US Highway Appreciation Thread!!

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I think the US highway system is especially easy to obsess over, especially the interstate highways. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of maps that lend themselves to posting here, as far as I could find, but here are a few:



If only it were larger . . .





Personal favorites:



Home Sweet Home:

The first map doesn't show 69... it scared me before. That highway goes between Michigan and Indiana, I grew up near it. Anyway, I took a temp job in Texas... and thought I went crazy when I glimpsed a sign that said 69! Heh, turns out that highway is going to be extended all the way to Texas and they already put up "future I-69" signs.

I prefer how we call our highways in Canada:

Trans-Canada
Yellowhead
Coquihalla
Queen Elizabeth II
Crowsnest
Sea-to-Sky
Alaskan
Dempster

Oh yes, I've seen route 69, and even driven on it! And I agree, these maps are pathetically imperfect. It's easy to find detailed highway maps of individual states, but I found not a one of the entire U.S. showing at least the whole interstate highway system.

Do they have numbers too? Our highways have names, but the annoying thing is that each numbered highway often has different names in different places.

For example, here is a list of regional names for Interstate 10, the southern-most east-west US interstate highway:

The Santa Monica Freeway
The San Bernardino Freeway
The Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway
The Veterans Memorial Highway
The Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway
The Papago Freeway
The Maricopa Freeway
The Casa Grande Highway
The McDermott Freeway
The Katy Freeway
The East Freeway
The Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway
The Pontchartrain Expressway
The Stephen Ambrose Memorial Highway

I'd like to see a map of the Canadian highways, or even better, a map of all North American highways!

I would like to travel each one, by motorcycle.

Yes! Traveling every US highway by motorcycle would be the best thing ever!! (Since so many things are tied for the title of Best Thing Ever, in my book)

^ We can dream.....

Fun fact: The major interstates are in multiples of 5. (5, 10, 15, etc.)

The interstates ending in 0 goes east to west. While, ones ending in 5 goes north and south.

There are parts of I-10 that I find beautiful, especially at night.

I-40 is another highway I generally like.

I've been on "The Loneliest Highway" before.. but I didn't feel lonely although I was travelling alone.

Then there's the 'Haul Road' up in Alaska that takes you from Fairbanks to the extreme North on a hardpack dirt/gravel road that's driven mainly by truckers who do not slow down for anything, and there's no room to 'move aside' either!

There's parts of I-70 and I-40 over in Kansas, Missouri and Akansas that are amazingly beautiful during the Fall.

wsmac, do you mean this highway?


And, yes, I agree Route 10 is beautiful at night!

Yes, the Dalton Highway.

Used to be that the Alaska State Troopers could stop you from driving up past a certain spot if you could not show a need to be up there.. such as work, or living up there, things like that.
Hunting, sight seeing, were not deemed important enough to have you up on that road.

Back around 1994 someone took the state to court over it.
The argument was that if Alaskans were going to be paying taxes to maintain what was a public road... then they should have access to this road also.

The court opened it up, but I moved shortly after that and have no idea if anything has changed
along the highway like businesses springing up.

I drove it in both the summer and winter.
In the winter, it's hard to distinguish the edge of the road because of the snow and especially when the snow is blowing.
But you can drive up there and see some pretty vast herds of caribou along the highway.. I'm talking hundreds at a time!

In the summer you'll see wolves and other assorted animals.

I don't know if it's a highway, but the road in Louisiana that runs through places like Houma, Morgan City, etc., is pretty cool when you can look out and see these boardwalks extending out to homes on stilts.

I-5 is pretty boring through California until you get North up to Shasta... then it gets better imho.

The four-level interchage, Los Angeles

Oh, cool, like this kind of thing:



There are some things like that in San Antonio and they're building them bigger.

Yeah, but everytime I'm on one I start thinking about what happened in Oakland not too long ago during a big earthquake!

I was thinking about that while driving back from Oakland today and crossing the Richmond Bridge... really makes me sorta nervous way up high in earthquake country!