Moving west coast to east coast. Need advice.

[drexel]

So I'm moving from Orange County, CA to NYC, leaving April 1st. I'll be staying with my friend in Long Island. I wanted to take a northern route to pass through Chicago. I don't want it to take more than 3-4 days to get there. What do you think of CA to Denver to Chicago to NY? Mileage-wise it seems like a good plan, but I don't know what the roads, weather, etc. are like, or if it will be easy or hard to find a motel to crash in, etc.

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Your proposed route is the shortest possible, but it is still just over 2800 miles. To cover it in 3 days would require over 900 miles a day. In a word, impossible. Even to make it in 4 days would require driving 700 miles a day, and while you might be able to keep up such a pace for a couple of days, by the third and fourth days you would be a highway hypnotized zombie. That's why such marathon drives are illegal for long haul truckers. You need to find more time in order to make this trip safely.

AZBuck

[Midwest Michael]

One more thing to keep in mind as you plot off a pace that is certainly on the edge, April weather can be mighty unpredictable. So while you could see perfectly good weather, you could also just as easily see Severe Thunderstorms, or Even a last blast of winter with ice and snow.

Being that this is such a speed run, I'd keep the weather a strong factor when plotting a route - its not like you're going to have time to stop and see anything along the way anyway!