By what route? and the Tao of Chris

To Interstate or not to Interstate, that is the question. Personally, I'm not a fan of interstates when on roadtrip. I go to get away from home, to enjoy the view, and just relax. You can't do that on the interstate. You're worried about the clown in the semi behind you and the idiots in front of you and next to you. Get off the interstates, stay to the highways and byways, go through the little towns, see some Americana.
Agreed, sometimes the interstate is the best or only way to get somewhere, but why go past a city when you can go through it? You never know what you'll see. And that has been difinitely true in my experience. I'll post photos in future blogs, but case in point: Chester, IL. It's a town of like 4 or 5 thousand and is the home to one or two of the cartoonists who drew Popeye. And there are murals and statues everywhere of the different characters. You just never know what you'll find by going through the smaller cities.
The way I work as "shotgun navigator" is I plan out a general route (we're gonna take a to b to c to final destination) and if the scenery isn't doing anything for me, I alter the route. I also generally pick three cities as possible destinations for the day. Now, I must tell you, for the most part, every trip I've done has been mostly unplanned. It's basically been point the car in a direction and fill in the blanks along the way. So when determining where to stop, I usually come up with a 6 hour, 7 hour and 8 hour spot (or somewhere thereabouts).
Generally speaking, we find a full service hotel (restaurant and bar) for the night. Holiday Inn is pretty consistently nice anywhere you go. And they aren't too expensive, usually $80 to $100 a night. Now, if money is a bit of an issue, Hampton Inns are nice, La Quintas are nice, there are a lot of nice cheaper hotels. My big thing, is not wanting to necessarily drive in a city I've never been to before; plus if I want to have a drink I have to behave. At least at a full service hotel, you can grab a bite to eat, go hang out in the bar, get snarked out of your gourd if you want (a future entry will have an interesting story from Branson MO), and then just stagger back to your room and not get arrested for a DUI.
And the 6 to 8 hour drive time is kind of an arbitrary thing. I like to be able to enjoy the hotel room a little, go for a walk around whatever city I'm in, and maybe take in some of the localness of the place. Besides, as much as I like just going for a drive, after a few days, I'm ready to just get where we're going so I can get out of the car. Near the end of the road trip it's usually the last 2 or 3 hours of driving that are hard. Part of it is, I don't sleep well on vacation, not the first night anyway. And when every night is sort of a first night, well it isn't that I don't like the view, I just am a little burned out. And a smidge stressed from navigator duties. But all in all I have a great time, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering with this.