Skirting the Chicago megalopolis on I-80 and I-294 generally sucks. The speed limit is 55 for most of it, but enforcement is apparently quite lax, as it’s pretty common to see people whizzing by at 80 or 90. That is, unless it’s stop and go. It’s a coin toss, depending on the time of day.
I always white-knuckle it when driving I-24 East in Tennessee toward Chattanooga, around Monteagle. A few miles of twisty road, all at about a 6% downhill grade, usually surrounded by semis. With the presence of several “runaway truck” ramps, just to remind you that those big rigs that are all around you do sometimes burn out their brakes going down that hill, so have fun!
Just chiming in here to tell the OP that I have made that I-80 drive through Nebraska 5 times and it is the most mind-numbing ass-killing drive I’ve ever done. By the time I got to Omaha (from Rawlins, Laramie, or Cheyenne) I was physically ill.
I-35 between San Antonio and Austin. Traffic is always terrible except in the middle of the night. Driving this stretch also gives you the impression that San Antonio and Austin are starting to merge into one huge monstrosity of a city.
Poor bugger. Mrs. SMV and I are relatively lucky - we come up from the south. I-20 from Atlanta to Florence is long but not particularly awful. I-95 to Smithfield is a boring stretch of endless pine trees, with Fayetteville in the middle, but once you get on US 70, the pleasant knowledge that the best barbecue in North Carolina, and therefore the world, is drawing ever closer with every mile we drive, helps pull us along to Goldsboro and Wilber’s. In the morning we’re on the ferry out of Cedar Island and our vacation has begun.
Last time we came home from the OBX, we took the Swan Quarter ferry and drove through Washington and Greenville, with a short stop in historic, and beautiful, Bath. I think that’s our new going-home route, even though it added a little time to the trip. Ferries, man, that’s the way to go.
This really is one of those YMMV - so to speak - issues. I’ve twice driven from Atlanta to New Mexico via I-40, and I can see why you would find it boring and/or creepy. It’s certainly the high lonesome. But l’ve lived all my life in the South or Midwest, and the novelty of the desert was appealing. Even the endless sky and the rolling plains of Oklahoma held my interest. I made a point of stopping once in downtown Tucumcari, where I saw honest-to-god tumbleweeds rolling down the main street.
West of Tucumcari, I saw a thunderstorm some fifty or sixty miles to the south, and watched the lightning and rain in perfect silence. Then, on the trip home, driving back from Window Rock, I saw the Sandia Mountains glowing in the rays of the setting sun; a Union Pacific train, the yellow engines almost perfectly matching the golden hue of the mountains in the westering sun, crept around the base. Past the mountains the sky was purplish black and stormy; the sun, the rain and the air formed the perfect circle of a double rainbow. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, and I think that memory of the mountains, the train, the storm and the rainbow will be with me when I take my dying breath.
Heh. I clicked on this thread thinking, humbly, that I’m really probably so ill-traveled, in comparison to everyone else around the country, that any of my worst drives wouldn’t even get on the list.
…and guess what ends up in the OP, entry #2? :smack:
(It’s really not that bad a drive; it’s just that I don’t enjoy seeing all my dead ancestors beckoning to me from the shoulder for hours as the sun beats through the haze, is all. The noise is a bit unnerving, too.)
I’ve driven a fair bit in the western US, and I also purchased a car in NC and drove it cross-country to CA. Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats I-10 between San Antonio and El Paso, TX in a boring competition. 550 miles of bleakness. It makes I-5 look like “It’s a Small World.”
This gets my vote for the most godforsaken stretch of road in the Eastern US.
I remember a drive generally eastward from Albuquerque. It appeared to be that a drive from Albuquerque to fucking anywhere was a hellish proposition.
I drive on 880 (not the 880 SoCal heathen!) every morning. They widened it and it is better than it used to be, especially during the recession. Now it is awful again because people have the nerve to be employed and commute.
Far worse is the 880 - 237 connector. You can use the carpool lane if you pay, but you can’t get out of it until First Street, and it is often backed up too. I’m very fortunate in being able to use Tasman instead to get to work.
I go to Anaheim on 5 fairly frequently, and I much prefer it to 880 and Bay Area roads. 101 is more interesting, but a lot longer. And slower.
In case any of you think she is making up the term “maze” - that is its official name on traffic reports. I’ve learned the proper lanes to use to get from 580 from San Rafael and over the bridge to 880 south, but it took a while.
I’ve been on 80 through Nebraska and Wyoming once, and loved it, though maybe it would get old with repeated trips.
Hey, in Boston if you don’t know where you are you don’t belong there. I like the disappearing highways myself.
My old office mate, who used to work in Boston, had a book called “Wild in the Streets: the Boston Driving Book.” Far worse than the Bay Area, even 30 years ago.
Not the very worst, probably not as bad as the aforementioned drive through Nebraska, but the stretch of I-75 through pretty much all of Ohio (between Toledo and Cincinnati) is mostly boring flat farmland as far as the eye can see. With what always seems like a lot of radar cops along the way. And last time I drove it both Lima and Dayton had a ton of road construction going on and slowed things to a crawl.