Abstract Long-distance travel and social network geography are important topics both understudied due to lack of data. This paper describes a travel survey instrument that included social network contact locations for 110 participants in a convenience sample from 3 states in the USA. New types of measures were successful at capturing a range of unique annual travel behaviours and social network extent. Respondents demonstrated significant variation in their social network extent, and new metrics of social network geography may be feasible from surveys. The association between social network extent and long-distance travel is still tenuous, but the limited relationships in this relatively small dataset suggest further survey data are worth pursuing.