Kick-off is 3:30. looking at the maps, looks like you can leave early from Pittsburgh in the morning and be there for kickoff. Or do most people get there the night before? Never went before and was considering it this year.
ND road trip?
- Thread starter Slick Manager of Champs
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I live closer to Philly than Pittsburgh. I stay in Pittsburgh overnight on Friday, leave before sunrise on Saturday, get to south bend by 8am, tour the campus, watch a game, and then drive home after game. If you live in Pittsburgh it's an easy out and back in one day.
If you are getting to South Bend at 8 AM you are leaving Pittsburgh at what, 2:00, 2:30 in the morning?
That seems to be a weird way to do it.
If you do that, just take Amtrak out of Pittsburgh at midnight. Get into South Bend at 8 a.m. and usually cabs or jitneys at station for 3 mile ride to campus. Leave 9 p.m SB and get into da Burgh at 5 a.m.
Leave at 4 am. Only about 5 hrs. Usually easy drive in the am. Get home the following Sunday around 4amish. I can still pull a 24hr wake session pretty well. Just grab a coffee or two on the way home.
yeah, that would be pushing it for me. I thought PSU in a day trip was rough a few years ago. I think ND you need at least 1 overnight but if you can manage it in a day then that is great for you
I usually stay in Pittsburgh or Ohio Friday night. But I have done 24 hrs before. Now I have also done the drive and pull over for a few he nap. It depends. Some drives are easier than others. I thought Tennessee was pretty easy but I made that an entire weekend. Honestly the drives that are the toughest are pitt home games at night. I think it was UNC a few years ago, Thursday night in the monsoon. My intent was to drive home but I got on the parkway and was hydroplaning at 35 mph so I got a hotel in Monroeville and drove home Friday morning
When I did it, I left at like 7:00-7:30 a.m. It would have been nice to have a bit longer to have toured the campus, but I saw plenty of it. Very crowded, lots of people trying to take in all of the sights on 3:30 kickoff gamedays. I've said this in other threads, but the campus is okay. I wasn't particularly impressed. But obviously you might judge it differently.
I didn't leave right after the game, but stuck around to grab some food. Drove as far as I could that night until I felt too tired, ended up having no problem grabbing a hotel room off the highway somewhere in eastern Indiana. Drove the rest of the way home on Sunday.
I didn't leave right after the game, but stuck around to grab some food. Drove as far as I could that night until I felt too tired, ended up having no problem grabbing a hotel room off the highway somewhere in eastern Indiana. Drove the rest of the way home on Sunday.
When I was younger, I would do the drive from Pittsburgh to Chicago pretty regularly for work stuff. I'd probably get something part of the way back for a 3:30 game if I was leaving in the morning. Just a matter of where. Not exactly the most heavily populated route until you get back towards Toledo.
Get there the night before or you won't have enough time to soak in the gameday environment on campus, which is a uniquely cool experience. Hotel rooms are tough to find on home game weekends so try Mishawaka just outside S. Bend. Parking is also challenging if you don't get tehre early. The good thing is once you park you won't need your car again until you leave the game, the stadium is on the south end of campus and the whole place is very walkable.
I don't understand why anyone would want to try to jam it all into one 24 hour period. 12 hours of road travel plus the campus, tailgating, game, etc. Doesn't make any sense to me.
I don't understand why anyone would want to try to jam it all into one 24 hour period. 12 hours of road travel plus the campus, tailgating, game, etc. Doesn't make any sense to me.
Right answer.
I've made the trip four times and it is clearly best to get there the night before. Their pep rally is kick-ass and worth attending.
I have zero interest in attending a pep rally for another school. If anything I would get there early to attend a Panther Club tailgate as I've done at a few other road games.
It's really not a "pep rally" as much as it's a series of gameday rituals and traditions ND has that are unique to the school and to college football. The people there, right down to the security guards and janitors, are very welcoming to visiting fans. It's a thing there, a point of pride. If you go all the way there and ignore that good stuff out of some small minded sense of rivalry or provincialism, you're totally missing out on what makes it different than anywhere else. This isn't Wake Forest or NCSU. Plenty of room and time to take in all the cool sights and sounds AND the Pitt tailgate.
I have found there is plenty of time to see the sights and hit some bars/restaurants if you get there fairly early on Saturday. The capel, grotto, dome, td Jesus are all great. I seemed to remember parking being a breeze. Really close to the interstate. They have ahuttles to take you from the parking lot to their campus (I think they drop you off by the library).
I wouldn't stay over two nights, because it would feel like I pissed the whole weekend away. So, for a 3:30 game that is 6 hours away, I would want to leave around 6:00 or 7:00 am and take in whatever experiences I could in the 2-3 hours I had before kickoff.
Then the rest would depend on who I went with. If it was a family trip, I would probably want to make up at least two hours of driving time after the game. If I was going with friends and getting sloshed, well, obviously I'd want to stay in South Bend.
I did down and back in one day to Virginia Tech in 2021 (similar distance and also a 3:30 game). That's just too much driving in one day when you're getting home that late.
Then the rest would depend on who I went with. If it was a family trip, I would probably want to make up at least two hours of driving time after the game. If I was going with friends and getting sloshed, well, obviously I'd want to stay in South Bend.
I did down and back in one day to Virginia Tech in 2021 (similar distance and also a 3:30 game). That's just too much driving in one day when you're getting home that late.
We are going to Chicago and then taking one of those charters down.
The bar/restaurant scene at ND is not good, not worth wasting any time with on a game day anyway. Campus on a game day is where all the action is. Plenty of good food and drink to be had all over the place on campus.
Went there on a whim when a coworkers relative gave him some tickets he couldn’t use. This was quite a while back, the infamous RJ English Fumble game. Left after work (downtown Pgh) on the night before. Stayed the night at some fleabag motor inn in eastern Indiana, found a bar with very cheap drinks and got fairly lit. Tough getting up the next am so we got in there with only a few hours to spare. Found parking in some desolate field and walked seemingly forever to get to the stadium. We checked out a bit of the flavor around there. As others have said, I didn’t find it overly impressive. And the stadium was a dump (perhaps it’s been upgraded since then).
Visitor seats were garbage, not that I really expected better, but we were right behind a freaking flag pole. The 50’s era scoreboard was so far and high away it was nearly useless but tracking the game time. One interesting thing was that this was shortly after 9-11 and the stadium is apparently in the flight path of either Midway or O Hare so planes repeatedly flew over the place quite low, rather disconcerting given what has just happened. We hustle out if there and drove all the way home, stopped at some roadside Olive Garden to eat and deservedly all were very sick for the next couple days.
Those things, and the loss kind of soured it for me. It must have been incredible to be there for a game like Palkos 5tds, so that might have changed things, but I’ve never really had interest to return. It checked a bucket list item, that’s all. I’d say it is worth it for that reason, anyway.
Visitor seats were garbage, not that I really expected better, but we were right behind a freaking flag pole. The 50’s era scoreboard was so far and high away it was nearly useless but tracking the game time. One interesting thing was that this was shortly after 9-11 and the stadium is apparently in the flight path of either Midway or O Hare so planes repeatedly flew over the place quite low, rather disconcerting given what has just happened. We hustle out if there and drove all the way home, stopped at some roadside Olive Garden to eat and deservedly all were very sick for the next couple days.
Those things, and the loss kind of soured it for me. It must have been incredible to be there for a game like Palkos 5tds, so that might have changed things, but I’ve never really had interest to return. It checked a bucket list item, that’s all. I’d say it is worth it for that reason, anyway.
Funny I was there for that one as well. Right after 9/11, I remember my brother commenting on this planes as well. Brought my dad, a proud East Libertarian (or Sliberty as he called it), Westinghouse HS and Pitt grad. Good seats at the 40 on the ND side from a Domer colleague of mine who sat right behind us with us family. Had a great time, beautiful day, we were very well treated by everyone we met, enjoyed every minute of it, and my dad who had hated ND his whole life did a complete 180 on the Irish. He became an ND fan that day secondary to only his Alma mater and Michigan State where 2 of my siblings went. I have been back to at least 7-8 games there since, including most of the Pitt games that were played there since then, and I have developed a real affection over the years for the school, the campus, the alums and the football program. The stadium was always very cool in my mind, but they have upgraded it considerably (controversially to the traditionalists) and it’s a lot more comfortable now.
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related question, how feasible is being based in Chicago? Do many people do that and drive in for the game? Are there any trains/subways that make the trip from there to South Bend if we flew into Chicago?
Maybe you have me on ignore.
That’s what we are doing. Flying into Chicago and taking a charter down. Lots of bar/restaurants offer shuttles or you can rent a car.
lol it would help if I read the whole thread before posting. What do you think is better, shuttle or car rental? Is Chicago like NYC where you don't need a car to get around (was only there once for a meeting for a day)?
Let me know if you have any recommends for shuttles/trains
appreciate the offer, but thinking of making a mini-vacation out of this and Chicago fits the bill more so than South Bend.
@bobfree any hotels/restaurants you know specifically that offer a charter? I saw there was an "Irish Express" coach bus but it was kind of pricey. $110 round trip. Would prefer not to rent a car and base myself in downtown. What about the South Shore line? Anyone have experience with that?
