We’re going to be driving from DC to Los Angeles in August to deliver our daughter (and a car) to USC for grad school, and I’d be interested if anybody has any tips on the most fun/interesting route to take. We will have, most likely between 7 and 9 days to do the drive. It looks like the more common routes take about 40 hours of driving. My inclinations is to do a central route through St. Louis, etc., but I’d love to hear any ideas. Thanks.
We did this from Philadelphia to Seattle. We took the northern route. We checked out common routes and decided that it was the most interesting. It’s a little cooler, too. Got to see Badlands, Mt Rushmore, places that we won’t make a separate trip to. You could start heading down sometime after Dakotas. Enjoy!
I have driven the route from Chicago to LA several times on my own in my early twenties and I preferred the southern route. It is incredibly exuausting through the plain’s states and Oklahoma seems to never end but once you get into Colorado, New Mexico (night stars galore) , and finally California the beauty of the west will release all the monotony of the plains states. Have fun! I would hire an Auto transport company to deliver the car and fly out.
If you do I-70, there are some things to see. St Louis is a fun tourist town. KC has some interesting things to do also. Next big town is Denver. From there you can continue west on I-70 or go south through NM and Ariz and go by the Grand Canyon. However, driving west through Utah you’ll drive by Vail, Grand Junction (buy gas there - there isn’t another gas station for many miles in Utah). The St. Rafael Reef is gorgeous, just rock shooting up to the sky. You then drive down through Vegas.
I-70 is a very easy drive. I’ve driven some on I-40 and it always seems to have more construction and detours, more long stretches without services. I-80 will take you very far north and out of your way.
We delivered a car from Philadelphia to Albuquerque. We were not interested in touring, so we drove about 550 miles a day. My husband planned it, and scheduled overnights in small towns in close proximity to cities. That way we were able to find reasonably priced lodging, but still have access to good restaurants.
We were dreading it, but ended up enjoying it. When we brought the car home, we did 650-700 mile days, because we were pros!
I have done the cross-country drive probably 10 times, anywhere from 3 days to 6 weeks. In general, I-80 is nicer than I-70, and I-90 is nicer than I-80, especially in August. Our normal plan for 8-9 days would be to drive almost continuously to get to mountains, hang out and go slow a couple of days, then do that again to get to the coast. This requires you can tolerate a couple of nights of sleeping in the car and trading off driving.
How we would have done it: leave around 3 am and drive straight through to St. Louis. Spend 24 hours there, then drive through the night to the mountains above Denver (Granby, CO?). Meander through the mountains to Salt Lake over a couple of days. Catch I-80 and head quickly to the coast. Take a couple more days working your way down to L.A.
This would add hours to your driving, but CO Rockies and the CA Central Coast (Carmel, Hearst Castle, Morro Bay) are worth it.
I think I’m getting too old for the driving through the night approach–that would have appealed to me 20 years ago.
I think the southern route is most interesting. Take i-95 to i-10. You can stop in Savannah, Pensacola and the beaches, Lafeyette and the Cajun country, Houston, White Sands , and Joshua Tree.
I did LA to DC drive. If you take I-81 south to Knoxville, you can detour slightly to Gatlinburg and the Great Smokey Mountain national park. Nashville is worth a look. Westward, you can stop in Memphis and see the sights there. Not much in Arkansas and Oklahome. You’ll see the signs for the 72oz steak place when you’re about 100 miles out from Amarillo. Stop by just to say you saw the place. The landscape changes dramatically outside Amarillo from green to brown. Albuquerque and maybe Santa Fe would be good to stop in, and if you stop at Gallup you will see how poorly the Navajo people have been treated. In Arizona, you can get off at Winslow and go to the corner where the lyrics of “Take it Easy” mentioned it. I’ve seen the most beautiful dark skies there at night. You can see the mountains near Flagstaff from afar as you approach it. Then it’s downhill to Kingman through an alpine forest, and then towards the CA line, or you can head north to detour to Las Vegas. After that, it’s nothing but desert until you get to Barstow, and then down the Cajon Pass to the LA basin.
All of this is appealing. We’ve done parts of some of these routes, but never all the way across. (We’ve been to Winslow, for example–not only did we see the corner, but we stayed in a really cool old railroad hotel there.)
I’ve done the middle 70, north (80) and southern routes. Great things to see on any. My favorite (possibly because it was the first time I had been in real mountains) was the “middle”. But that is because I enjoy natural wonders as much, if not more, than interesting cities. But we went through Nashville and that was fun too.
If you get to Denver, you can then go down to Durango through the mountains and on to Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, Lake Mead and Vegas!
Also will be hot when you are traveling, particularly along the southern route, if that matters to you.
It is such a personal decision, depending on what you want to see and whether you want more time in interesting cities or nature. Good luck!
The route may also depend on how much stuff you have in your car. I wouldn’t want to drive the Denver-Durango-Utah canyons route with a packed car. If you are not used to driving mountains, it can be difficult (Million Dollar Highway? It’s tough).
I wouldn’t drive the I-10 route in August. Too hot.
I moved from Denver to Orange County in July a few years ago. Took the I-70 west to Utah, south to Vegas on the I-15. Vegas was 104 degrees - at midnight! The next day it was so hot that I had to stop and just SIT in an air conditioned restaurant. It was too hot to drive (and yes my car had aircon). There are also a lot of people driving campers and RVs on these roads all summer. Slows things down.
I’d think about what route takes you through areas where you could check things off your bucket list.
More northern? You could hit spots like Denver and see if there are any good concerts at Red Rocks.
More south? Beautiful spots in TN, Memphis barbecue tasting, you could hit Santa Fe.
We have vacationed from WI several times- a car trip is the way to see many things hard to fly to. Our western trips included deciding choosing between I 90 and I 94 for starters- both out of the way for you! Warning- distances west of the Mississippi River are LONG. Few small towns/rest areas for many more miles than the eastern third of the country. A lot of flat boring land as well. We cut through a bit of Texas heading home from New Mexico one year and discovered their posted “rest areas” were merely a picnic table- no bathrooms et al. I like to get the AAA books and maps even though we use computers for booking et al. It is nice to look at paper maps and see at a glance what may be along the way. Plus we have a Rand McNally atlas that makes it easy to visualize the whole trip at a glance.
We used to drive longer hours but scaled back as we age. We have a large cooler bag in which we have paper plates, silverware, wine bottle opener, knife and other stuff that sits in a cupboard between trips. We take a jar of peanut butter, one of jam and a loaf of bread for on the road lunches. You can get by with using a small cooler (where you put your beverages after using motel ice/refrigerators) to keep the jam fresh enough.
Rare to be able to just get tickets to anything these days. Almost always sold out.
I was thinking if it were me, I’d try to hit the baseball parks - St. Louis, KC, Denver, and then the Dodgers and Angels. It would take some luck to hit each team at home.
Stubhub. 
But just checking, there are plenty of shows in August that still have tickets available at Red Rocks, and even one or two that haven’t gone on sale yet. (one will tomorrow)
My number one recommendation: Cheetos. A long cross-country drive will require a plentiful supply of Cheetos.
Actually, my daughter and I just did the opposite move last week (from San Diego to DC). And after some consideration we decided that there was no really good route. The whole thing would be an exhausting death march no matter which way we went. Thus she shipped her car and we flew - a lot faster and a lot less tiring. Shipping the car cost about $950. And the two airfares combined cost about that too. So if you can afford a couple of grand I highly recommend it.
“I think the southern route is most interesting. Take i-95 to i-10. You can stop in Savannah, Pensacola and the beaches, Lafeyette and the Cajun country, Houston, White Sands , and Joshua Tree”.
Also, Carlsbad Caverns is on that southern route.
I drove from LA to DC towing a trailer and accompanied by my two dogs. My wife and baby flew out two weeks later. It was a good trip, and I saw a lot. I wouldn’t have passed up that opportunity for a shorter trip.
Are you traveling during the great American Solar Eclipse? August 21? If so, head through St. Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Casper WY, or other places. Don’t try to find a hotel, they’re already all sold out. Just drive.
I love the stretch of I-40 through NM and AZ. I dislike I-10 through Texas, just because, at 880 miles, it becomes demoralizing. Still, it’s cool to look left out the car windows and see Mexico as you go through El Paso.
But there are warning signs about summer dust storms that reduce visibility to zero along that route in
southern AZ.
ETA - Petrified forest/Painted desert are right on I-40 in AZ. Not crowded at all either.