rufus":2u1lqg9c said:
Not to pick on you in particular, but in general people who suggest driving long distances fail to calculate the true cost. Driving from Pennsylvania to Colorado for a family of four is not cheaper than flying.
You've made the classic mistake of failing to account for a lot of expenses. The true cost of driving your car is not simply gas. You need to take into account fuel, maintenance from the mileage you drive, wear and tear and loss of value from the mileage. The true cost to drive from Pennsylvania to Colorado and back is between $1,800 and $2,000. The real cost is between 50 and 55 cents per mile for an average vehicle.
Second, you haven't taken into account the costs you'll incur in route. This isn't a one-day drive, so you've failed to account for lodging and meals while in route.
And lastly and most importantly your time. Not only is your time worth something, but so is everyone else's who will be traveling with you. You have to assign a dollar amount to each persons time. Furthermore, I look at wasted paid vacation days as lost income, so you may as well add that onto the travel cost as well. You're talking four days of wasted vacation time, versus two for air travel. If you have to unfortunately take unpaid time off when you could be working then it really truly is lost income.
As already mentioned by others you didn't consider possible weather delays, road closures, accidents, and construction.
The cost to fly a family of four from a major airport in Pennsylvania to Denver or Salt Lake City will cost round-trip between $300 to $400 per person.
With the $2,000+ I just saved you you can instead add a day onto that vacation and ski for eight days instead of seven now!
Your best options are to fly to Salt Lake City or Denver and then rent a car for the week. Flying to smaller airports like Jackson, Aspen, etc. are problematic since they suffer from frequent weather issues.
