Best and Worst Highways

[bizsmith@yahoo.com]

Another topic about a bad road in Oklahoma prompted me to ask the forum, where are the best and worst highways in the country?

In my opinion the worst highways is easy. Oklahoma wins it hands down followed closely by Colorado. The third ranking for worst is a little harder but my home state of Minnesota is right up there in the running. I haven't traveled to every state by motor home so I'm sure there are many opinions out there.

Best roads are harder to pin down. In the 50's Texas would have had my vote, but not so anymore.

We mostly avoid the Interstates because we are usually not in a hurry to get somewhere. Charles Kuralt said it best, "The interstate highway system is a wondrous thing. You can go coast to coast and border to border and never see a thing." In my opinion the interstate system is falling apart faster than it is being kept up.

My vote for the single most RV friendly road is the Natchez Trace Parkway. No commercial vehicles are allowed, gentle curves, absolutely no trash on the right of way, and no billboards. It runs 400+ miles from Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS. If you are in a hurry forget it, speed limit is 50 and strictly enforced. It is mostly limited access but only two lanes comfortably wide. It follows the historic trail of the boaters that took their goods south on the river and then walked back to Nashville.

I would like other opinions.

[tbutler]

I agree with you that the Natchez Trace Parkway is one of the best roads in the country. Every RV'er should travel this route at some time to really experience a park that is made for motor homes. We have traveled it in both our 40 foot motor homes towing and found it to be very easy to navigate. Of particular help were the signs that indicated if there was no loop drive or turn around at attractions. There were relatively few of these but if you are towing, that notice will save your bacon. The only problem we had was early one spring when we found tree branches brushing us on the southern end of the route. We stopped at the visitors center and found the same condition getting into and out of the parking lot. I talked to the people at the visitors center and filled out an evaluation form. I haven't had a chance to travel there since but assume that alerted them to the problem and the trees were trimmed.

Regarding states, each state has many thousands of miles of highways. Rather than rating by states, I think the discussion would be better focused if we discussed particular roads. Even some sections of roads are bad while others are quite easy to travel. As an example, we travel from Texas to Denver Colorado frequently and one route we take is US 87 and then US 287 in northern Texas. Until you get close to the Oklahoma border, US 287 is good road. At the town of Castaneda the road narrows and becomes extremely rough. It is about 15 miles of bone jarring driving in rutted paved road. US 287 continues in Oklahoma and is pretty good road, a relief by comparison to the highway to the south. Near the northern border of Oklahoma and Colorado US 287 deteriorates again into rough road. Once again, cross the border and it is a wonderful high speed highway in Colorado. There is little traffic on this route and few towns to slow down for. Approaching I-70 where leave US 287 for the interstate to Denver, the route is now under repair. We chose to detour to the west on a small road and that was a mistake. No delay in construction could have been worse than the alternate we took!

That brings up another topic. We've traveled in all 49 RV states and most of Canada. There are states that we've only traveled through 2 or 3 times in ten years. There are other states we travel almost every year. So any discussion of road conditions is time dependent. A road that is rough and almost impossible may be repaired several years later and become a fine easy to travel road.

Another factor in travel is also the amount of traffic you encounter on a road. Some roads are heavily traveled by trucks, others are auto racetracks. Both these factors make the driving experience less enjoyable. I recently wrote up some highway information in my Blog here on the FMCA site. Like you, I find the roads in my home state to be flawed in many cases. I lived most of my life in the St. Louis area. I-70 from St. Louis to Kansas City is a traffic nightmare. I-70 through Kansas City is its own special category of nightmare with left exits thrown in just to keep your attention. There are lots of trucks and heavy auto traffic on I-70 and everyone is in a hurry. Travel on a weekend when the U of MO at Columbia traffic is on the way home or on the way to a football game and this is even worse. Add in some section of the road that needs repair and it is one highway that I'll try to avoid when possible. As a result we altered our usual route to visit friends in South Dakota. The usual route would have been I-70 to I-29 to South Dakota. This time we went north from the St. Louis area on US 61 and US 218 and I-380 to Waterloo, Iowa. Roads were generally good and traffic was light until we hit rush hour traffic from Iowa City to Waterloo. We then headed west on US 2. We found this highway to be lightly traveled and in excellent condition until we got about 100 miles from Sioux City, IA. There it gave out to two lane with an irregular route through small towns. Parts of this section were rough and in need of repair. At Sioux City we joined I-29 for the final leg of our trip. Continuing on west after our visit with friends we decided to rejoin US 2 across Nebraska. There were several sections under repair but we found the road to be lightly traveled and in generally good condition. There were a few widely scattered towns to pass through most lowering the speed limit to 50 or 45 with no stop in town. The route was relatively easy and became quite scenic in the sand hills of western Nebraska. US 2 becomes even better in Wyoming. We enjoyed the ride into Casper where we stayed at Wal-Mart for the night. The road from Casper to Rawlins was not quite as good. That got us back to I-80 and our usual route to northern California.