How far is “too far” for an overnighter?

I'm spoiled, i am within 1.5-2hrs of fantastic hiking through the mountains. For running 2 -4 hours I try to stay within 30 to 45 minutes each way. For full day hikes I will go up 2 hrs as well.

…

As with many fellow Coloradoans, I am blessed with lots of mountain an hour away at the most.

I rarely drive more than two hours for an overnighter. On rare occasions, I'll push it to 3 hrs.

For a three-day weekend, five hours is my upper end, six hours if I want to push it.

So much to do…so little time.

This work things get in the way of my fun! ;)

…if the payoff is good.

So far as I can tell, I only have one go at this life. I've done some pretty stupid-long drives to get to places I've always wanted to see. Not once have I EVER regretted the drive. All these trips live on in beautiful memory and the hours in the car and gas money spent are promptly forgotten. Besides, road trips are fun to me, solo or not.

A few notable longer ones:

*20 hours of driving (round trip, including traffic) to hike the Grand Canyon R2R2R in 36 hours (one night spent at North Rim). I wanted to do it and wasn't going to wait for anyone.

*10 hours of driving/shuttling to hike from Onion Valley to Whitney Portal (including Whitney Summit) in 36 hours. Again, wanted to do Whitney and had to strike while the iron was hot.

*10 hours of driving in a day to run a 50K in 8 hours in Bishop. Too cheap to spend the night in a hotel on this one.

So basically, I say go burn that gas and live it up. I doubt anybody here will one day be reflecting on their life and congratulating themselves on all the trips they DIDN'T take in order to save some driving time or gas money.

With two or three days off as the biggest limitation, either I spend lots of drive time and not much hiking or less time driving and more hiking. The nearest wildlife management area is only a 10.2 mile hike from my front door, and that works just as well as the 800 mile round trip out to the Pine Ridge area in western Nebraska.
I'll agree with Craig. Just go.

Although New England isn't quite as rugged as the terrain many of you enjoy out west, we are pretty lucky with access. Even living on the coast, I can be on the New England Trail in 20 minutes, and on the AT in an hour. This makes weekend trips pretty easy logistically.