Somewhere to stop between Philadelphia and Yorktown?

[pinotnow]

I will be driving this summer and it's my first time driving in the USA so I'm quite nervous. Google says it's a 5 hour trip and we'll be collecting the car around lunchtime so ideally I don't want to drive more than a couple of hours for the first stretch due to the time of day. I also don't want to drive into a city like Baltimore or Richmond, and would either like a small town or even just a motel with somewhere for maybe a quick walk and/or place to eat before going to bed and then setting off in the morning.

I appreciate it's quite specific, but if anyone has any suggestions that would be great.

Hey there @pinotnow I’m from New York and am a bit familiar with the area. I’m guessing you’re driving down to Yorktown, Virginia vs. up to Yorktown, NY just based on the traveling time you mentioned. Please check me, just in case!

Are you thinking about stopping for the night before you get to either Baltimore or DC or are you trying to get past both those cities and then stop? Depending on what you want to do, I can give you some recommendations. 🙂

Hi, To be honest, I'm not really looking to go to Baltimore at all. We only have a couple of weeks in total and are flying into NYC, then train to Philadelphia then straight to the hire car. We fly out from DC a around 10 days later and have accommodation booked there which leaves us with about a week to see Yorktown and associated historical stuff and have two or three days in Shenandoah/Charlottesville. So I think in answer to your question, we want to go past both those cities to get a bit closer to Yorktown on the way there.

Hope that makes sense and thank you for any advice!

Friends did this route in October. Let me see if I can get the details. They loved the drive apart from the last hour from Richmond to Collonial Williamsburg which was a bit boring. CW is very pretty. Well worth a visit. The seafood place in Surrey is also fab. And fun getting the ferry over. Jamestown museum was great.

We did this but drove via the Maryland peninsula, staying in a Holiday Inn Express easily located off the road near Cambridge, Maryland. Cambridge was an attractive place to have dinner. We then drove down the peninsula and had lunch nesr the water in Cape Charles before crossing the Chesapeake bridge and on to our hotel apartment near Willliamsburg. We went to Jamestown and Yorktown from there.

We used to live outside Philadelphia, how long the drive down past Baltimore and DC took did depend quite a lot on the traffic. That was a long time ago but I'd be surprised if it had got better since then.

We returned by the peninsular route once, I'd agree with Azure it's well worth considering that route, given you'll be going back up the 'mainland' to return to DC.