monorailsilver. thanks, very helpful information. Can you give me more information on Traffic apps? Best ones? Just recently got first smartphone so this is new to me.
I should have also mentioned, I'm not taking this trip until April 2015 so current construction projects may not apply in April.
We did the drive in April too, as well as them Ito train but thankfully this yr we are flying on good Friday for under $250 RT and a rental (van) for 12 days for under $500.
Anyways, the apps we use are Waze. It 'powers' so to say the Google maps/traffic app. Basically my dh uses waze on his 5 min drive to work since its a game to him and he needs all these point from it which give you nothing!
Someone like you and me driving down the road turns on the waze app (make sure you are plugged in to keep,your phone charging). If you slow down due to traffic, waze will detect it and ask you if you are in traffic. It will re route you or show you options of routes depending in traffic as well. If there are people with red and blue flashing lights on the road pulling radar, lol, as you drive by you can tap it to alert others that there are these wonderful people doing their jobs! Let's just say the stretch of Delaware, all 5 miles of it was loaded.
For long drives, my dh will have me check the traffic on Google even though he is on waze. It shows up easier on Google with the red or dreaded black and red line.
Like I said, we drove pretty much straight thru DC because if the app. If we didn't have the app we would if taken the east loop but I looked and saw it was red (traffic) and the straight thrust route was green. My dh kept asking me was I sure. Um..yes!
Hopefully you will have a navigator because i was constantly checking it from CT thru DC and a little beyond.
We have kids so I got them a trip tic so they didn't have to ask how much longer or where are we, they still did but not as often. I also did this scavenger hunt for my kids http://faculty.deanza.edu/donahuemary/stories/storyReader$1473 but I did delete some stuff, aka drunk drivers.
Everyone says how horrible the drive is thru the NY/north east area. But that is my favorite part because there is so much to see. I mean getting off that last rest stop in NJ (Vince Lombardi I think) and seeing the empire state building via that exit is amazing! But this area makes things go faster. Driving thru the southern half of VA to the FL border made me ancy. Some of it we did in the dark but even during day time there was little to see besides the sad looking Christmas tree park or the tractor plant.
Coming home/north was better because a lot of snowbirds were leaving so it was nice to see other cars in the road.
You did ask about hotels, what I would say is look at every possibility of time-
aaa, map quest, the apps I mentioned, etc...to see how long of a drive it is. Then try to see where your breaking point will be-12 hrs?? 9 hrs?? And look to see what towns are in that area and how many miles between exits because you may actually be able to drive another 30 min.
We didn't book a hotel until we were about an hour or 2 from breaking point.
Oh and another app we used was i95 exit guide or something like that. It was free. I think the paid version lets you see more exits. But it will tell you what gas stations, food, hotels, etc... Are off each exit. I want to say there was another app similar because we used it on 1-75 but it's on my DHs phone and he is at work. Anyways, that was good because we could see what gas stations were off the exit.
Safe travels!
