The stretch I’m referring to is a lot like that (the drive I’ve made is from LA to Elko, so I’ve done the portion you’re talking about as well), except the landscape is more of a pale green instead of the brown you get further south on 93. The first 50 miles or so heading north from Ely is a gentle but steady climb with a completely unchanging landscape where eventually you find yourself convinced that you’ve been wished into the cornfield, except someone took all the corn.
I’ve done the Big Empty: I-10 between El Paso and Junction, Texas.
I’ve done I-70 between Kansas City and Denver … and the entire Kansas Turnpike, between KC and the Oklahoma state line.
I’ve done I-40 across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.
I’ve done various Interstates through hundreds of miles of flat evergreen forest in Florida.
The worst of the worst, though, in my opinion, is I-90 between South Bend, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio. All toll road, so exits are tends of miles apart. No major cities along the route, or even small towns. It’s just 150 miles of flat, featureless farmland with patches of scrubby third generation forest, with the only points of interest being rest stops.
Mackenzie Hwy, Manning to High Level, then High Level to the NWT border.
Straight. Fields. Then trees. Roughly four hours worth. Hit the border and you finally get some twisty excitement.
I’ll see your 93 and raise you the 6 from Bishop to Ely. In July. On a motorcycle.
When going thru Tonopah is the highlight of the road trip, there’s problems.
I-40. Drove out to Lubbock from north of OKC, boring as hell until a rest stop a while before Amarillo. There was some good scenery. I-27 wasn’t much better between Amarillo and Lubbock, though the goddamn cop livened it up some. Being night actually made it better, I think.
Coming back, I took a smaller highway to Wichita Falls, then I-44 to OKC. Much better.
The Eyre Highway is 1,200 kms of boredom.
I vote for the Seney Stretch. 30 miles of straight, flat highway through a swamp.
Gotta mention I-71 between Columbus and Cincinnati (or at least to King’s Island, when there’s more to see). The farmer who put up the Ten Commandments signs at about mile marker 83 knew he had a captive audience.
The western 2/3rds of Pennsylvania along I-80 has some nice views, but otherwise there’s nothing going on there. Ditto I-68 between Hagerstown, MD and Morgantown, WV.
But the real winner might be the Western Kentucky Parkway. No scenery along the entire length of highway, unless you count the nuclear power plant on the Green River.
san antonio to el paso very boring drive and nextel phone doesn’t work. bring your own cd’s or ipod
MB
This is awesome. I’ll soon be travelling from Birmingham, AL west to Dallas, then north through OK & KS to Omaha, then east thru Iowa/Ill/Indy/Columbus to NE Ohio and can’t wait. My satellite radio needs a new antenna in order to work but I think I’ll wait and see how it goes without it for a while. This is where it’s handy to be a champion daydreamer 
I doubt if I’ll even bother to take much in the way of music or podcast CD’s except maybe a Spanish tutorial. My purpose is to scout the region a bit in case I decide to look for jobs there after I finish my degree this year, since it’s the Nebraska’s that have the lowest unemployment rates.
This is the first road I thought of when I read the thread title.
No highway in North America could possibly approach the monotony of crossing Nullarbor. It’s over a THOUSAND MILES.
You think crossing Kansas is bad? Try crossing Kansas, and then keep going and cross Colorado, and oh, you’re not done, cross Utah too, except the entire way is just nothing at all. No mountains in Colorado. No cities. No nothing. Nothing at all for over a thousand miles.
I figured someone would mention I-70 thru Kansas. I’ve driven it a couple of times and didn’t find it to be totally devoid of things to see. It’s just so friggin long and takes so long to get between one major town and another.
The windmill farms are interesting to see. The last time through there, I remember watching the windmills and noting that some were turning and some were not…okay, it’s boring as hell.
In Ellis, Kansas is Walter P. Chrysler’s boyhood home. I stopped there to take a picture on a cross-country trip in my '75 Cordoba.
There are 6 curves in the road between the Colorado state line and Salina. The curves get you all excited because you think that you’re going to see something soon, but then all you get is straight road for another hour.
There was some sort of tourist trap that I would’ve stopped at but was too pressed for time. It was some sort of tower and was supposed to be the tallest thing for many miles. I don’t remember the details, but it would’ve made for an interesting story.
My vote is the Tamiami trail (US 40 / SR 90) between Naples Manor and Tamiami.
I’ve written in it on a pice of paper so that when I’m facing my eterneal judgement I’ll get some huge credit for not setting the Everglades on fire with dirty bombs while killing my wife and three kids with a live video uplink.
I mean, I like driving even in traffic jams, but this made me doubt my most cherished beliefs.
As long as this zombie has come back to life and I’ve driven a few more highways since back then, I’ll add US-2 across the northern part of North Dakota. It makes I-94look like a designated Scenic Byway. I-70 still takes the cake, though. That trip across Nebraska years ago haunts me still.
The I-35 from San Antonio to Laredo reminds me of a joke: Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillos that it was possible.
There’s something about the absolute pool-table flatness of the Texas Coastal Prairie. Surely, the area can’t compare to the great vastness of the midwest–or even other parts of Texas.
There’s a reason that Townes van Zandt used to introduce one of his darker songs by saying “This song is about living in Pasadena and commuting to Beaumont.” I-10 most of the way. But there are refineries!
Jesus, this was the first thing that popped into my mind. I was visiting my sister out there a couple months ago, and the lack of any sign of human life other than the road itself is kind of eerie.
I-40 between Flagstaff and Oklahoma City gets tedious rather quickly. Start in Flagstaff. Drive 150 miles, passing absolutely nothing of any consequence (stop at Meteor Crater - it’s actually worth the price of admission and is the only interesting thing you’ll be looking at for a while). Stop in Gallup. Take a look around and realize that beyond being mentioned in that song about Route 66, Gallup isn’t very interesting. Get back in the car. Drive another 150 miles through more desert. Get some lunch; it’s the last chance for respectable food for a long while. Get back in the car. Realize you’ve been driving for two hours and have seen one tree. Stare at the desert. Desperately try to find an interesting CD to listen to. Keep driving. Do this for four hours and change. Finally get to Amarillo. Have a look around. Get back in the car. Drive for another four and some hours until you reach Oklahoma City, which is not dusty. Resist the temptation to kiss the ground.
Oh come on. You can almost see the Cypress Hills when you go through Maple Creek! Cite!
I think this might be the answer. I have been across the Nullabor in a car five times (three of those were in a VW combi van with vinyl seats and no air-conditioning). You don’t see any trees for a day. No real towns, just glorified petrol stations. Totally flat. And things aren’t a lot more interesting on either side of that stretch either in WA and NSW.
Maybe somewhere in Russia or Canada can beat it though.
My exact words when describing the Prairies to my mother, who was born there: “It’s flat. Not bad, but flat.”
I agree. We were driving through SE Alberta, and we stopped for a rest and a break, and it was just so open and spacious and quiet. It was amazing. I am so glad I experienced it.
I’ll add Alberta 41, south from the Trans-Canada to the Montana border. Except I found it beautiful. This is also where we passed the infamous NO SERVICE OR RESIDENCES NEXT 134 km sign. If you broke down on this road in the winter, you’d probably die.
Just before the crossing, the road runs parallel to the border for a while. The actual border is the wire fence on the right. The Canadian inspection station is just ahead, then the road makes a right-angle turn across the line, and the US inspection station is just beyond.