United States Road trips
54 curated road trips in United States — Route 66, Pacific Coast Hwy, Blue Ridge Parkway. Mapped stops, distance, duration, best season, and practical route notes.
These 54 routes range from 50 to 4610 km and from 1 to 36 days, across 1 country. Top picks: Route 66, Pacific Coast Hwy, Blue Ridge Parkway.
LegendaryRoute 66The Mother Road. From Chicago to Santa Monica, Route 66 is America's original road trip, neon diners, desert motels, and wide-open sky that defined a nation on wheels.
LegendaryPacific Coast HwyCalifornia Highway 1 hugs the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles, cliffs, redwoods, Big Sur, and beaches that look designed for film shoots.
LegendaryBlue Ridge ParkwayThe most beautiful drive in the eastern United States, 755 km of ridge-top parkway through the Appalachians from Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains, with no commercial traffic, no billboards, and no stoplights. Named overlooks appear every few kilometres above a landscape of unbroken hardwood forest turning gold and crimson each October.
IconicOverseas HighwayUS-1 leaves the Florida mainland and drives 230km over 42 bridges across the Florida Keys, the highway that goes to sea. Turquoise flats on both sides, pelicans on every railing, and America's most southerly point at the end.
LegendaryBeartooth HighwayThis iconic alpine drive climbs from Red Lodge, Montana to the Beartooth Plateau and down toward Cooke City, threading past hairpin switchbacks, glacial lakes, and broad tundra views. It is one of the highest paved roads in North America, with nonstop scenery and crisp mountain air.
LegendaryRoad to HānaThe Hāna Highway winds along Maui's dramatic northeastern coastline through 59 bridges and 620 curves, bamboo forests, hidden black-sand beaches, waterfalls tumbling into the sea, and one of the most lush drives on Earth.
LegendaryGoing-to-the-Sun RoadThe only road that crosses the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park threads through the most dramatic mountain scenery in the American Rockies, hanging valleys, waterfalls cascading across the road, and grizzly bears roadside.
LegendarySouthern Utah LoopThe greatest concentration of red-rock scenery on Earth. Utah's five national parks, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches, connected by highways of surreal painted desert, hoodoos, and slot canyons.
LegendaryGrand Teton to YellowstoneAmerica's ultimate wildlife corridor, from the jagged Teton skyline above Jackson Hole, north through moose meadows and bison herds into the world's first national park, where the earth erupts with geysers, prismatic hot springs, and mud pots.
IconicDeath Valley CircuitThe lowest, hottest, driest national park on Earth, and one of its most spectacular. Golden badlands, salt flats at 86m below sea level, rainbow-painted hills, and dunes that hum when the sand shifts in the wind.
IconicNatchez Trace ParkwayThe oldest road in America, a 715 km National Parkway following a 10,000-year-old trail used by Native Americans, French traders, and flatboatmen walking home from New Orleans, now a billboard-free parkway of cathedral forest, Civil War earthworks, and ancient mounds.
IconicMillion Dollar HighwayColorado’s Million Dollar Highway is the dramatic stretch of US 550 between Silverton and Ouray, threading over Red Mountain Pass through steep alpine scenery, old mining country, and sheer canyon walls. Expect tight curves, dramatic overlooks, and one of the Rockies’ most memorable short drives.
IconicSeward HighwayThis classic Alaska drive runs from downtown Anchorage south to Seward, following Turnagain Arm past tidal mudflats, glacier-capped peaks, and roadside viewpoints. It’s a straightforward paved route, but the scenery demands frequent stops for hikes, wildlife viewing, and overlooks along Kenai Peninsula’s dramatic coast.
IconicOlympic Peninsula LoopThis classic loop circles Washington’s Olympic Peninsula from Seattle or Tacoma into a landscape of rain forest, wild Pacific beaches, glacier-capped peaks, and mountain passes. Follow forest highways to Hurricane Ridge, the Hoh Rain Forest, Ruby Beach, and the shores of Lake Quinault for a compact, varied Pacific Northwest road trip.
NotableGreat River RoadThe Great River Road follows the Mississippi River through ten states, linking river towns, levee roads, historic downtowns, and wide floodplain scenery. Drive from Itasca State Park in Minnesota to the Gulf coast at Venice, Louisiana for a classic American road trip rich in birdlife, steamboat history, and changing river landscapes.
IconicBadlands & Black Hills LoopSouth Dakota's astonishing concentration of American myth, the razor-ridged Badlands spires and buttes rising from the Great Plains, the ancient Lakota sacred Black Hills, Crazy Horse's unfinished mountain monument, and Mount Rushmore's four presidential faces carved into granite. Bison herds, prairie dogs, and the ghosts of the frontier frame the most symbolically loaded landscape in the American West.
NotableBoston to New YorkThe east coast's most storied corridor, from Boston's Freedom Trail and Samuel Adams breweries, zig-zagging through Newport's Gilded Age ocean mansions and Hartford's Mark Twain House to the architectural immensity of New York City. Tesla Superchargers every 100 km make this the original electric road trip route in America.
NotableCajun Country DriveFrom New Orleans' jazz balconies to the cypress bayous and accordion halls of Acadiana, 274 km through the beating heart of French Louisiana, where Creole cooking, zydeco music, and Mardi Gras traditions survive in a culture unlike anywhere else in America.
NotableCannonball RunThe legendary coast-to-coast dash from the Red Ball Garage on Manhattan to the Portofino Inn on Redondo Beach, dreamed up by Brock Yates in 1971 after the 55mph national speed limit threatened to kill American road culture. Dan Gurney ran it in 35 hours 54 minutes at an average of 80mph. The record stands at just under 26 hours.
Hidden GemCape Ann, MassachusettsThe North Shore route from Newburyport south along Cape Ann, clam shacks on Route 1A, the Parker River Wildlife Refuge's 800 species of birds and plants, Crane Beach (one of the longest and sandiest in New England), maritime Essex, and the working fishing port of Gloucester. A short drive dense with seafood and Atlantic atmosphere.
IconicCape Cod, Old King's HighwayRoute 6A, the Old King's Highway, traces the Bay side of Cape Cod through 300 years of sea-captain architecture, cranberry bogs, saltmarsh, and shingled villages. The Cape narrows to a sandy hook at Provincetown, where the Pilgrims first landed in 1620.
IconicChain of Craters RoadThe most geological road on Earth, descending 1200m from Kīlauea's active summit caldera to the Pacific coast, past pit craters and still-smoking lava fields, ending where a previous flow swallowed the road whole and entered the sea.
IconicDenali HighwayThe Denali Highway runs between Paxson and Cantwell across a vast sweep of tundra, alpine lakes, and glacier-carved ridges with constant views of the Alaska Range. Long gravel stretches and frequent wildlife sightings make it a classic remote drive, best enjoyed slowly in clear summer weather.
NotableDenver to San FranciscoThe Vanishing Point drive, west from Denver across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California. The 1971 cult film sent Kowalski west on I-70 in a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440 Magnum. The real route skips the interstate and traces the movie's huge horizons: the Utah desert, ghost towns, the Sierra Nevada, and San Francisco Bay.
NotableDinosaur Diamond Prehistoric HighwayA loop through the greatest concentration of dinosaur fossils on Earth, the Dinosaur National Monument's quarry wall (1,500 bones embedded in exposed sandstone), the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, Arches National Park's red-rock arches, and the Book Cliffs' 160-million-year-old Morrison Formation strata. Where the Jurassic Period meets the American canyon country.
IconicFantastic Canyon VoyageA grand Arizona circuit from cowboy-era Wickenburg to the rim of the world at Grand Canyon Village, threading through the Old West centres of Prescott and Jerome, the vortex-energy red rocks of Sedona, and the pine plateau of Williams before the canyon opens in all its terrifying magnificence.
IconicFour Corners CruiseSuper-sized Southwest, from Las Vegas through the Valley of Fire into Utah's slot canyons, across the Colorado Plateau to Monument Valley's prehistoric buttes, then south to the Grand Canyon and back through Red Rock Canyon. Five states, every major landscape of the American Southwest, and what may be the best day hike in North America at Zion.
NotableHighway 1, FloridaUS-1 traces Florida's Atlantic spine from the Georgia border to Miami Beach, through the Golden Isles, historic St Augustine, Kennedy Space Center, the Space Coast, and Miami's art deco shore. Not to be confused with the Keys Overseas Highway; this is Florida's forgotten Atlantic coast road through lighthouse towns, rocket launch pads, and Art Deco glamour.
NotableHighway 61 Blues TrailThe "Blues Highway" runs from Memphis to New Orleans along the Mississippi River through the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues, juke joints, catfish shacks, antebellum plantations, and the music that changed the world.
IconicHistoric Columbia River HighwayThis classic Oregon drive follows the restored Historic Columbia River Highway through the Columbia River Gorge, linking waterfalls, stone bridges, and bluff-top viewpoints. Starting near Troutdale and finishing in the Hood River area, it blends early 20th-century engineering with constant river-and-cliff scenery, best enjoyed at a leisurely pace.
IconicJimmy Buffett's Florida KeysThe Florida Keys Scenic Highway, a prestigious All-American Road, is Jimmy Buffett's country. Hemingway lived here, Tennessee Williams wrote here, and Thomas McGuane caroused here. The drive hops one bridge at a time through a magnificent seascape to Key West's Margaritaville.
IconicJohn Muir's Sierra NevadaWhat the canyonlands were to Edward Abbey, the Sierras were to John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club drove 260 miles of road through three national parks from north to south. Big trees, big cliffs, big waterfalls, and the dramatic descent into Kings Canyon on the alpine Scenic Byway.
IconicKancamagus HighwayNew Hampshire's "Kanc", NH-112 through the White Mountain National Forest, is the quintessential New England foliage drive. No traffic lights, no commercial strip, no stops for 56km of blazing maple canopy, covered bridges, and cold mountain streams.
NotableKlondike HighwayClimbing out of Skagway over the White Pass where pack animals collapsed in their thousands during the Gold Rush, the Klondike Highway follows the prospectors' footsteps through steely lakes and abandoned roadhouses to Dawson City, a boomtown frozen in 1898.
LegendaryLake Tahoe to Death Valley via YosemiteCalifornia's greatest single road trip, from the alpine clarity of Lake Tahoe through Yosemite's granite cathedral valley, over the 3,031m Tioga Pass into the Eastern Sierra's high desert, past the tufa towers of Mono Lake, and down through the Alabama Hills below Whitney to Death Valley's salt pan 86 metres below sea level. The full geological range of the American West in one drive.
Hidden GemLee Against GrantThe road through central Virginia provides access to the pivotal 1864 Overland Campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg, where Ulysses S. Grant outmanoeuvred Robert E. Lee through nine brutal months until Lee's final retreat and surrender. Virginia has a network of Civil War trails to rival the Ho Chi Minh Trail; three national parks preserve the key battlefields.
Hidden GemLonesome Pine TrailThrough the Virginia Coalfields and Big Stone Gap, a forgotten Appalachian landscape of mountain music, coal country heritage, and ancient forest along the winding back roads of southwest Virginia.
Hidden GemLong Island LoopBeginning and ending in New York City, this Long Island circuit heads east on the Expressway to Montauk, then returns down the Southern State past 30 vineyards, Hamptons mega-mansions, unspoilt North Fork farmland, Shelter Island, and Fire Island (car-free, visit on foot). Allow four days for the Gilded Age beach resorts, Cedar Point lighthouse, and the Sagamore Hill home of Theodore Roosevelt.
IconicNapa Valley Wine RoadCalifornia's Silverado Trail and Highway 29 thread through the most celebrated wine valley in the Americas, grand château wineries, Michelin-starred restaurants, mustard flowers in spring, and golden harvest light in fall.
IconicOahu's Windward CoastThe Ko'olau pali throws a wall of fluted green peaks above Oahu's windward shore. H3 and the Kamehameha Highway trace the coast through taro fields, ancient heiau, sacred valleys, and turquoise bays where Hawaiians surfed a thousand years before tourists arrived.
NotableOld West, ArizonaFrom desert cattle ranches to mile-high mountain towns, this Sonoran Desert drive climbs from the cowboy capital of Wickenburg through a former copper boomtown hanging on a cliff to the red-rock vortexes of Sedona and Flagstaff's ponderosa pines.
Hidden GemPilgrim TrailFrom the tip of Cape Cod where the Mayflower first anchored to the witch trial city of Salem, 178 km of colonial New England history through dune-backed shores, Plymouth Rock, Boston's Freedom Trail, and the most witchcraft-obsessed city in America.
IconicPortland to Bar HarborMaine's rocky Downeaster coast from the peninsula city of Portland north to Bar Harbor, through Bath's shipyards, Rockland's lobster wharves, Camden's perfect harbour, and the spruce-forested headlands of Acadia National Park. The US Northeast's finest short coastal drive.
LegendarySan Juan SkywayColorado's Million Dollar Highway, the San Juan Skyway loops through Ouray's "Switzerland of America" canyon town, the 3,358m Red Mountain Pass above collapsed mine workings, Silverton's Victorian mining town, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, and Mesa Verde's Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. The most dramatic mountain circuit in the Rocky Mountains.
IconicSkyline DriveSkyline Drive is the classic ridge-top route through Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, tracing 105 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains. The road links mountain overlooks, short hikes, and forested valleys between Front Royal and Rockfish Gap, with especially vivid color in spring bloom and autumn foliage.
IconicStephen King's MaineStephen King has two homes in Maine, and many of his gritty stories are set here. US Route 1 runs "downeast" past the LL Bean flagship, the Bath Iron Works, the 1827 Pemaquid lighthouse, and the spectacular Penobscot Narrows Bridge, with Acadia's pink granite coast as the centrepiece.
NotableThe American SouthFrom Charleston's antebellum grandeur north through the Civil War's bloodiest battlefields, Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, this drive traces the fault line of American history through plantation country, mountain gaps, and the cities that shaped the nation's most conflicted century.
Hidden GemThe Crooked RoadVirginia's Heritage Music Trail threads through the Blue Ridge hollows where American roots music was born, fiddle tunes, bluegrass flatpicking, gospel harmonies, and old-time mountain ballads played in courthouses, country stores, and dance halls along 531 km of winding Appalachian road.
IconicWhite Mountains KancamagusNew Hampshire's Kancamagus Highway cuts through the White Mountain National Forest without a single traffic light. In fall, the hardwoods burn crimson and gold, one of the great foliage drives in the world.
IconicWhite Rim RoadThe otherworldly terrain of Canyonlands National Park is intimidating enough from the hard-top, once you leave the tarmac for the White Rim Road, it feels like driving on Mars. A 4WD-only loop around the Island in the Sky mesa, sneaking along sheer cliff walls above two deep river canyons. Built by Cold War uranium miners; no potable water anywhere on the route.
NotableWillamette ValleyPinot Noir is the grape that put Oregon on the wine map when Eyrie Vineyards beat the French at the 1979 Wine Olympics. The 180km Willamette basin runs between the coast and the Cascades, I-5 and 99W threading past vineyards, hop yards, winding rivers, and bubbling hot springs from Portland to Eugene.
NotableBonneville Salt FlatsThe remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville, 200km² of blinding white salt crust where land speed records are broken and the curvature of the Earth is visible to the naked eye. I-80 is one of the straightest, most surreal roads in America.
IconicThe Hogback, UtahRoute 12 south from Torrey climbs to a 2,750 m pass through Dixie National Forest pine trees before reaching the narrow spine of The Hogback, a tarred road balanced on a razor ridge with near-vertical drops into canyon on both sides. One of the most dramatic stretches of road in America, ending in the frontier town of Escalante with Cowboy Blues' legendary local trout.
IconicWaimea Canyon DriveThe "Grand Canyon of the Pacific", HI-550 climbs from Kauaʻi's red-dirt lowlands to a 1200m lookout above a canyon 16km long and 900m deep, its walls stripped in ochre, violet, and jungle green by five million years of erosion.