Planning for a trip out west this summer (family reunion). As it stands now, we'd drive from North Carolina to Kansas City (17 hours), then fly from Kansas City to Billings, MT (via Denver...hour and a half flight each leg with whatever layover), THEN pick up a rental vehicle and drive five hours across the state of Montana to Missoula, MT and another 20-30 minutes beyond that to my famiy reunion. Stay three days, then do everything in reverse to get back home.
Oh, and did I mention we'd be transporting two small children, ages 2 and 5? There is no way this could possibly go wrong.
Are you worried about being tailed or something? Why not just fly from NC to Missoula?
Cost. Plus we want to spend some time in KC visiting my wife's sister. It's cheaper to drive to KC than fly. It's entirely too far to drive from Kansas to Montana, and it's considerably cheaper to fly to Billings (on the eastern end of Montana) than to fly to Missoula (on the Western end). Like, $1000 cheaper when you consider it's four tickets. A rental vehicle + gas round trip is only a few hundred dollars.
Yeah, it's all kinda nuts. Part of me is thinking "This is insane. We should just pass on this one and wait till the kids are a bit older" and the other part of me is remembering how much I love our cross-country road trips when I was a kid (we used to drive the entire thing every few years or so, some 2400 miles).
I just punched it into Google Earth to see what the drive would look like if we drove straight from here to Missoula, and one of the sections is:
"Continue straight onto I-94 W
go 227 mi
Slight right to stay on I-94 W
go 843 mi"
Yay for the Midwest.