Tonight's the night I learned enough detail to realize that if I need to travel west on short notice, there are no good choices. The bus is the bus. The train would have to depart from Philly and it would take 16 hours to get there. Plane tickets from the area airport to the airport closest to my destination would be prohibitively expensive, and even when I got there I'd need to rent a car for the final 60 miles. Trip itineraries online showed no direct flights, and the ones that would get there eventually required routing via Atlanta or Charlotte. Now, that's what I call the long way of getting somewhere.
If I flew from Philly to Detroit, or Newark to Detroit, there'd be a direct flight that would cost less than $100 for the round trip and take less than two hours to arrive. But that still leaves the 1 hour-plus to get to Philly or the 90 minutes-plus to get to Newark, let alone the distance from Detroit to the middle of nowhere.
So in short, the most desirable flight leaves the longest remaining driving distance on both ends. The next best option takes longer and costs more due to less direct flights, and you don't have much less driving ahead of you from Toledo or Fort Wayne. And then there's the travel itinerary that means the least driving time getting to the one airport and after leaving the other one, and if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
It's a little late to take flying lessons and acquire a Cessna. But hey, I could skip public transport altogether and just drive for 10 hours. Each way.
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