College Station, TX to Copper Harbor, MI (to Isle Royale) and back, Summer 2025

[flucoe]

Hi,

With my family (2 adults and 5 kids ages 5 to 14 at the time), we'll be driving from College Station, TX to Copper Harbor, MI to spend some time in Isle Royale in the middle of June 2025. This will be our sixth road trip with the troop, and though we know when we need to be in Copper Harbor, we are not restricted in how long we can take to get there. Therefore, any recommendations of routes that would make the trip enjoyable would be great. We obviously cannot take forever to get there and come back but we have flexibility. We'll be traveling in a minivan.

Thanks!

[AZBuck]

By the normal 'best' routes between those points, you'd be looking at about three days if you had just the two adults to share the driving. It would help if they got along with each other. But as you know full well, adding a kid, let alone 5, puts an end to Plan A. The first thing I'd do is plan a fourth or even a fifth day. That would get you down to driving just 400 or 300 miles a day respectively, leaving plenty of time for short stops to let everyone get a bit of exercise and out-of-the-car time. We've talked about this before, so see if just sticking to the interstates for speed and safety, while taking time outs along the way works for you. Otherwise we can alter this approach or even try something else entirely.

AZBuck

[flucoe]

Thanks AZBuck! We'll be checking the information in the link and decide what approach we want to take. Thinking about four or five days sounds like a good idea. We'll be able to take time for longer stops (or more stops) going in both directions, which will help with planning but will make it hard when deciding which places to visit and which ones to skip and leave for another time :-)

[AZBuck]

I'd probably stick to the US-190/TX-21/US-69/TX-110/Cty-2274/US-79/TX-43US-59/I-30/US-167/US-67/I-55/I-39/I-90/I-39/US-51/MI-26/US-41 routing. I know that such a route sounds complicated, and a navigator will be helpful, but it is the shortest route in terms of time and avoids spending a couple of days on the flat plains with not much to see. The route will also take you near to the only diamond mine in the US (Murfreesboro AR) where the kids can actually dig for diamonds, past the site the largest earthquake in US history (New Madrid MO), along the Big Muddy, and well west of Chicago.

AZBuck