From STL to Orange County (noobie)

Hi! This is my first time posting on this forum. My girlfriend and I just got the idea of doing a road trip recently and in the midst of searching online, we stumbled across this great site! The trip will be from St. Louis, MO to Orange County, CA in late April, early May.

I'm sure people have asked this same question before - if there are other starter threads that would be useful to read, I'd appreciate that too - but does anyone know how approximately how long it takes to drive from the midwest to west coast? I just did a quick Google map query and it said it would take about 27 hours.

As we don't have that much time, we're thinking about alotting 3-4 days for the trip, so it looks like it would be about 7-9 hours of actual driving each day? Does that sound about right?

Thanks in advance :) We're really looking forward to this trip!

It's 1826 miles from STL to Santa Ana - it's safely doable in 3 days, 4 days would make for a more leisurely trip. Instead of using Google's time estimate, figure an average of 57 mph - this allows for fuel and bio stops, but not dedicated meal stops. If you do it in 3 days, you will be on the road for close to 12 hours each day assuming an hour for lunch. Maybe 3.5 days would be best, so you can hit the LA area in midday. This would give you overnights around OKC and Albuquerque - and probably Barstow.

I ran the routing through Microsoft Streets & Trips, which shows me a stop symbol every 8 hours - which is really closer to 10 hours with stops and lunch - and those are the 3 points it gave me.

wow! thanks a lot for the information!! much appreciated