How do I meet more with my long-distance friends?

I seem to move around the midwest every 2 years. I’ve made quite a few friends here and there, but a lot of them are about 2 or 3 hours away. We all have to do the grown up thing and work, but most of us get weekends off. I have a fairly fuel efficient car, but it’s still a lot to go back and forth to spend a little over a day at someone’s place to hang out. We only really hang out maybe once every 2 months or so, and I’d like to do that more often.

Are there any options that would maybe alleviate things like cost and/or time? We talked about maybe meeting up at a middle point, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas or suggestions that might help out.