Nice movie but one of the main plot theme does not make sense at all....

Alice wants to move from Socorro to Monterey to rebuild her life as singer....planning to get there by fall when Tommy starts school again and stopping along the way to work and earn some money...ok...well....the problem is that Socorro to Monterey is only a 16 hours trip, according to Google....if she really wanted to get to Monterey she could do so in less than 2 days...only one hotel stop!
It is probably less cos effective to stop in the middle and looking for job (you have to eat and sleep) if you really have a clear destination in mind.
She should have been easily able to scrape the few dollars needed (again, only one motel stop needed and you can have few cheap meals) to do the trip all at once before leaving.
The "go to Monterey" should have been played more along the lines of a state of mind, in my opinion, than a real immediate objective, with the trip being more of an excuse to do some soul searching than a "go from A to B" proposition.
Alternatively, Scorsese should have added to the plot a more plausible excuse for stopping along in Arizona, for example car trouble costing money and time to fix so the need to get a job, etc...