Road trip your 4runner

Just got back from a 2400 miles road trip from Salt Lake City Utah to ski in Banff Alberta.

I was surprised how I never got uncomfortable in the 5th gen. I remember when I owned a 4th gen, how uncomfortable I would get been after a couple short hours.

Anyways, 2400 miles, and got 16.7 MPG overall!

Have you gone on a long road trip in your 4runner?

 

I took a “See The USA In Your Chevrolet”
Toyotalet”
in my 2004 SR5. From Hampton VA across the Northern tier of states to West coast in Oregon at Columbia River, down the coast to San Francisco, to Lake Tahoe, to Vegas via Death Valley, to Denver, Kansas City, Nashville, Chattanooga, Roanoke, back to Hampton.

 

My house hold only have 4runners. This pic from last trip to Yellowstone and covering few other parks nearby.

Distance - 1643.6 miles
Total weight - 5880 lbs
Mpg - 19.0

 

Since you said Utah, I checked that trip (CO-UT) and it gave me 17.94mpg. Didn't check the weight on that trip, but that trip had 3 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog vs Yellowstone trips only had 2 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog. (Can't say for sure if my mother in law cost me just over 1mpg extra )

 

That sounds like an awesome trip! I just got back from a 2500 mile trip as well from Cheyenne out to California and back. I never did get uncomfortable either. Usually I am moving around every cpl hours trying to adjust, but this 4runner seems to be a good road trip car!

 

Oh man I did this trip the Christmas before last in my 4th gen with the wife, 2 year old and dog loaded up with our normal vacationing stuff plus Christmas gifts for the family we were visiting. Never again. "I" was comfortable on the drive, but we did way too many stops in too short of a time, unloading and loading and the dog making things more complicated, staying in hotels and with family:



This isn't the 'exact' route we took but basically what we drove.

 

1,600+ mi round trip from northeast Indiana to Hilton Head, SC and back. Wasn’t as enjoyable as the 1,100 mi round trip to Asheville, NC with “no highways” selected on Google Maps. Much more enjoyable than multiple lanes of 80+ mph traffic the whole way. No complaints on either trip for comfort, but lots of complaints on cruise control downshifts.

 

I love Hilton Head, great place! I hate the cruise control downshifts too, when it starts to hunt I usually just slap it over to S4 and I’m good to go for the most part.

 

I bought this 2023 TRD pro in Hermiston Oregon and Drove it to Keywest and then back to Las Vegas last month. I go back to Las Vegas in a week to finish driving it home to Alaska where eventually I will drive it as far north as you can drive. The first leg was a bit over 6,600 miles (with a few extra stops just off the beaten path)


and the last leg will be about another 4,500. Then my 4runner will have been as far south and as far north as you can drive in the United States!


Some of the stops:

 

That is awesome! You should start a thread on it with lots of pictures!

 

I need to and I need to start a build thread as well since I have been building this out as I go lol. I guess I will combine the two!

 

1100 round trip from Pa to Ocean Isle Beach, NC and back for family vacation (3 adults & 1 child). Same thing as you, very comfortable driving and zero issues. Best mpg was 19.7 on a highway around 70-75 mph.

can’t wait to do it again this year, but on Falken Rubitreks instead of the old Wildpeak AT3s.

 

We’ve done 2 roadtrips since we got our 2024. Currently has 15k on it.

1) 2024 - From CO to Albuquerque and back
2) 2025 - From CO to Albuquerque to Phoenix to San Diego to Las Vegas and back to CO

Our 2nd trip was about 2700 miles and I think I averaged 16-17 MPG. I did install a Gobi rack which I’m sure made an impact on the trip. Still on the stock tires, but will be switching them to a beefier tire which I’m sure will impact gas mileage. Wife and I plan on doing an annual trip with our dogs to get them to the ocean regularly (we also enjoy roadtripping).

Previously, we rented vehicles for road trips (RAV4 3x and Subaru Forester 1x) before we got our 4Runner. Wife hopes to get the 4Runner up to Alaska someday. I’d like to get it on a Ferry. A big deal to someone born and raised in CO.

 

Just returned from 1200 mile round trip from Southern Ohio to New Jersey and back. 5th Gen fully loaded with 5 people (how they all rode in the back seat is beyond me, but they wanted to...) and all of our luggage, averaged 17 MPG running nearly 80 most of the way. The 5th Gen is pretty comfortable on road trips!

 

yeah that would be great!

 

Made four 5,000 mile round trips from Upper Michigan to Moab and back in the past three years. Just got back from Utah two weeks ago and already have another trip in the works for September.

We've put 50,000 miles on our "new to us" 4Runner in the past three years. None of those miles are commuting, just out enjoying retirement and seeing the country!

 

Side note.... longest road trip I've ever taken was a 10,300 mile motorcycle trip. Rode from Michigan to Emerald Island, NC (Atlantic Ocean)...then followed the Trans America Trail all the way to Port Orford, OR (Pacific Ocean). Then we had to ride back home again.

Rode 34 out of 35 days. We took a rest day when we hit the Pacific.

Ride report can be found here: trip

 

A few. Always comfortable, 18-19 mpg, at least 50% of the miles off the boring expressways.
KY to western WY
KY to Moab UT
KY to Orange Beach AL
KY to OBX
KY to Blue Ridge Parkway
KY to Mt Massive in CO
KY to Mt Harvard in CO
KY to central MI

If you want a road trip do it in a soft top TJ on 35’s. I did three 3300+ mile Colorado/Utah/New Mexico trips.

 

I would say yes... I have. In the almost 4 years I've owned my 4Runner, I've put on 66k miles, of which about 60k have been road trips, seeing as I have never used it to commute, and I walk to the grocery store. Many of the lines on this map have been done multiple times, and it's missing two additional trips from California to Maine, also in the 4Runner.

(As a side note, I used to live in Banff. I need to get back up there again)

 

The admin were nice enough to add a "Trip Reports" subforum when we asked them to create one. It would be a great spot for your road trip pics!
Trip Reports | Toyota 4Runner Forum [4Runners.com]

 

Thats a cool tracker. Do the different colors represent different trips, or something else? Looks like you've done some cool road trippin thats for sure.

 

The program is Gaia GPS, and it's my favorite navigation system. I use it along with the Toyota built in GPS. And yeah, each time you begin recording a trip, it will randomly select a color for that trip. The reason so many are the same is that I went through afterwards and changed all the colors to a single one that was easier to see, I just haven't done it for a few of my more recent ones. And if you've recorded multiple trips on the same highway, when you click on the line, it will bring up all of them and let you select the trip details. For example, Highway 84, between central Washington and Ogden, Utah, I've done at least 10 times, but it only shows as one line on the map until you click on it.

 

My longest trip in the 4Runner was to Acadia National Park. That was around 6 hours away and 700 miles round trip. We mainly do snowboard trips to VT and NH that are around 3 hours anway and can do them without stopping and no complaining which is nice.

 

We moved to KY from AZ 2 days after we bought our 4Runner. Our longest trip was KY to East Carolina University then to University of Arizona in Tucson for our girls college softball games. We did ECU to UofA that trip in 32 hours. About 2300 miles that trip straight thru. No wonder I just hit 150K on the 4Runner today!

 

Last October we left Northern Colorado and hit Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Awesome trip. Limited was excellent.

 

This reminds me to share something minor. Been on the road with my TRD Pro with TRD exhaust is little annoying. Driving a 4runner without a TRD exhaust is highly recommend.
(Some members may find it annoying me bashing on the TRD Pro. But I like to share honest, my personal opinion.)

 

I purchased my Pro in June of 24 with 9k miles, I put 2400ish miles on it locally since then, I now have 39,800 miles. The other 28k was 3 month long plus road trips. I've been to every state where I could carry legally. Lot's of fun.

 

Stock muffler from @ChessGuy was the best upgrade I ever thought about doing to my Pro!

 

There are states you can’t carry in?!? lol

 

Are you actually avoiding seeing states where you can’t carry. That’s silly.