On long road trips, not hauling the TT, my wife and I will swap driving about every 2-3 hours. We will stop at a Holiday Inn Express along the way by around 5-6 pm. Get some dinner shower and relax in the room for a bit and go to sleep. We only bring in a single little travel bag to get thru the change of clothes and toiletries for each of us.
We will get up at around 5 am and brew up the coffee that comes in the room and get ready to go and usually out by 5:30am.
Repeat until we get to our destination.. Have only stuck to the West coast doing this, but in my single, younger days, I would do coast to coast trips driving an E250 Van and 16' utility trailer by myself in around 4 days...
But that was a long time ago and I was getting paid to do it!
Anyway, just gotta do whatever works best for you in the end.
Good luck!
Mitch