Think Texans or Californians would top a national ranking of road trip tolerance? Not even close. A survey by travel points platform Upgraded Points asked more than 2,400 people across the continental US how long they'd happily drive before switching to a plane, and Idaho came out way ahead. The average Idahoan will sit behind the wheel for 12 hours and 55 minutes before calling it quits — compared with just seven hours and 16 minutes for Texans and a nation-low six hours and 24 minutes for Californians.
The result is a bit counterintuitive, since California and Texas are both famous for distances that eat up a whole day of driving. Upgraded Points suggests the explanation lies in how far Idaho residents are from major travel hubs and destinations in the first place. In a spacious, lightly populated Mountain West state, a long drive is simply the default way to get anywhere interesting — and the state pays you back with rugged peaks, river canyons and high-desert scenery along the way.
The survey also found Idahoans set their personal bar for a "long drive" at around six hours and 50 minutes, which makes a surprising number of iconic destinations feel like quick weekend material. From Boise, Yellowstone's West Entrance — your gateway to Old Faithful and the park's geyser basins — is about six hours away. Closer to home, the alien lava fields of Craters of the Moon National Monument sit just under three hours from the capital. Push a little further and you can even trade high desert for temperate rainforest: Washington's Olympic National Park is roughly nine hours from Boise.
If you'd rather not have a destination in mind at all, Idaho's road network does the entertaining for you. The state counts 32 scenic byways, per Scenic America. The headline route is the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway, stretching over 200 miles from Lewiston to the Montana border and taking close to five hours. It threads through river canyons and mountains while passing Nez Perce cultural and historical sites — a drive with genuine depth, not just views. At the other end of the scale, the Wild Horse Trail Scenic Byway packs mountain and lake scenery into about 36 miles and just over an hour in the state's panhandle.
For travellers, the takeaway is that Idaho works brilliantly as a base for multi-park, multi-state road trips that elsewhere would require flights and complicated logistics. Two or three national park-level sights in a single week of driving, with almost no traffic and constant scenery, is a rare combination. Rent a car in Boise, budget generously for fuel distances between towns, and keep your days flexible — weather in the mountains can reshape plans quickly. Anyone who loves the driving itself as much as the arrival should put the state high on their list.
