What is a "long way to travel" for you?

[QueenofAllThings]

For dinner out, I don't see the necessity to drive an hour each way (particularly with wine at dinner). We are surrounded by fantastic restaurants, but have friends that like to drag us to their latest 'find' which is, frankly, never worth the trip.

I will drive 4.5 hours each way for a long weekend in my favorite place without blinking an eye. The same distance to pick up a child from college is much more tedious. Context matters.

[kherbert05]

Depends. Sitting in traffic going nowhere - 10 min is to long.
Three hours to Austin or San Antonio and 3 hours back is ok for a day trip.


Back when Mom was still in San Angelo, I would pick her up and bring her to Houston for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would leave after work drive to Kerrville (4 hours). I would stay overnight in a motel because driving on lightly traveled, large deer population, 2 lane black tops at night alone not something I do willingly.


I would get up and leave around dawn - drive 3 hours to San Angelo. Pick up Mom. Leave there by 10 am and drive back to Houston 7 hours or so (With breaks).

[Dazi]

Like others have said context is everything.  Is it somewhere I want to go?  Is it an obligation?  How long will I be there in relation to travel time?

Driving 30 minutes can get me to about 4 other close cities or the other side of the one I live in. 45 minutes to 1.5 hours can get me to an additional 4 big cities and a multitude of smaller ones.

My daily commute is less than 5 miles and only about 10 minutes.  Shopping is very close, less than a mile.  Mall and several big shopping centers are only 10 minutes maybe less from my home.  BIG Mall is 45 minutes. 

I rarely go to big mall unless a group goes, simply because I dislike driving on the highway (I will if there is something really specific I want to get there, but that's the only reason I would personally drive it).  I will go to one of the larger cities if a show I want to see is playing there or some other kind of concert that is not playing at the local venue.  There is one thing I will drive a round trip of 3 hours to get, but it is way, way out in the country and a really nice drive.  I can't drive without another driver if is going to be more than a couple of hours round trip due to an old injury.  Long drives tend to exacerbate the pain level...if it acts up I would have to stop for the night and rest.

So in short 30-45 minutes can get me to almost anyplace I need or want to be, so I tend to stay within that time frame for most outings.

[Hmmmmm]

Depends. Sitting in traffic going nowhere - 10 min is to long.
Three hours to Austin or San Antonio and 3 hours back is ok for a day trip.


Back when Mom was still in San Angelo, I would pick her up and bring her to Houston for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would leave after work drive to Kerrville (4 hours). I would stay overnight in a motel because driving on lightly traveled, large deer population, 2 lane black tops at night alone not something I do willingly.


I would get up and leave around dawn - drive 3 hours to San Angelo. Pick up Mom. Leave there by 10 am and drive back to Houston 7 hours or so (With breaks).

We always laugh that 6 hours out I-10 east to get to New Orleans seems to take half the time to drive than the 7 hours out I-10 west to get to Midland.  Of course part of it is "yeah, New Orleans" but the other is "7 hours and I'm just half way across the state."

[guihong]

When I lived out in rural Arkansas, it was a 25 minute drive down to a small town, where we paid utilities, shopped at Piggly Wiggly, or went to Subway.  It was 30 minutes in the opposite direction to a larger city with Wal-Mart, the hospital, and other things (including DH's work).  It was an hour to the capital city, with its pediatric emergency room, malls, and cultural activities, which was a major reason we moved up here six years ago. 

I did my MAT degree mostly online, with three Saturdays each semester spent on campus.  I drove 2.5 hours for that, returning home the same day.  Then over one summer, I had to attend class every day for two weeks.  I decided to make the drive every day, rather than get a motel room or dorm, as there were students coming from all over the state who I felt needed it more.  That was tough, though, in July in a car with broken A/C  .

When I have to fly, I do check flights out of Memphis (larger international airport: 3 hrs away) and Fayetteville (regional airport: 4 hours away).  It would have to be a fantastic savings to make the extra drive worth it.

[Lady Snowdon]

My normal commute is about 20-30 minutes one way, although if traffic is bad it can take over an hour.  One memorable day a couple of years ago, it took us three hours to drive the fifteen miles from my work to our house!

I consider an hour drive to be about the farthest I'll go for a casual get-together.  If we have plans for a specific thing to do, I'll drive about three hours and still consider it a day trip.  I consider visiting my family (14 hours away) as "a long way to travel", and thank God that we can usually afford to fly there instead of drive!

[Jocelyn]

I think the other posters have pretty much covered my personal opinion, so I'll tell you about a survey I did for the state of Kansas. One of the questions was about how far one had to go for health care, and how satisfactory that distance was. We had people complain that their health care provider in Wichita had moved, necessitating a 30 minute drive, and that was unacceptable, and people who said that a 3 hour drive in the western plains was perfectly acceptable. So while it depends upon individuals, there's also the matter of how far one and one's neighbors have to travel. If you're used to having things right in your neighborhood, having to leave the neighborhood may seem 'too far', but if you're used to driving an hour to get to a store, and several hours to get to a town that's big enough to have a variety of shopping, then a couple of hours travel doesn't seem far. The comfort of the trip also mattered. I had one Native American woman tell me that her 75 mile trip to the Indian Health Services clinic usually wasn't too bad, but the time she was so sick she couldn't sit up and had to lie down on a mattress in the bed of the pickup to make the trip, now THAT was too far. (For those who don't live in the USA: the IHS provides free care to Native Americans as part of treaty rights of the tribes, and seeing a doctor locally would have meant she would have had to have paid for all her treatment from her own pocket; her family simply couldn't afford that).
I used to have a 10 hour trip to visit my parents. I recently relocated so that the trip is now 5 hours, which is a great improvement; I can now go for a weekend by leaving work early and driving on Friday, having Saturday to visit, and coming back on Sunday afternoon. Before, it meant 2 days to drive, so I had to have at least a 3 day weekend.

[Sharnita]

There are so many factors to consider?  Am I driving?  IS somebody else?  Public transportation?  What is weather like?  What is traffic like?  Am I traveling for work? family? fun? Am I by myself? Do I have company? How much does the trip cost? How long am I staying when I arrive?

[perpetua]

Context is important, as others have said.

I travel a little over an hour each way to work and back on public transport. That's about enough for me.

Going out in the evening? Maybe I'll travel half an hour each way if it's something up in town (I live in a big city).

For social obligations on a weeknight, I don't really want to drive more than about 15 minutes each way.

For a weekend visit, perhaps an hour and a half each way.

A long weekend or a longer stay? Maybe 3 to 4 hours on a good day.

My benchmark is how long it takes me to get back home to my parents' house. It's about 4 hours on public transport. I wouldn't do it for an overnight, but I'll do it for a long weekend.

I also have mobility issues, so travelling can be tiring and painful, and I prefer to take public transport than drive for a longer trip. I factor this in also.

[Violet Tulip]

For me, the limit is usually 2 1/2 hours each way for a day trip. I'll go further if it's something I really want to do.

Right now we're about 4 1/2 hours from my parents and in-laws. I like driving when I have good podcasts to listen to, so I'm okay with going, staying a night and then coming back, but need to sleep over.

I don't really want to commute more than 30 minutes for work. For a few months I had a 75 minute commute, and that killed me. I was so ready to move. But my Dad drives 70 minutes each way and has for 15 years with no problems. To each his own.

"how far is too far" is actually a question that amused me at Christmastime. MIL was saying how her cousin's daughter was having a baby shower in Mountain Town, and she didn't know if she would be able to make it, because it's "so far to drive there". Mountain Town is 40 minutes away from MIL. There's no reason she can't drive there by herself, she just doesn't want to. She was hinting that SIL or I should come and drive her, but seeing as neither of us was directly invited, we didn't see the need .

[snowdragon]

Depends on what I am doing once I get there.  I have done 24 hours on a bus gone to a concert and gotten right back on the bus to go home.  I've also driven 15 hours to Nova Scotia stayed for 3 days, seen  two concerts and driven home.  But those are one time deals.
  If I have to do this everyday or even every week - I factor in the on going gas prices and that thirty minute drive may well be too long for a 30 minute lesson. Or it might be ok for an 8 hour workday, depending on the pay/benefits/type of job/ect. Shopping I will drive about 2 hours as long as I think the food will be ok in coolers. It makes more sense to do an all day trip once a month than to do a smaller trip 4 or 5 times a month.

[stargazer]

My best friend lives 2.5-3 hours from me and that is the max of how far I will go for a day trip.  I don't enjoy long drives and do not do them just for the heck of it.  I will drive 8 hours one way if I'm staying somewhere for a week.

[cicero]

the country i live in is teeny so it's very relative here.

from the northernmost point to the southernmost point, it's about 500 km, about 5-6 hours driving. cross country, is about 2-3 hours driving. of course, this depends on traffic, and public transportation can be a pain. I don't have a car.

so - to my fav vacation spot, I drive about one hour each way. the beach is also about one hour. about once a year, DS and I go up north for vacation , that's about 2-3 hours each way, but we usually spend a day or two there.

my commute to work is about 50 minute walk and anywhere from 20 -60 minutes by bus.

to visit my family - a 12 hour flight across 7 time zones...

[Outdoor Girl]

My skiing buddy and I have a 'rule' - we have to ski at least as long as it takes us to drive there and back.  It's an hour each way so we have to ski for at least two hours.

For day trips, anything under 2 hours each way is fine.  If it is longer than 2 hours, it's an overnight.  If it's longer than 4-5 hours, it's a weekend trip.  And 6-7 hours has to be at least a long weekend, if not longer.

But I'm really strict on my work commute.  I won't drive more than 30 minutes each way for work on a regular basis.  It just eats into my time too much and I can't take the added stress of the driving.

[Lynnv]

I am going to agree with the multitudes who say it all depends on what you are travelling for and what you are used to.

I live in a big city.  It takes me at least 30 minutes to get across town to go to my club meetings once a month (assuming traffic isn't horrific).  If we lived further north or west or if the meetings were further south or east, it would be even longer.  When it can take 45 to 60 minutes to get from one part of town to another, even when traffic is good, 30 minutes to get somewhere seems pretty reasonable.

I don't mind 20 - 40 minutes for something fun.  My commute, before I got semi laid-off, was less than 15 minutes most of the time.  More than a 30 minute commute, each way, gets annoying.  When I was in London a few years back, my trip to the office (via train and tube) was just over an hour each way-and that got old, but at least I wasn't driving.

I have, however, driven 4 hours (one way) for a simple day trip (it was cloudy in town and we wanted to see the transit of Venus, so we drove west until we were out from under the clouds).

We drove to Albequerque, NM for the eclipse last year.  It took about 8 hours each way.  We left early in the morning and drove out, watched the eclipse and then drove back the same day (DH had to be back Monday morning to teach a class). 

On the motorcycles, we are even more liberal.  I once rode 230 miles (one way) because I heard the rumor of really good pie.  The scenery and the ride were part of the attraction.  The pie was overrated.   

I drive about 2 hours each way to see my Mom about every other month or so.  Less in the winter, more often in summer.