Road Trip from Calgary to San Francisco

[arisman]

Hi ,

We are planing a road trip from Calgary to San Francisco in late December.
We will be more than appreciate to hear your inputs , tips , and advices.
It's not gonna be an easy winter condition driving, and we would like to learn form any previous experiences.

Thanks !

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

The thing about winter travel is that you just can't know exactly what you're going to see, until you just before you leave and can see accurate weather forecasts. Its possible that you'll see some bad weather, it is also possible that weather will be perfectly fine on your days of travel.

You've got a couple options for routes. What I suspect may be the easier would be to head south to pick up I-15 at the Montana border, take that to Idaha, then use I-86/I-84/US-93 to reach I-80, then take that to San Francisco. This is not the shortest route, but it is nearly all freeway and is likely to get the most attention if there is bad weather.

Another route option would be to work your way down to Spokane WA via Hwy 22/3/95. Then I-90/US-395/i-84 will get you into Oregon, and then US-97 will take you to I-5 in California. This saves you some miles, but it involves a lot more 2 lane roads where you could see problems. I've driven some of the Crowsnest Highway (Hwy 3) but it was in summer, and I don't know how it would treat you in winter if there is any bad weather.

Anyway you go, it's a trip where you should plan on spending at least 3 pretty full days on the road, and have a 4th day available in case you do see some bad weather that forces you to slow down, or stop to let the plow crews do their thing.

[arisman]

Thanks a lot , we are planing to spend 3\4 days for driving , depends on the road and weather condition. The first route that your mentioned is our preference as well.
Hope that we will have some nice weather :)