48 state road trip

The Ultimate Road Trip: The Great 48

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Last Updated August 2026 by Kodia Byers | Originally written by Guest Blogger Karen Jacobson

A trip of this magnitude might take weeks or months to plan, but now could be the perfect time to start organizing (and saving money) for an adventure like this for next summer. Here’s how one Triad mom took her two kids to 48 states in just 46 days.

My late husband and I had a shared goal of getting our two children to all 50 states before they finished high school. Being a thorough planner, he began mapping out the country with educational themes such as Civil War South and Colonial New England, figuring out at what age each of these would fit best with what they might be learning in school. When he passed away in 2016, I was determined to still get them to all 50 states, but I changed strategies. I decided to get 48 states done in one trip.

Planning the 48 State Road Trip Route

I had seen Randal Olson’s maps of optimal 48 state road trip routes and was fascinated. He has multiple maps for the most efficient road trips both in the US and abroad, and I highly recommend checking out his website. The beauty of his maps is that you can start from anywhere and wind up right back where you began, no need for one-way plane tickets or travel to a separate starting point. We chose the route that would take us through all 48 contiguous state capitals.

I like to take a fairly spontaneous approach to travel, but I knew I had the time constraints of summer vacation to work within. So I took Randal Olson’s map, calculated the distance and driving time between each capital, then divided it up into manageable chunks I knew I could drive in a day, since I would be the only driver. We also added in a few side trips and extended stays to see family and friends, which meant recalculating and adjusting the route along the way. A college friend of mine lives in Manhattan and offered us the use of his apartment, so we spent a few days there so each of us could live out a dream, Ellis Island for me, a Broadway show for my daughter, and the Nintendo store for my son. Among other things, we also spent time in Illinois with my in-laws, in my old hometown of Tulsa, and made special stops to see Mount Rushmore, the Space Needle, the Winchester House, and the St. Louis Arch.

The Summer Challenge

This became our summer challenge for 2018. To complete it, we collected postcards from all 48 states and took pictures of all 48 capitol buildings. We also tried to get pictures of the welcome signs at each state line, but sometimes the kids slept through them, and as the driver, I couldn’t safely snap a photo myself.

We packed up my little Subaru Impreza and hit the road as soon as school got out, generally spending between 8 and 14 hours a day driving, and we had a ball. If we saw something we wanted to check out, we stopped and checked it out. World’s longest candy counter in New Hampshire? Yes please. Alpine Slide in South Dakota? We rode it again and again. Making saltballs (instead of snowballs) on the Great Salt Flats of Utah? Absolutely.

I didn’t make hotel reservations before we left home. Instead, as we approached our planned stop for the night, we’d search Hotels.com for a place to stay, racking up multiple free nights along the way. I wanted to keep the flexibility in case something took us a little longer, or we felt like pushing the drive a little farther. This flexibility served us well, both when we found fun unplanned places to visit, and when my daughter caught a stomach bug that delayed us by a day, and again when we got rear-ended in Seattle and got stuck waiting three days for car repairs.     

Finding Our Rhythm on the Road

Amazingly, I didn’t really start to feel road fatigue until we were well into the second half of the trip. I distinctly remember passing the “Welcome to Iowa” sign and deciding we were going to stop early that day. I was asleep by 7 p.m. and slept until nearly 8 a.m. But I never once thought, “I can’t wait to get off the road and be home.” In fact, when we got to Atlanta, we treated ourselves to a couple of nights at Great Wolf Lodge, and somewhere in all that fun, we found ourselves getting a little teary-eyed realizing we were almost home. After finishing our last state capitol of the trip, we made a joint decision to spend one more night in Columbia rather than drive straight home, because we simply wanted one more night on the road.

In my ideal world, we would have taken more time to stop at more landmarks and visit more friends and family than our timeline allowed. But I loved every minute of this trip and am so grateful I was able to do it with my kids. It was a lot of driving, 15,391.7 miles to be exact, but worth every one of them.

   

48 State Road Trip Tips

Knowing I was going to take this trip, I started stockpiling gas and restaurant gift cards throughout the year to use on the road, sometimes buying them at a discount during store promotions.

I joined all the hotel rewards programs, but found Hotels.com was the quickest and most flexible way to earn free nights along the trip.

I bought license plate sticker books on Amazon so we could track all 50 state plates as we spotted them. It became a fun bonus challenge, and it was so exciting when we finally spotted Hawaii’s.

“The Next Exit” by Mark Watson is an invaluable guidebook detailing exactly what’s available at every interstate exit. It helped the kids look ahead for upcoming food, gas, and rest stops without needing my phone, which I needed for navigation.

To keep the kids off screens the whole trip, we downloaded audiobooks and podcasts, ran photo contests, and picked up a few invisible ink game books.

Keep an eye on your mileage so you can plan for oil changes on the road and find a facility ahead of time rather than in a pinch.

One thing I wish I’d had was a dash cam to capture all the moments I couldn’t safely photograph from behind the wheel.

Above all, stay flexible and take everything in stride. Sometimes the unforeseen changes in plans turn into the most wonderful memories.

For a twist on this kind of adventure, check out our related post, “5 Tips to Cross Country Camping in a Pop-Up Camper,” from our archives.

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~ For a twist on this adventure, consider this blog “5 Tips to Cross Country Camping in a Pop-Up Camper” from our archives!