All I can say about "marthon" driving is that it "sucks". But, I understand the why tho. My sons wanted to have a lot of thier vacations, so of course, we did 1508 miles in 2 days.
We started out from Bellingham, Washington at 12:45 pm July 5th. The truck was packed. And oh ya, I managed to get Josh to throw in a couple of bigger rocks for my garden. I found the "cutest" tuffet looking rock for a stepping stone!! Also, a "green stone, which when Josh threw it it broke and the most wonderful looking designs came out. I also found a few other things my hubby had forgotten when he had been up there cleaning out before Josh bought the place too.
anyway, off we went. We started at milemarker 250 going south! Traffic even thru Seattle was full of 18 wheelers. Over the Colombia river all the overpasess were filled with semi's.
Josh really gets into his drive. Now, imagine sitting in a Tacoma truck for this long. I gotta say, leg room isn't great! My butt got "numb" a lot. It's really hard to find a comfortable position for 12 hours of driving. Except for gas stops and a couple of "rest areas", it was all drive. Josh did the Oregon mountains at night. Now that is sometime. One can make out the tops of the forest trees against the dark sky. Only other thing is the snaking red tail lights and the brightness of the white headlights going North.
We did stop in one little town and had a great Mexican dinner. Family run, homemade salsa, very hot plates. and just a really big "YUM" factor. !! At about 12:45 am, I managed to get Josh to stop in Yreka to get a room and grab some ZZzzzzz. Not bad for 3-$85. Hey, showers, toilet and a place to get horizontal for a few hours. Josh was out before his head hit the pillow. Robert and I at least got to the pillow before sliding into a sleep coma. I set the alarm for 4:30 and was up, showered, went out for "more coffee" and milk, before the other 2 arose. Tipical Mommie. We left at 5:45 as we were in California and had the skillet run thru the central valley. After Sacremento, the temps were 103 degrees, the drive is fairly flat, and tons of 18 wheelers everywhere. Central California is the "bread basket". Just about everything grown comes from the central valley. Finally, going over the grapvine. The grapevine is the last mountain pass before dropping down into the L.A. basin. And even more traffic. Hey, it was Fri, during a "holiday" week. Those that had to come back to work on Thursday, now wanted to leave for the lakes and such!!! Down the 5 to the 405 cutoff. The 405 makes it easier to make the trek to Orange county. One doesn't have to go thru L.A. The sight of exit signs that I knew were such a relief!! We arrived at the house about 6pm! A bit over the time limit, but with the traffic, especially all those 18 wheelers, we did pretty good.