Best day to travel? - RV-Dreams Community Forum

cherylbrv · RV-Dreams Family Member

Best day to travel?

SnowGypsy · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have found early mornings on Sunday the best time to travel especially if you are going through a metro area. Times of the day you mention, well, I don't like to be in a town/city during lunch 11:00 am to 1:00 pm because people become very careless during that time but otherwise the hours of, I would say 9 and 2 since you would miss or should miss the work traffic. As you might guess from my thoughts, we live in the sticks and don't really care for traffic. Basically you are just trying to avoid the city traffic going to work, going to lunch and coming home from work.

igotjam · RV-Dreams Family Member

Ditto on the Sunday thing. Usually we just travel when we feel its time but in 8yrs of doing this we have found Sunday as the lightest in traffic.

bigredoes · RV-Dreams Family Member

Ditto

Ric and Rebecca · RV-Dreams Community Member

Sunday mornings pretty quiet for us. Avoid mondays and fridays. ric

cherylbrv · RV-Dreams Family Member

Thanks guys and gals! I was planning my routes around leaving on Mondays, thinking Sundays were bad. But clearly the consensus is otherwise. Great advise I will adhere to wherever possible.

Barbaraok · RV-Dreams Family Member

We love the quiet of the park's after weekenders leave on Sunday. Usually leave Monday's.

Barb

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Mondays work well for us, as well. That is what we did today, we moved, and it was no problem.

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

We like Sundays and Mondays. We also moved today and had smooth sailing. I really like Sunday mornings if we need to travel through a larger city.

The Junkman · RV-Dreams Family Member

colder weather seems to keep floridians off the road , and in their houses/rv's too..

folivier · RV-Dreams Family Member

Only thing about Sundays is if you have any trouble it may take longer to get help. Especially in remote areas.

Jim01 · RV-Dreams Family Member

If you're full-timing, any day that you feel like moving to a new location. biggrin

Jim

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

What about the best day(s) of the week for night/early morning travel, as it's cooler with less traffic?

Chip

PIEERE · RV-Dreams Family Member

If I was moving up to 300-350 miles I would go on a Sunday. If I was traveling 1000-1200 miles i would go on Monday; but that's just gotta-be-different! LOL! I remember an 1100 mile trip a few years back and did it in 2 days; that was foolish disbelief ; but had to be back at work! biggrin

A-S Travelers · RV-Dreams Family Member

It depends!!!!!!

If you want avoid traffic in metro areas then early Sunday morning. Leaving by about 7-8am. If you do leave on Sunday, watch out for Sunday afternoon traffic with everyone hurrying to get home.

If, like we usually do, want to move from one public campground to another, w/o reservations and want the best selection of campsites, travel on Mondays or Tuesdays. Tuesdays are usually the best. While a lot of people leave on Sunday, sometimes they leave late and arriving at say 2pm, may find some campsites still occupied. Some people don't leave until Monday to avoid the Sunday afternoon traffic. By Wednesday we find there are a few people arriving for the upcoming weekend, even more on Thursday.

If you have reservations, then Monday thru Thursday, or Friday if you are arriving by 1-2pm.

TheNewhalls · RV-Dreams Family Member

Barbaraok wrote:
We love the quiet of the park's after weekenders leave on Sunday. Usually leave Monday's.

Barb

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el Rojo and Pam · RV-Dreams Family Member

TheNewhalls wrote:
Barbaraok wrote:
We love the quiet of the park's after weekenders leave on Sunday. Usually leave Monday's.

Barb
X2

X3

cejones4210 · RV-Dreams Family Member

We like to arrive in a new area on Tuesday or Wednesday; gives us a chance to get settled and adjust to a new site before weekenders arrive.

A-S Travelers · RV-Dreams Family Member

Barbaraok wrote:
We love the quiet of the park's after weekenders leave on Sunday. Usually leave Monday's.

Barb

We really enjoy seeing families with children enjoying themselves on weekends, even though it disrupts our piece and quiet. We don't mind the kids running around and making loud noises, in fact we really enjoy seeing the youngsters having fun. However it is also nice come late Sunday afternoon when we have the park to ourselves again.

What we really, really don't like is the 20 somethings & 30 somethings playing loud music and loud talking into the late evening. Fortunately that hasn't happened too often to us.

TRAILERKING · RV-Dreams Family Member

A-S Travelers wrote:

We really enjoy seeing families with children enjoying themselves on weekends, even though it disrupts our piece and quiet. We don't mind the kids running around and making loud noises, in fact we really enjoy seeing the youngsters having fun. However it is also nice come late Sunday afternoon when we have the park to ourselves again.
What we really, really don't like is the 20 somethings & 30 somethings playing loud music and loud talking into the late evening. Fortunately that hasn't happened too often to us.

Agree with all that.................Except there are even older than the 20's & 30's that can be an issue.

Technomadia · RV-Dreams Family Member

We follow our instincts and move when we feel like moving. We usually have no clue what day of the week it is.

We do try to avoid rush hour when moving through major cities, and try to be in tune with any major events or weather conditions in the area which might cause heavier traffic. If there's bad weather projected, we'll sometimes just stay put and ride it out. But usually, we're taking back routes anyway, which have little traffic to begin with. We love moving during the shoulder season of an area - just past or before the 'peak'. The campgrounds are less crowded in general, and sometimes you can snag off season rates if offered.

For time of day, we pay attention to if we're heading into the sun or not. Driving late afternoon while heading west is just a recipe for causing glare, headaches and unsafe driving with the sun in your eyes. So when heading west, we try to be off the road before the sun is in our eyes. During the summer or when driving anything other than west, we'll drive later into the day if needed. Sometimes our workload keeps us at camp right up until check-out time - so we're not even hitting the road until early afternoon.

Diana and Jim · RV-Dreams Family Member

Technomadia wrote:
We follow our instincts and move when we feel like moving. We usually have no clue what day of the week it is.

Hahaha....Love it, C and C! A buddy of mine has to tell me constantly what day of the week it is. He has an excuse though...he still does the 9 to 5 grind! By the way...happy Wednesday!

Jim (and Diana)

Bill and Jodee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Most people avoid driving through Los Angeles and Orange County in CA any time of any day - for good reason :D We live north of L.A. and were invited to brunch in OC at 9:30 on a Sunday morning. GPS said 90 minutes and I gave us two hours. So we left at 7:30. Arrived just minutes after 8:30! There was almost no one on the freeway the entire trip!!

So yes, we will aim for Sunday mornings when we need to get through a metropolitan area!!!

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

You need to get one of those special clocks, mine says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

MarkS · RV-Dreams Family Member

Avoiding traffic in Los Angeles is easy any day of the week. Travel between 1 am and 5 am. This will probably work in any metro area. Another alternative is to go drive truck in your chosen metro area. It won't be long till you aren't bothered by the traffic. I remember back in the day, we were living in a small rural area and hadn't been around a city for a long long time. We drove into Denver and being close to all those cars going 55 about freaked me out. It took a day or two to get used to close quarters driving.

The other day I was driving north over the Grapevine when a guy pulling a travel trailer to my left moved into my lane squeezing me between him and the semi to my right. I think he forgot he had a trailer behind him. I don't know how it is that we didn't trade some paint but he missed me. All I could think of was "this guy obviously isn't a member of RV-Dreams!"

The Crumps · RV-Dreams Family Member

As for not traveling on Fridays through metro areas, we somehow managed to land in Chicago on a Friday afternoon about 5:00. Poor planning on my part. But, the nice part of it was that we went 5 mph so were able to relax a little and see all around us. Not nearly as stressful as going 60 and not being familiar with the surroundings. Not that I would recommend doing this on purpose. But, at least it wasn't a really bad experience.