Travelling

So last weekend my girlfriend floated the idea of going to the Grand Canyon over the upcoming holiday weekend. It seemed like an awesome, impromptu idea (the sort of thing I rarely partake in) and the six hour drive seemed manageable, so I said I was down.

Well, it turns out it’s not six hours, it’s eight. And my girlfriend doesn’t actually have Monday off. This means we’ll be driving for 16 hours over two days for about half of that in actual sightseeing time. Oy.

I don’t mind that much as in this case it’s more about taking a road trip with my girlfriend than it is with the actual destination (which I actually spent an hour or two at when I moved out west in 2006), but it did get me thinking about traveling ratios.

My personal thinking is that for a normal two-day weekend, four hours each way is the maximum I’m will to travel. For a three day weekend I might bump that up to six, but that’d be rough. Mind you, this is based on me being the sole driver on said trip, and sharing the wealth would undoubtedly make it easier. Unfortunately, I don’t like having other people drive my car, so that’s rarely the case (for the Grand Canyon trip we’re taking my girlfriend’s car so we’ll be splitting driving duties). Also, unlike some of my friends, I don’t like driving at night (i.e., leaving Friday night at 6pm and driving until 1am) and instead follow my father’s lead and choose to leave at the crack of dawn (5 or 6am Saturday morning).

For overseas trips (10+ hours each way), I think a minimum of two weeks is necessary to really make it worthwhile. That said, if I had a chance to spend a week in Paris, I might be willing to change my mind, though that would essentially be two days spent traveling and only five days actually doing stuff.

So…yeah. That.