That doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the rules, but whatever.
Why not? The Outlander finds food per day, no need to travel. They can only take the "foraging but no passive perception" while traveling.
If you knew that you couldn't pay proper attention in a forest full of deadly monsters, but that you safely get food when you stopped to camp while paying enough attention to potentially avoid deadly monsters... why wouldn't you?
Well, there are players that do enjoy "the tedium" of exploration by the rules. They're not much different from what was found in the B/X and BECMI editions. And, well, people did have fun with those. It may not be for you or your group, but it's not the universally despised thing.
Sure, some people like it. But if the exploration pillar is only something that people with very specific tastes enjoy... there might be a problem in the exploration pillar. Maybe not if you share those tastes, but if you don't.
You don't need 6 encounters every day. (And, yes, encounters can be anything—from washed out bringes to strange obelisks to mysterious tracks or sudden weather changes to whatever.) You can vary the amount of encounters (less encounters that are more challenging or more encounters that are less challenging), you you could have 1 encounter in a day that require the expenditure of most of the party's resources. Speedbumps are okay, as long as the players are enjoying themselves—in fact, you can use speedbumps to allow the party to show off how awesome they are. Or you could even have encounters that don't require the expenditure of resources—that strange obelisk with some mysterious, ancient script could be an encounter just to be mysterious or to connect the players with the setting's history or be there to telegraph something that may play into the campaign in the future.
Sure, sometimes a squash match is good for the players to feel awesome. But it is also time spent at the table on something that is usually not relevant to the larger picture.
But, the other issue is that if we are just montaging until something interesting happens... that feels like we aren't actually doing the exploration pillar at all. But if we do the exploration pillar, things grind to a halt.
But the question I have is: What do you want from wilderness exploration?
For the sweet spot in the middle. If I knew the exact rules and things to do to make it work, I don't think this would be an issue that comes up so often, and I don't necessarily expect you to have a perfect answer either.
There needs to be something in the middle. A point where players can make informed decisions, and that isn't just wasting their time. Something that takes into account the abilities of players, including high level abilities, but doesn't just cancel those abilities and make them pointless. Something that doesn't drag exploration on for dozens of sessions, but doesn't feel like you are cheating like skipping over it in minutes does.
How much real time do you want your players to spend travelling/do you think the players will have fun with?
That's the crux, isn't it? How much time of this is fun. That does depend, but I don't think it should depend on the player's patience, I think it should depend on the tools and systems they can interact with. And I think that is something getting lost a bit in the noise.
Size matters—how large an area are you wanting the players to explore/how distant is the location you want to travel to? The larger the unknown area the characters have to travel through will likely require more time spent. Though scale can affect this as well—for smaller areas, using the 1 hex = 1 mile makes sense, larger areas should probable use a larger scale like 1 hex = 6 miles (as the DMG suggests) or more (24 miles is a good one for represent 1 hex travelled per day).
Distance traveled in game shouldn't affect time IRL. Also, this is something completely outside the player's control. They make no decisions regarding any of this.
How many encounters you have planned (and how often you roll for random encounters) will affect this, too. Do you want one planned encounter per hex or do you want 1 encounter per x hexes, leaving some empty hexes to breeze through? How often do you want to roll for random encounters (if at all)? Are the encounters interesting, or just rote—do they take place in terrain that affects the encounter (is there quicksand in some spots, iced-over lake, forrest fire, etc.)? Are there weather conditions (rain, heatwave, strong winds, etc.) that affect the encounter? Having a weather generator helps with this (especially if you generate several days or weeks in advance).
Again though, while the number of encounters and the DMs plan for those encounters matters.... players get no say in this. The only thing they can choose is whether or not to engage. They can't make decisions based on this.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to your question. You have to know (ask) your players what they think on the matter and base your answer on that.
Which, is an interesting point, when you start looking at the questions you are asking. Because you are asking "what do you as the DM plan for the players to do or encounter" and at no point do the players get a say, except whether or not to engage.
And, to reiterate a point I think I'm going to be saying a lot, a blind choice isn't a choice.
I actually had a DM who put us in a wailing blizzard in the mountains. It was an eternal storm from the Plane of Ice, never-ending and the DM wanted to challenge us. Did we turn back, did we go right, did we go left, or did we continue forward.
I asked what we knew about navigating the storm (my character was the local expert on such matters) and we were told... basically nothing. We had no idea which decision would mean which thing. We knew we had to get past the storm to reach our goal, and nothing about what the various paths would lead to.
The DM got a little upset when I told them then that our choice didn't matter, so we might as well move forward. They seemed upset, telling me that if we chose wrong we could be stuck in the blizzard forever, or reach the center of the rip in the planes and face worse consequences. And, I told them, "Look, we only know one thing. That we can turn back and head back to the ship, abandoning our mission, and that is the one thing we won't do. Since every other path is identical, it doesn't matter which path we take. So, we might as well go forward. It's all luck."
Soon after that the DM had us meet Yetis who guided us the rest of the way to our destination. But, I remember that feeling from that scenario. It was utterly pointless. Our decision didn't matter, because it was basically a coin flip. We had no tools to figure out anything, and the DM basically told us we couldn't figure out anything, and since we literally couldn't turn back and abandon out mission, we realistically had no choices to make.
And, it isn't the only time that that has happened. I've run into this a lot. Where we are given a choice, but zero information, and so the choice is pointless.
