30 days, coast to coast (and back!) Help edit my cross-country route on google maps!

[rpfeynman]

Greetings knowledgeable friends on the roadtrip America forums!


Before we both start grad school (for the rest of our lives), my friend and I are planning a 30-day coast to coast (and back) road trip for all of July this summer. As this is our first undertaking of the sort, I’m hoping that you guys can provide some valuable feedback on our rough outline of a route. Using the internet to harness the collective wisdom of (you) the masses might be good way to go.

Here is our draft route, in two very long hyperlinks I made using google maps: (I encourage you to alter it.... just copy the whole long url to the clipboard!)

The way there


The way back

Total:
ETA 5 Days, 22 Hours Driving Time

We’ve been told that this route is more than a tad ambitious… I could really use some perspective on this question.

Is thirty days a reasonable amount of time to complete this much driving? A friend of mine did 8100 miles in three weeks, and he said he was quite rushed. Between the effort of driving (approx six hours a day, on average?) and throwing up and tearing down our tent every night (we intend to stay most nights in KOA’s along the way).

Generally speaking, we’d like to find a good balance between covering a lot of ground, and actually having some time to take in what we are seeing.
Any ideas on cutting the total driving distance down to 7500 miles (for some reason this sounds more reasonable)? Which destinations do you all think would be worth giving up? Perhaps cutting of the huge bulge up to Yellowstone on “the way back”.

Is there anywhere along the way that you suggest we should absolutely visit?

I’d greatly appreciate it if those of you who are willing could alter the route, and post the entire huge hyperlink back in the forum. Its kind of fun playing with google maps in this way. (although who would have thought that they don’t currently support saving multiple destination driving directions to “my maps”.. crazy.

Thanks in advance for all your help, and happy traveling to you all!

Best,
Andrew