Trip Planning:
 

I am planning a trip to Atlanta to pick up another Metro. This one is an automatic, and will only see city trips. But on the way back, it will see highway. I know for 300 miles i'm probably not going to mess it up going 65 but I don't want to, so I am going to take the scenic route.

Now to my question. Google maps has me two (well three, but I made up the third one) choices to make a trip, two of them are pretty much all interstate/highway. One is a slower paced one. The time/distance are as follows.

A: 258 miles 4h 7m
B: 221 miles 4h 28m
C: 192 miles 5h 3m

I understand that driving 70/speed limit A would be the fastest, but would C be the "fastest" at 55?

*I know there are tons of variables, but I am wondering if my general idea is sound?

I would choose the shorter slower route unless it has a lot of stops and lower than top-gear speeds. It will probably burn the least fuel. Yes, your general idea is sound.

Assuming you average 60 mph during Trip A and B and 50 mph on Trip C:
A = 4.3 hours
B = 3.7 hours
C = 3.84 hours

Not exactly sure which way you are going but I guess the best route depends on what is most important to you (time or mpg) and what hurdles lurk on each trip (construction, traffic, etc).

I planned a similar trip back in September...300+ miles...and I ended up getting about 4+ mph higher than my usual route I take to go on that trip by avoiding highway travel. It was alot of fun to see different scenery than I usually do on that trip and also saved me some mpg too.

Best of luck with your trip!

Look for the old (pre Interstate) US routes, especially those that follow rivers. These routes generally do no suffer extreme elevation changes, and in many cases are 4 lanes and practically deserted.

I have driven my local roads literally thousands of times, so I try to avoid the Interstates, unless its early in the morning and I want to be at a specific place at a specific time. Sometimes I will start at 4 AM to try to get past congested areas before the traffic gets bad.

It may be that you would want to use one higher average speed route to go there and another lower speed route coming back.

regards
Mech

I think I may do this, we are driving in my dads car over there, and we are both driving back. (me in the Geo) We will probably take the "fast" way there, and then the "slow" way back.