How many hours is it from California to Colorado?

17 hours, 33 minutes

Average driving speed: 64.5 mph
Kilometers per hour: 103.8 km/h
This is based on typical traffic conditions for this route.

Map of driving directions from Colorado to California

View a map with driving directions using your preferred map provider: Google Maps, Bing Maps, or MapQuest.

More trip calculations

Driving time from Colorado to California

How long is the drive from Colorado to California? The total driving time is 17 hours, 33 minutes.

Your trip begins in the state of Colorado. It ends in the state of California.

If you're planning a road trip, you might be interested in seeing the total driving distance from Colorado to California.

You can also calculate the cost to drive from Colorado to California based on current local gas prices and an estimate of your car's best gas mileage.

Since this is a long drive, you might want to stop halfway and stay overnight in a hotel. You can find the city that is halfway between Colorado and California.

Planning to fly a plane instead? You might be more interested in calculating the flight time from Colorado to California.

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Driving time calculator

Travelmath helps you find the driving time based on actual directions for your road trip. You can find out how long it will take to drive between any two cities, airports, states, countries, or zip codes. This can also help you plan the best route to travel to your destination. Compare the results with the flight time calculator to see how much longer it might take to drive the distance instead of flying. You can also print out pages with a travel map.

Driving non-stop from California to Colorado

How far is Colorado from California? Here's the quick answer if you have friends taking shifts as driver so that you can make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 1,745 miles or 2808 km

Driving time: 26 hours, 46 minutes

This is a really long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would actually take, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would be if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from California to Colorado

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between California, Maryland and Colorado (CO). Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula. For a long distance, this appears as a curve on the map, and this is often the route that commercial airlines will take so it's a good estimate of the frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate as well.

Flight distance: 1,553 miles or 2499 km

Flight time: 3 hours, 36 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 192 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.1x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/7th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a medium length flight, so unless you have a nice private jet, you might be booking a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.

California to Colorado road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from California to Colorado, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Colorado, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over a number of days.

Road trip: 4 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 27 hours on the road with 3 overnights

Itinerary

Start at California.

Drive for about 7 hours, then stop in Tonopah and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 2.5 hours, then stop in Ely (Nevada) and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in Manti. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 3.5 hours, then stop at Goblin Valley State Park and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 3.5 hours then stop at Arches National Park. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 4.5 hours, then stop in Vail and stay for about 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 2 hours and arrive at Colorado.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

California to Colorado airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)

Arrival airport: Colorado Springs Airport (COS)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 143 minutes

Getting to your destination: 115 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from DCA connecting through DFW and arriving at COS flying on American Airlines. We can figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, time to taxi on the runways, and an average layover time of about 2 hours.

Initial flight time: 3 hours, 15 minutes

Connecting airport: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)

Connection flight time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from California to Colorado including time spent getting to and from the airports, roughly 2 hours at the departure airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, plus the connecting flight with a 2-hour layover.

Total travel time: 13 hours

To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:

Plan a trip to Colorado

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Colorado (CO). Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Colorado. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Colorado like Hiking in Breckenridge & Steamboat Springs. Click the button below to explore Colorado in detail.

How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Colorado to California, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know California, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about California!

How far is Colorado from California by plane?

How many days does it take to drive from California to Colorado?

How long is Los Angeles to Colorado?

How long does it take to get to Colorado from California by train?