Travel Experts Reveal the Best Time to Hit the Road on Thanksgiving

The most important thing to know is when not to travel. Leave the car parked on “Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon because they’re the worst times to travel during the Thanksgiving period,” warns Barber. That’s when traffic could make the drive twice as long or more — and trigger a chorus of “Are we there yet?” from your mini (or grown) backseat drivers.

Keeping in mind the Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon blackout, when should you hit the road? There are two choices.

The early-bird option

Turn Thanksgiving into a mini vacation for your family, and leave Sunday or Monday night. Typically, roads are clearest the Sunday or Monday before the big day around 8 p.m. local time, according to a new Google Maps report. But the report advises not to head out the Friday before Thanksgiving, which tends to be traffic jam-prone.

Even if you’re a “get up early and hit the road” type of family, consider the nighttime driving strategy, especially if you have children who will sleep in the car and a partner who will share some of the driving responsibilities.

On a longer road trip with older kids and teens, ponder whether it makes sense for you to drive half of the trip at night, stay over in a family-friendly hotel, then tackle the rest of the ride the next morning.

If you absolutely can’t avoid being on the road during the worst of the traffic on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon because, well, life, then consider stopping for a meal or letting the kids burn off steam on a local playground to avoid the stop-go traffic nightmares during those peak periods.

The day-of option

Will you be feasting a few hours away from home or less? Then it may be easier to pile into the car on Thanksgiving Day, cranberry sauce in tow. “The morning is the best time for travel on Thanksgiving Day,” says Barber.

Even if the host won’t be ready for you until late afternoon, get an early start and find an activity where you’re headed. For instance, you could build up an appetite for the meal by tossing around a football at a park near the host’s house, or locating a nearby trail for a short hike. Prefer to do something inside because of the weather? Some nearby stores may be open on Thanksgiving for a jump on holiday shopping.

You could also coordinate with the host in advance and ask if your family could arrive before other guests because you’d like to avoid traffic. You might offer to have them “put you to work” helping with the dinner, setting the table or even entertaining their kids, so the hosts can concentrate on carefully orchestrating the timing of the meal so the sides and turkey are done around the same time, a true feat in itself.

When to head home

After offering to help the host clean up, hit the road on a full belly Thursday night. From a traffic standpoint, it’s better than Friday morning because you’ll be dealing with bargain-hunters in addition to fellow Thanksgiving travelers.

But, if you’d like to stay over for a night or more, don’t plan to go home on Monday because that’s the peak traffic day, according to the AAA. The best times are after 1 p.m. on Friday or before 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Karen is a seasoned journalist who specializes in travel, book, lifestyle and food coverage. Cicero has visited almost every state with her family (look out Wyoming, she’s coming for you next!). She has spoken at several travel industry conferences, including PRSA and the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Alliance and was previously the senior editor at Parents. A mom who goes overboard for all the holidays, Cicero lives in the Christmas city itself: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.