I'm new!!!!

[jan tetzlaff]

Hello everyone;

My daughter and I are planning a trip in late summer or early fall from Milwaukee, Wi to the Las Vegas area. Basically, I'm retiring in about 3 years and we're looking at cities to relocate too. I've chosen either Nevada, Arizona or New Mexico. I want somewhere where there's NO SNOW!! We'll be driving...we've taken road trips before, but not this far. I want to get as far as we can...anyone have any advice how far to drive per day. We'll have about 10 days for the trip. I'm looking for any and all suggestions! Thank you very much!

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

The simple fact is that while you would have enough time to make a loop RoadTrip that included Las Vegas, Tucson, and Santa Fe, such a drive would chew up eight of the ten days you have available to you. That would leave you less than a day to scout out each of those cities as potential new homes. And even that is only if you ignore all the other possible cities and towns in your potential new home states.

We generally recommend no more than about 550 miles per day on multi-day RoadTrips. That's a sustainable and safe pace. With two drivers and making no scenic, historic, or other stops along the way, you might be able to push that up closer to 580-600 miles per day, but that would start pushing the bounds of safety and still leave you only a single day in three cities. That's not really enough to get a feel for or enough information about a place you're going to relocate to for a significant number of years.

Although it would be more expensive, this is a trip whose length and purpose calls for a fly/drive sort of RoadTrip where you would fly to somewhere in your target area, rent a car and drive a loop to several cities or areas you're interested in, and then return to where you started (saving on car rental costs) and fly home. Since it doesn't matter where on the loop you start, you might as well further cut costs by flying to wherever you can get the cheapest R/T flights. Look at Albuquerque (closest to Milwaukee) and Las Vegas (lots of competition among airlines) as the prime possibilities. Doing such a fly/drive would give you eight full days in the southwest after budgeting a day on either end of the trip for the flying part. That's a lot better way to spend you time than spending six or seven of your days just driving through the Midwest and Great Plains before you can even get down to business.

And just so you know. I live in Tucson and we have a ski area just north of town. Yes it's in the mountains but we do rarely get snow down here - just not enough that we have to shovel.

AZBuck

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

We consider around 550 miles per day on a multi day road trip to be the maximum limit you can safely cover, roughly 9-10 hours on the road with short rest breaks, lunch, bathroom and to refuel etc so you will need about 7-8 days for the driving if you are going to wander into AZ and NM. So you will need to narrow down and research 2 or 3 areas that really attract your attention and focus on them with the time you have. Even that's going to be rushed so find more time if you can.

[jan tetzlaff]

OK, thank you. Time is limited due to work. And we're trying to budget and trying to avoid renting cars etc. I've a nurse friend who says it takes them 2 days to drive to Vegas: she used to live there. If we only got to New Mexico, I wouldn't mind that either. Or if we only got to look around Vegas...I'm totally open. It's just the first step in many a trip before the big move. I have about 3 more years to work in this hellhole called the Midwest!

[AZBuck]

I'm sorry, but there's no good way to say this. Your friend is being totally reckless in driving to Las Vegas in two days. That's about 900 miles per day. I too used to work in a hospital ER and we had a name for people like her: "Organ Donor". Please do not follow her example.

AZBuck

[Mass Tim]

Like others have stated, you'll be better served by lowering your expectations of how many miles you can reasonably travel in a single day. Since you noted there will be other trips then perhaps it makes sense to focus on one location and have more time there. That way you could visit other places on another trip. You can certainly get a better sense of place with more time in a given area.

[Mark Sedenquist]

Howdy Tim,

Been a while since we've heard from you!

Mark