Advice needed on solo road trip.

[JPD]

Tomorrow morning I'm driving alone from CT to Rochester NY to visit family. Then two days later I will be driving back, but will have my sister and her 3 year old with me.

It's about a 6 hour drive, without any rest stops, so I'm planning on it taking me 7-8 hours, to get there and probably a little longer to get back.

I have done this drive once before, back when my neice was about 6 months old, but I had my sister, neice, and brother in law with me both ways that time.

I have never driven that long by myself before, and this will only be my second time driving out of state by myself.



What I'm worried about include staying entertained on the ride up there (When I'm bored I tend to let my mind to go everything bad that has ever happened to me and I end up a crying mess), and dealing with the fact that there is one stretch of road in which I stay on for 200 miles, and while I have had a decent amount of highway experience since I got my licenses exactly 9 years ago, it's been a few years, and last time I was having trouble merging.

[Dave1982]

I'd suggest finding a good audiobook that'll keep your mind occupied during the long solo drive.

[It's me]

Do what airlines do.... have a whole bunch of small interruptions all through the trip. Plan to stop about every hour, and look for something to do at each stop. It might be "look at local tourist attraction" or "Grab a coffee" or "check out a bookstore" etc.

[Seshat]

Make sure your family knows your planned route, and when you leave. Consider periodically calling and saying 'I'm at blah blah blah'.

To keep your mind active during the long straight stretch, play those children's car trip games with yourself.

Make words out of licence plates.
Identify farm animals you pass.
Identify rock formations you pass. (Or was that only my family?)
Play the alphabet game with road signs.

Mix up your music. Don't play only one type of music, have an extremely eclectic mix.

If you find yourself drifting off, or your mind going into a bad loop, DO pull over to the emergency lane and do something else. Make a phone call, or do some stretches, or anything else.
Yes, you'll need to merge back in afterwards, but it's better than hurting yourself.

[AccountingDrone]

Tomorrow morning I'm driving alone from CT to Rochester NY to visit family. Then two days later I will be driving back, but will have my sister and her 3 year old with me.

It's about a 6 hour drive, without any rest stops, so I'm planning on it taking me 7-8 hours, to get there and probably a little longer to get back.

I have done this drive once before, back when my neice was about 6 months old, but I had my sister, neice, and brother in law with me both ways that time.

I have never driven that long by myself before, and this will only be my second time driving out of state by myself.



What I'm worried about include staying entertained on the ride up there (When I'm bored I tend to let my mind to go everything bad that has ever happened to me and I end up a crying mess), and dealing with the fact that there is one stretch of road in which I stay on for 200 miles, and while I have had a decent amount of highway experience since I got my licenses exactly 9 years ago, it's been a few years, and last time I was having trouble merging.

*sob* We do this road trip about once a month ... next time, PM me and ask when we are headed up again...we got back yesterday.

I find it a dead easy commute. We head up 91 to the Mass Pile, and across westward to the NYS throughway. There is no troll on the Mass pike if you get on it where it crosses 91 most of the way into Auburn. DO NOT leave 91 to go to some random way onto the Mass Pike, it is more for people going to Boston, and they sneek you into getting on 1 exit east of the proper Mass Pike/91 interchange and thereby suckering a troll out of you. NYS thruway is as you put it, 200 miles of nothing to do until you hit Rochester.

I normally pop the ipod into the stereo, crank it up, make sure I have a full tank and banzai, but I also have personally driven about 500 000 miles in my lifetime. YMMV [did I mention my jetta got 44 MPdiesel this past trip? Bite me, expensive and ever so stealable hybrids...]

[AccountingDrone]

I'd suggest finding a good audiobook that'll keep your mind occupied during the long solo drive.

Good one, but perhaps not for tomorrow ... it would be a bit late to hit a library to check some out... =(

Identify rock formations you pass. (Or was that only my family?)

Thruway doesn't have lots of rock, going through the erie canal path =( though there are a few formations of oil bearing shale, and the thruway does actually go through Herkimer, home of interesting double termination quartz crystals...

[Gerrinson]

I think everyone has covered most of my suggestions. I can no longer have caffeine , so that makes long distance drives pretty tough.

I normally make at least 1 trip per year to see my dad up in New Brunswick, Canada. That's a 600 mile drive for me the vast majority on 95 north from MA pike up through NH and ME to the Canadian border.

I used to do it 7 1/2 hours, now it's more like 10 1/2 as I need more rest stops to keep me going and sane, sans caffeine.

I call my dad and home at regular intervals so everyone knows I'm still OK and where I was last if I don't show up for some reason.

[JPD]

I made it there safely I'm on my phone so I'll post more when I get home wed

[It's me]

I made it there safely I'm on my phone so I'll post more when I get home wed

Excellent! Hey... you could post up some pics of the excursion!

[SongsOfDragons]

That kind of drive over here would probably take me up to Yorkshire...

I drive up to see the rents in North Lincolnshire now, they moved last December and I've driven there and back a grand total of six times, the first two sharing with my housemate. A34, M40, A43, M1, M18, M180. It's a fun little journey and I have some fun playlists recorded onto CDs which I plonk into my stereo one at a time when I stop at service stations. I get awful cramp in my right ankle after a while, but stopping often is okay for it. I bring lots of water in sports cap bottles and a big bag of Mint Imperials.

[wolfie]

Tomorrow morning I'm driving alone from CT to Rochester NY to visit family. Then two days later I will be driving back, but will have my sister and her 3 year old with me.

It's about a 6 hour drive, without any rest stops, so I'm planning on it taking me 7-8 hours, to get there and probably a little longer to get back.

Checked my atlas - first CT city it listed on the "distances" grid was Stamford, which was 361 miles from Rochester (in line with the 6 hours you listed). That's not a road trip - it's a short run. I'm going to be driving roughly that distance tonight.

I've done a couple road trips - Toronto to B.C. and back.

[protege]

I've done a couple of long-distance trips--Pittsburgh to Indianapolis, Pgh to Springfield (MA), Pgh to Cape May (NJ)...and one thing I always did first, was to make sure my car was in good shape. I wasn't about to have something fail several hundred miles from home But, one thing I always did...was make sure that I had plenty of tunes, snacks, several bottles of water, and maps of where I was going. Oh, and I always made sure that my cellphone was fully charged.

Like the others have said, stopping often is a good idea. I'm sure there are plenty of things to see along the road. For example, when I drove back from Indy, I couldn't resist seeing the oval and the Speedway Museum. In Ohio, I *almost* hit up the airplane museum near Dayton. But, at the time...there was a storm coming, and I wanted to stay ahead of it. Good call, since it was a monsoon for the last 1/4 of Ohio, all of WV, and the last few miles home.

[Jester]

Checked my atlas - first CT city it listed on the "distances" grid was Stamford, which was 361 miles from Rochester (in line with the 6 hours you listed). That's not a road trip - it's a short run.

To a lot of people, such as yourself, that is a short run, not a road trip. I'm with you. But to a lot of other people, such distances are, in fact, a road trip, as they don't normally travel that far, ever. Just remember, not everyone is an experienced road warrior like you and I.