretch the limbs and refresh the mind, never mind sleep! then there's things like traffic or construction delays, getting gas to consider.

Basically your trip of over 4500 miles would be 8 days on the road for 10 + hours a day with a day in Tuscon and one in New Orleans before turning around. If that's what you want to do, it's doable but I am quite sure the dog will be happier at home or kenneled and being cared for then in the car for such long periods of time. Trying to get from NOLA to LV to SF in 3 days is beyond safe and what professional drivers are permitted to do.

[Midwest Michael]

Yeah, you've got some extremely unrealistic expectations and your return trip in particular is a recipe to almost certainly severely injure or kill someone.

Driving from San Francisco to Tucson in one day is really really pushing the limits of safety, but on a one day trip, you don't feel the effects quite as much. The problem is that if you do that trip in one sitting, which is about 900 miles, you'll be severely hurting for the rest of your trip. Even with your one day of rest, and then taking 2 days to get to Austin you'll still be dealing with some of the lingering effects of that first day. Its doable, but certainly on the brink of what is safe.

Your return trip is in a word, homicidal. NOLA to Vegas without sleep is a game of russian roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber. If you only severely injured yourself, we'd consider it to be the best case situation. Its nearly 1800 miles which you should be taking 3 full days to do safely. It's also a computer generated fantasy that you could do it in 28 hours. 30-32 Hours is a more realistic "best case" and again, that would be extremely dangerous to try to do even in 2 full days, with a full 8 hours of sleep in the middle.