Coast to Coast
Suggestions for route from Arizona....then return to Idaho.
Forum Discussion
Smoky Mountains are near the southern end of the Appalachian chain that runs north from NE Alabama up into New York and the western edge of New England. The cross-country route that takes you closest is I-40; near its intersection with I-75, US-321 takes you into the gateway city of Gatlinburg, where you pick up US-441 to go through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On the east side of the park you can get on the Blue Ridge Parkway to go through the Blue Ridge section of the Appalachians all the way north to Waynesboro, where the road becomes Skyline Drive going through Shenandoah National Park (I just now got home from that trip). Or you can get back to I-40 and move on the the coast of North Carolina, US-74 taking you to Wilmington and either US-17 or the route up the Outer Banks.
To see what used to be fishing villages, you need to go where the fish used to be. For the fisherman exploiting the big cod fisheries, that would be Cape Cod and up the coast of Maine. Other fisheries include Pamlico Sound (the small towns are on the east coast of North Carolina, not connected by a single highway, a lot of side trips from US-17) and Chesapeake Bay (the Annapolis side is easier to visit than the Delmarva side). Long Island Sound was another big fishery, worked from Cape Cod, south shore of Connecticut, north shore of Long Island. Many of the small towns and former fishing villages are now busy resort communities, in the places where they have not yet fully developed into commuter suburbs for big East Coast cities.
Big storms in the middle of the U.S. are pretty much year round, with the latitude of the most frequent activity being determined by the position of the jet stream. Thus the South (East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, southern Georgia) is stormiest in winter months, the mid-south (N. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Illinois and Indiana) in spring, and Colorado into the northern Plains and Great Lakes states gets hit in late spring and on through the summer. I deal with this by watching forecasts (which are pretty good for 3 to 5 days ahead) and not moving when the storms are coming through. At any given location the duration of these storm systems is short, the mistake is to be moving with the front, or along the front (usually a SW to NE diagonal).
To see what used to be fishing villages, you need to go where the fish used to be. For the fisherman exploiting the big cod fisheries, that would be Cape Cod and up the coast of Maine. Other fisheries include Pamlico Sound (the small towns are on the east coast of North Carolina, not connected by a single highway, a lot of side trips from US-17) and Chesapeake Bay (the Annapolis side is easier to visit than the Delmarva side). Long Island Sound was another big fishery, worked from Cape Cod, south shore of Connecticut, north shore of Long Island. Many of the small towns and former fishing villages are now busy resort communities, in the places where they have not yet fully developed into commuter suburbs for big East Coast cities.
Big storms in the middle of the U.S. are pretty much year round, with the latitude of the most frequent activity being determined by the position of the jet stream. Thus the South (East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, southern Georgia) is stormiest in winter months, the mid-south (N. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Illinois and Indiana) in spring, and Colorado into the northern Plains and Great Lakes states gets hit in late spring and on through the summer. I deal with this by watching forecasts (which are pretty good for 3 to 5 days ahead) and not moving when the storms are coming through. At any given location the duration of these storm systems is short, the mistake is to be moving with the front, or along the front (usually a SW to NE diagonal).
