The Mother of all Road Trips: the Ultimate American Road Trip

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I am a great fan of road trips, so how about this one, the ultimate American road trip? There are two routes in the article, one visiting national parks and monuments, the other cities:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/10/a-data-genius-computes-the-ultimate-american-road-trip/

[bretedge]

Cool, but my ultimate road trip doesn't follow someone else's route.  I spent four months on the road in 2005 with no real itinerary or agenda.  If something looked cool/interesting/weird, we stopped.  Best four months of my life.

[Peter McLennan]

I'm with Bret.  My road trips are driven by geography and weather. Freedom is the keyword.  The last thing I want is to be controlled by someone else's itinerary.
Get it while you can.  I think that they'll be impossible one day soon.

[langier]

Too much tech involved. I still use my 1955 Rand McNally road atlas for planning my trips :-) I prefer the road less traveled, one that starts without an "I", the one where you will find the real gems and monuments of America, seldom found on any one else's list or map :-)

It's the journey, the finding of serendipity that is the real adventure awaiting!

[bretedge]

Too much tech involved. I still use my 1955 Rand McNally road atlas for planning my trips :-) I prefer the road less traveled, one that starts without an "I", the one where you will find the real gems and monuments of America, seldom found on any one else's list or map :-)

It's the journey, the finding of serendipity that is the real adventure awaiting!

I'm the same way, although my atlas is a wee bit  newer than yours. ;-)  Seriously though, I'd rather use a paper map over GPS any day.  We stay off the main highways as much as possible, too.  Over the years I've found so many wonderful places by just wandering somewhat aimlessly.

[Peter McLennan]

My three favourite words on my Rand McNally?

"Closed In Winter"

Always a sign of a reeeeeely good road.

[bretedge]

My three favourite words on my Rand McNally?

"Closed In Winter"

Always a sign of a reeeeeely good road.

Haha! That's a great tip!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Speaking of ultimate road trips... hard to beat this one:

Drive from Europe to the U.S.? Russia proposes world's greatest superhighway

[Praki]

Putin collects the toll?

[MikeHudson]

I drove to Alaska in '88 with a couple college friends (starting in Chicago)- we still refer to it as the Ultimate Road Trip. No real agenda, except to make it to Alaska, then down to Oakland to drop off one of the guys. 9500 miles total. Best trip ever. I'm trying to figure out how to do it with my two boys now, before they head off for college in the near future.

Traveling with two non-photographers meant having to miss a lot of photo-ops, but I want to do it again now on my own terms. Getting to Alaska isn't the goal, the journey along the way is.

[langier]

Even today, that journey could be that of a lifetime! As a road, it would be easier to travel than today which requires land and sea, air and rail, but still either would be a real adventure. Even from Homer/Fairbanks, Alaska to Patagonia, Argentina is quite an adventurous trip today and requires portage around the Darién Gap of Panama, much like the gap between Russia and Alaska through the Bering Straight, which in 2011 was envisioned as a rail tunnel, twice as long as the Chunnel.

[Jimbo57]

Speaking of ultimate road trips... hard to beat this one:

Drive from Europe to the U.S.? Russia proposes world's greatest superhighway

It's a heck of a long way round to drive from London to New York.

A much shorter route would be a bridge from Shetland to Iceland, another from Iceland to Greenland and then down into Newfoundland. Much the same as they did with the Florida Keys.