Quote Originally Posted by umichamanda
Hey all! I am venturing out on my first ever road trip two weeks from today.
Welcome to the Great American RoadTrip Forum! For starters, since this is your first-ever roadtrip, and you are traveling with three other friends, I would suggest that all of you take our roadtrip compatibility quiz and discuss the results, because the four of you are planning to spend many, many hours in close proximity on this trip!
I am a 20 year old female and will be travelling with 3 other girls around my age. We are staying with friends at all of our stops but wanted to see if anyone had any road trip tips.
That is a good plan.
Also, I wanted to see if anyone knew of any cool places to stop on the way. The first leg of the trip is Ann Arbor, MI to Winston-Salem, NC (I-80 and I-77 most of the way).
This is almost 620 miles and even if you drive faster than the speed limit, it is still going to take you all of eleven hours to get there -- if the only stops you make are for food and fuel.
The next part will be Winston-Salem to Naples, FL (I-77, I-95, and I-75 are the three major portions of the trip).
If this is intended for a single day -- this is truly nuts! This leg is over 820 miles and again, if you were to drive at or over the speed limit, it will stay take nearly fifteen hours to cover this distance with no time for sightseeing.
We will then be heading back up I-75 from Naples to Atlanta
by comparison, this day is almost reasonable at 615 miles (11 hours) -- we generally recommend that first-time roadtrippers never drive more than 500 miles in a day.
And finally, all the way up I-75 back to Detroit.
Yikes another 720 mile run -- over thirteen hours on the road. Now, if these legs are not intended for the same day, we can offer all sorts of ideas of places to stop.

Mark