Each year we have been taking a driving vacation out of Grand Rapids.  It is typically 10-14 days with some final destination (turn-around point).  We’ve found that driving 6-9 hours a day is optimal (depending on what you want to do at the interim stops).  We’d like to drive for 2-3 days each way.  In this way the journey ends up being about half the vacation, but there are lots of great things to see and do along the way so we kind of like it that way.

So here is the challenge – It seems like any of the online map folks will find an address, zip code, etc. and even give you fairly decent driving directions (including approximate drive time) between two destinations.  I need to turn this use case around.  I want to put in the time (6-9 hours) from a point and see a perimeter  of how far I could go in that amount of time.  It is clearly more complicated than concentric circles (until we get the family helicopter).

We’re just wondering what things are easily in reach (with cool stops along the way) and which things are out of reach (e.g. Rocky Mountains, Florida Keys, Maine?, etc.). We’ve gone in every season – this time will be late winter so a southern location will have obvious preference.

Surely someone has conquered this problem.  It would seem like a very common scenario for any package delivery service.  Anyone seen something like this before.