Welcome to RTA!

First, I'm curious if you got your travel times from an online mapping program such as Google Maps or Mapquest. If so, they are not in the least bit realistic! You should always take the mileage they give you, then divide by 55 to get a more reasonable drive time. Online maps don't take into account that you have to stop for fuel, food, bathroom, and just stretch. They don't take into account any construction or accidents that may occur when your trip actually takes place, that will slow you down way below the speed limit that their "travel time" estimate assumes you will always be driving. So for that first leg, at 475 miles, it's about 9 hours -- not really too different from what the mapping program said.

However, the next one is a doozy, and I highly recommend that you rethink this one. Missoula to Keystone is about 680 miles, and not all of it is on interstate highway. It would not be any 10.5 hours, I can tell you that! It would be between 13 and 14 hours on the road, which is more than commercial drivers are allowed to do by law. (They are allowed 10 hours before they must get out of the front seat of the truck. That includes passenger seat "shot gun" riding.) My husband and I drove Custer City (close to Keystone) to Billings one day, and it was a very long day.

I see other issues within your figuring. You may want to go back to the drawing board and do some re-configuring to make some of those longer drives a bit more reasonable. Use the following:

*When driving all interstates, 500-550 miles a day is plenty.

*When you add in 2-lane highways, subtract time. My husband and I figure no more than 400 miles if all of the roads are 2-lane, and less is better.

* When planning to sightsee (such as your thought to see the zoo in Omaha one day before getting on the road), take time off of your travel time. I would not try to drive all the way to St Louis after seeing the Omaha Zoo. You are going to run into traffic in the Kansas City area unless you take US-36 and avoid KC altogether, but then you're adding a little 2-lane highway (most likely) to get from US-36 down to STL or I-70. More time.

* Give yourself time to see some of these places, or cut back somewhere. I see a red flag in trying to drive from Santa Fe NM to Flagstaff AND see the Grand Canyon on the same day. Not really do-able unless all you want to do is make the trip to GC just to shoot a picture and move on.



Donna