Traveling the back roads

Back roads when feasible

As told by a trucker long ago :

Do you want to get there or look at the scenery ?


Interstates are fine if you have a schedule to keep. Otherwise its local roads for us. We find lots of great people and sites along the way. We don't have many favorite stories of when we spotted something from the interstate, but we do have a book full of wonderful memories found along the local roads.

Choose wisely grasshoppah

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
-- Charles Kuralt

He's right y'know.

Matt

I use the U.S. numbered highways extensively. In much of the country between the Mississippi tier of states and the Sierra Nevada, this is the primary highway system, unless you are crossing East-West on three or four narrow corridors.

You usually have to drive slower, and more carefully, because even where multi-lane divided these roads are not limited access, and can be carrying slow traffic, like agricultural implements, bicycles, and animal-drawn vehicles. Lane widths are usually at least twelve feet where two-lane, but often the shoulders are unimproved, very narrow, and sometimes non-existent (state highways particularly).

I use the back roads (county roads, farm to markets, oilfield service roads) locally. Sometimes paved, sometimes just "improved" with total width sometimes 20 feet or less. I can't recommend these for RV travel.

We full-timed 16 years and traveled constantly on secondary roads - even in the western mountain states. Of course, with our 40' motorhome we did some research before taking off. The 'Mountain Directory' worked great as one of our tools. We love the scenic mountain roads.

We also kept one road atlas for the 16 years. When looking at it it is a maze of colors from our highliters and the western states have just about all secondary roads highlighted. It brings back good memories when looking at it. We also choose public parks as our choice and you'll find plenty on the secondary roads.

We enjoy traveling on back roads if we have the time. Last time I drove from California to the east coast we took as many back roads as possible. Drove the southern route and come back the northern route.

We took six months doing it and enjoyed every mile we took through a lot of two lane roads.

Being thinking of doing it again.

We'll go hundreds of miles outa the way to avoid the interstates. Don't have a choice this year gotta stop by the brother in laws in Atlanta.

Always take the side-back roads when we can and have the time. On one trip in CA heading east from Barstow CA toward Arizona on highway 40, saw that old route 66 went alongside winding in and out and under 40. So thought that would be fun. Actually it had 66 signs occasionally painted on it.....for many miles. But it kept getting worse and worse, rougher and rougher until I was almost out of paved road. Finally had to slow to 5 MPH, stop, unhook, turn around, hook back up and reverse drive for 5 miles until an opportunity to turn off, cross the active rail line and get back on 40 going east. Lots of fun but added a couple hours to the drive time, dinking around on basically a paved road about to turn to dirt.

interstates are for getting there.
secondary roads are for once you have gotten there.
bumpy

Old-Biscuit wrote:

Interstates are for getting there.
Secondary/back roads are for enjoying getting there

Totally agree.