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Looking for tips for cross county drive from Los Angeles to Tampa. Wonderin how best to split up the drive. Id like to drive just 8 hours a day and best I can figure is la to tuscon to El Paso to San Antonio to Pensacola to Tampa. Any ideas in a faster more even route? Trying to get there as fast as I can :)
Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!
Your current plan has you trying to cover over 1200 miles in just two days, including a physically impossible 725+ miles on Day 4! Certainly we, and you, can do a bit better than that. The problem is in west Texas where there is, admittedly, a whole lot of uninhabited space with limited travel facilities. But such facilities are not non-existent. If instead of El Paso you go on to Fort Stockton on Day 2, and then get just beyond Houston on Day 3 (so that you're not fighting rush hour traffic the next morning), your days will be much more evenly spaced, at around 500 miles each. Now 500 miles can be easily covered in 8 hours of driving, but that will be more like 9-10 hours of travel time when you add in time for necessary stops for food, fuel, bathroom breaks, and one or two other stops each day just to get out of the car, take a walk, get some fresh air, and clear your mind.
AZBuck
The best you are going to do is 5 full days, overnights:
Benson AZ
Fort Stockton TX
Houston TX
Mobile AL
Benson vs Tucson -- LA to Tucson is about 480 miles, LA to Benson about 50 miles further. Benson to Fort Stockton is 500 miles, so Tucson to Fort Stockton is 550 miles. Benson has about 4 choices along the freeway for lodging (probably a few more in town off the highway). Tucson has dozens. So that depends on which day you want to drive that extra 50 miles.
Fort Stockton has a dozen places for lodging. You may want to either get in early or call ahead for a reservation. There's an oil boom and a lot of construction that fills up the motels. For a place that gets rather warm in the summer, not as many of them have a pool as you'd think. Food wise, there's every chain available somewhere in town. Our choice of a local place wasn't the best one and it was rather high priced.
Donna