Chicago,IL to Portland, OR with cats

Hello All! In August, my husband and I will be making our way out to move to Portland Oregon. We'll be driving my VW GTI with two cats. I'm guessing we could do this drive in 3 days, but would be more comfortable in 4 days. I would love to stop and see some sights along the way; however, I am not sure how well we can do this with our cats. We do have a carrier for them as well as harnesses and leashes.

I'm still debating which route to take. The northern route seems to have more to see like Yellowstone, Badlands, Mt Rushmore, but would take longer. If it were just my husband and I, this would be great. Since we have the cats, I'm thinking the faster route (southern through Iowa, Nebraska, etc) would be better.

Has anyone made a long trip with cats before? I'm looking for any tips and tricks for stopping for food, lodging, seeing sights, etc. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

The drive is too far for 3 days to do safely and avoid fatigue, it's a 4 day drive before you consider detouring to Badlands and Mt Rushmore, and Yellowstone is a whole new ball game. It's a huge park and very slow going, you could spend a whole day there and be limited to what you could see. So if you want to turn this into a sight seeing trip you will really need to find more time. There is a range of Pet friendly hotels and you can find some by looking at the 'Search Roadtrip Motels' link to the right of the page. Plan on covering around 550 miles per day which is 9-10 hours on the road with basic stops and don't be fooled by Google map times. In the computer world they do not face 'real world' problems like congestion and construction or the need to stop for fuel, food, exercise nor sleep.