Best way to stay off Interstates. From FL to Rapid City, SD

2gypsies wrote:
I thought in another post the OP was planning to go to Yellowstone, also.

Yes, you are correct. From Badlands to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone I will take the main interstates. Getting out of Fl i will take I75 and was planning on taking main interstates up through GA, TN, KY, IL, IA, then over in SD.

I have been told by so many to try and avoid the Interstates due to the speed of everyone else and that, "I'll get there the same time because my speed wont change from interstate to highway". However, some good points were made here regarding the passing lanes and longer drive times.

I would like to avoid high traffic and will plan my traveling to avoid metro areas around busiest times. I would like to avoid the extra draft situations by staying off interstates, but I also do not want to add more days to driving just to do so.

It looks like there are benefits/disadvantages to each so I'm going to just see how it goes and have an alternate route (highway) to switch to if I want to compare the two.

I thought in another post the OP was planning to go to Yellowstone, also.

But there aren't any mountains east of Rapid City, or south of it. There the Black Hills to the SW. But nothing else east of I25.

You didn't say how much time you have for this trip and that might be a consideration. However, we successfully traveled 16 years of full-timing and rarely got on an interstate.

Get yourself a good road atlas and pour over possible routes. Get a highlighter pen and mark the route. You can easily bypass big cities by not making big detours.

Once you get beyond the Plains states I'd suggest you get the 'Mountain Directory of Truckers and RVers' so you don't get into trouble in the mountains. There are many mountain routes that are very easy for RVers though so don't try to avoid mountains. That's where you'll find the beauty. Get the book from the original site, not Amazon. Amazon sells it for waaaaay more than the site does, for some reason.

Good travels to you.

bclan6 wrote:
I suppose I'll just have to bear it because my route is already planned out and way faster than the highways.

Well you're gonna have to explain that one.
How is the route "planned" so that it can't be changed?
And how can it be "way faster" than the highways ??

I drive my C at 60-65 in the right lane of Interstates ALL the time and it is NOT a problem......mostly.

Other drivers generally know you are "old and slow" and give you space.

But I still HATE an RV on the Interstates, mine at least, because big trucks overtaking from the rear make an air wake that is very difficult to handle.......and I've been driving big boxy things on the road for near to 40 years. Oddly enough, passing that same truck on a 2-lane coming from the opposite direction doesn't seem to cause any problem at all.

Except for the big towns and mountains previously mentioned, I find it MUCH less stressful travelling a 2 or 4 lane non-interstate and the time difference usually isn't that much......given that your speed isn't much different.

To each his own. There is no "right way" and no "wrong way".
And people who don't do it the way YOU do are not necessarily stupid.

bclan6 wrote:
My biggest concern with taking the Interstates is being blown all over. I drive about 50-60 and don't want to go faster than that. I suppose I'll just have to bear it because my route is already planned out and way faster than the highways.

I just don't think it's safe going 10-20 miles under the speed limit either, but I'm still new at this and am not going to do 65 while towing.

I drive between 59-62MPH when towing and have never really felt pressured on the interstates or 4 lane highways, because there is always an opportunity to pass. I do travel a lot on U.S Highways and state highways. The speed limits on these roads is often 60, 65, 70 MPH and with only limited opportunities to pass and often limited opportunities to pull over to let traffic pass there have been numerous occassions when over anxious/aggressive drivers have passed under less than ideal/safe conditions. No matter what highways you take, you need to be aware of the other traffic and the conditions around you all of the time.

Thanks for all the advice and tips!

A few years back, DW and I traveled from Rapid City to Middle Georgia by avoiding the interstates. It was a great trip. We got to see a lot of interesting places that are off the beaten path, such as Fort Scott National Historic Site and Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. We stayed a night in a free city park in Nebraska. We got on the interstate only once for about 15 miles and that was when we were crossing the Mississippi. The largest city we went through was Huntsville, AL so big city traffic was not a problem. Have a great trip.

Hundreds of ways, many bypassing the major cities, details depend on starting and destination, just which cities you can tolerate, which ones you would most like to avoid.

Realistically, the easiest and safest way is by Interstate, and it goes through Atlanta, Nashville, St Louis, and Omaha, only the first two of which tend to be real bottlenecks if you hit them at the wrong time of day. St Louis and KC have real good bypasses both ways around, with traffic light enough that some of it will be running 15-20 MPH over the speed limit (which is what bothers me about those two).

You can avoid Atlanta by using I-10 to get more to the west before going north. I like to go US-49 through Mississippi from Biloxi, (or US-98 from Mobile) through Jackson to connect with US-65/I-530 into Little Rock, I-40 to Fort Smith, where you would take I-540/US-71 to Kansas City to join I-29 going north (I don't, I'm still going west at that point). You could go on to Oklahoma City and I-35 to Wichita, or take the Muskogee Turnpike to Tulsa, then US-412 (another toll road) to I-35, but either way, once past Wichita you start running out of good routes up to the Nebraska and the Dakotas.

If I had to choose something two-lane going north from south central Kansas, it would probably be US-81 out of Wichita, up to I-80 (US-30 if you really must) then north again on US-385 out of Sidney, going into Rapid City.

A note on the two-lane highways. They can be so-so in Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri, sometimes pretty bad in Louisiana and Oklahoma, fairly good in Kansas.

Speed limits for these on the plains tend to be 65 or higher, and local drivers like to run about 5-10 over, a lot of the big trucks at 70 or slightly more, especially grain haulers and dump trucks hauling building materials (the way they get paid is an incentive to complete more trips per day). If you will be going 50-60 MPH on this class of road in the middle of the country, you will be holding up traffic a lot more than on the Interstates, where at least the faster drivers have a passing lane.

FWIW, I do almost all of my regional travel on state highways and US-numbered highways (there no Interstate highways going where I am going), and on long trips I now make it a 50-50 mix most of the time. Getting off the superhighways adds, on the average, an extra half day of driving time for each day of the trip. Where I use the superhighways in particular is to get through large cities and to go around small cities.

Where Interstates replaced a numbered highway, and the old road still exists, the old one goes through the city, no bypass. The highway has become "main street" and there may be traffic signals every 1/4 mile, and you wait at all of them because protected left turns have greatly increased wait times. When you get to town center, speed limits often drop to as low as 20 mph, for protection of people using crosswalks and backing out of street parking.

A city of 30,000 people might take as much as 20 minutes to crawl through. A town of two thousand might slow you down to 30 MPH for 5 to 10 miles, 20 mph or less for a half mile to a mile. In much of the country, spacing of these towns is horse and buggy round trip for market days, thus every 10-20 miles unless they've become ghost towns.

The other thing I've noticed traveling this way is that some places have local traffic customs, drivers will do things you do not expect (particularly pull out or back out in front of you) because even though through traffic has right of way, local custom is to courteously yield to someone leaving a driveway or backing out into the street. But of course, you also find these variations on the superhighways, particularly how people use the on ramps, how they merge, at what speed, and who they expect to yield.

My biggest concern with taking the Interstates is being blown all over. I drive about 50-60 and don't want to go faster than that. I suppose I'll just have to bear it because my route is already planned out and way faster than the highways.

I just don't think it's safe going 10-20 miles under the speed limit either, but I'm still new at this and am not going to do 65 while towing.