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I'm relocating from NYC to Las Vegas and I will most likely be driving in December or first week of January. My biggest concern is weather and road conditions. I will have my son with me so I'm interested in some stops so we can enjoy the experience. Any advice would be appreciated.
Welcome aboard!
I can understand your dilemma. It's a lovely drive, no matter what route you take, but you're worried about the weather. Normally we don't offer routing suggestions on the first message, but I'm going to break protocol. But first...weather.
Of course you'll be watching the Weather Channel, checking weather online, or whatever before and during your trip. No matter what route you choose, you'll want some flexibility. When I drove from central MO to SoCal one December, after Christmas, I listened to the weather broadcasts constantly!!!
One suggestion for routing will take you far enough south to avoid a lot, hopefully. If it were me, I'd take I-80 into Pennsylvania, where I'd catch I-81 heading south. Sticking to interstates during the winter usually helps, because they are the first ones dealt with in bad weather - - our truckers MUST get our goods through. Along I-81 there is Shenandoah National Park. Skyline Drive is open during the winter months, if the weather is decent.
Once in Tennessee, you can catch I-40 west. Just south of Knoxville is the Great Smoky Mountain National Park - - a day ca be spent there. Some of it will be open in the winter! Back along I-40, you'll go through Memphis. Elvis Presley's Graceland is there, if you or your son (you didn't say how old he is) are interested. My daughter says it's a nice tour.
I-40 in Arkansas and Oklahoma is a beautiful wooded drive, until Oklahoma City. Then the terrain gets to be high desert. Climbing into Albuquerque is where the weather can get "iffy" again, as well as into Flagstaff, AZ.
At Williams, AZ, you could take a small detour up to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Part of the Rim Drive is open year -round.
To get to Las Vegas from I-40, one could either take US 93 from Kingman, or cross into CA and take US 95. OR, as an alternative, take AZ-68 from Kingman over to Bullhead City and Laughlin, then NV-163 over to US 95 and north.
Donna
The *fastest* route is I-80/I-76/I-70/I-15, weather permitting. The next fastest route is I-80/I-76/I-71/I-70/I-44/I-40/US-93, that adds about 1 hour. I-78/I-81/I-40/US-93 will add about another hour and a half to that. Keep tabs on weather and road conditions daily and be flexible.
Welcome to the RTA forum!
Flexibility really is the key. There is no route that is generically better than any other for winter weather. Every single route you could possibly take can and does see snow/ice at some point during the winter - and that includes I-10 through Texas, NM, and AZ. Trying to "go south" to avoid weather can be counter productive, and even increase your odds of seeing bad weather, if you end up taking a route that forces you to spend more time on the road. That extra time of adding extra miles is often better used to take a short route and simply use that time to wait out a storm.