erblog

Driving Cross Country Take Two

July 10th, 2008 by erb

Malaika is making her own trip from Seattle to Champaign… Including all the anipals, plus our friend Julie, who is helping a ton with this move — Thanks Julie! Since she has all the animals, she wanted to take a little longer than I did … four plus one days (I took three, but with 13–14 hour days driving). Here’s her trip, complete with live mini updates and pictures from the road.

See earlier post, wherein I briefly describe my own journey, and also the other earlier post, wherein I include Google maps of said journey.

To recap:

I figured I could do it in either three or four days: Total trip: 2,165 miles — about 31 hours, (4 days) * (8 hours/day) = 32 hours… I ended up doing three days, with actual time probably about 13–14 hours per day.

Also, numbers from the Google maps estimates (note these are appreciably shorter times than what I Actually Encountered):

Mon 05/12/08: 1st Day: Ended in Bozeman MT.
Google says: 679 mi – about 9 hours 43 mins
(not including the ferry ride from Bainbridge Island)
Tue 05/13/08: 2nd Day: Ended in Sioux Falls SD.
Google says: 857 mi – about 11 hours 40 mins
Wed 05/14/08: 3rd Day: Ended in Champaign IL.
Google says: 636 mi – about 9 hours 38 min

I believe 13–14 hour days above are an accurate estimate. So “worst case,” that’s a total of 42 hours. Compare with Google’s estimate above of 31 hours. (If you GoogleMap it straight to Champaign, they say: 2,164 mi – about 1 day 7 hours, which is in agreement.) I don’t think so! So it may be best to consider anything Google says with a grain of salt, and generally add 20%.

Let’s follow the same trip I took, see maps and summaries above.
Briefly: Without mentioning (too many) cities:

From Seattle, Take I-90 for a Long Time: Through Washington, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, until you reach Sioux Falls SD.
When you reach Sioux Falls SD, you will get on southbound I-29.
Continue on I-29 through SD, into Iowa, until you reach the Omaha Nebraska area.
North of Omaha, watch out, you want to get on I-680 (I-80) East.
Continue on I-80 through Iowa, into Illinois…
As soon as you enter Illinois, take I-74 southbound.
I-74 will bring you to Champaign.

Zeroth Day: Wednesday July 9th: Bainbridge Island to Seattle

From Malaika:

Julie and myself would have nothing to sleep on after the movers load all the stuff (I’m hoping they can at least leave us the futon to sleep on together after packing the first day so we have that for Tuesday night). So, I booked us a room at the Hotel Monaco in Seattle for Weds night. We can get an early start to Missoula on Thursday and avoid the ferry to boot.

View Larger Map
Lily on Hotel Sink
Whoopie being pampered at hotel Monaco
Dogs waiting to leave hotel