excerpted from the new travel guide book….. forth coming November 2014….

We always plan for the worse mileage so that we can take side trips if we see or hear about fun stuff while we are gallivanting about.

How far do you plan to cover during each day or leg of your trip?

Back when we were much younger we would split the driving between 2 or 3 adults and we would cover 1,200 miles in a day [24 hours] so that we would have more time at our destination.

Realistically if you are going to see stuff along the way and be a tourist don’t expect to cover more than about 300 miles a day IF that. And plan way stations along your route.

As an example one year a friend from our military days was visiting from ‘back east’. At the end of his visit I took him to the state capitol to catch the Amtrak train home.

The drive was planned to take 2.5 hours with a planned detour of 4 hours to a park along the way. The park is a natural rock bridge that had been carved over the centuries by a large creek.

The park portion had several hiking trails and there were those standing BBQ cook areas with picnic tables that were comfortable for the lunch we had packed.

The site was / is very beautiful and has a rich history as an oasis for the local American Indians. One of the pluses is that it is well protected from the wind. Some of the other features included more than enough fresh water for the tribe and their animals. There are several apple trees which are reputed to have been planted by the Indians. Game such as fish, deer, rabbits and birds are plentiful. I didn’t have time to search very hard but there were many edible plants such as Purslane, plantain, cattails, milkweed and burdock.

I can really see why the Indians would tarry there and perhaps even a good place to settle in the general area.

Round trip was about 400 miles and took less than a tank of gas. Total time away from home was under 12 hours

That was a brief example of a travel journal entry.