Please advice moving from Belle Fourche SD to San Diego with trailer want to avoid roads with high elevations.
Thanks
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Please advice moving from Belle Fourche SD to San Diego with trailer want to avoid roads with high elevations.
Thanks
Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!
Altitude doesn't of itself slow you down or make the driving more difficult. Indeed it can have just the opposite effect with lower air density resulting in lower air resistance and less forceful winds. And with today's fuel (and air) injectors rather than carburetors, there is no significant penalty in fuel usage. What will cause you problems is change in elevation, i.e. grades. There is one set of highways in the US that is built so that the maximum grade allowed is 6% and whenever/wherever grades greater than a few percent occur will offer a special lane for slower traffic. Furthermore, that highway system will never make you stop for a light at the bottom of a long climb. That highway system is, of course, the Interstate Highway System. And your best option is to do what truckers do - use it as exclusively as possible. In your case, that's I-90 to I-25 to I-80 to I-15. However there is, due to the paucity of Interstates in sparsely populated sections of the west, one major spot where using 'surface roads' makes sense to connect those major routes. That is in eastern Wyoming between Gillette and Rawlins. From Gillette take WY-59 and WY-387 to I-25 south, and then from Casper take WY-220 and US-287 to I-80 at Rawlins. Although those routes are tw0-lane roads for the most part, they are also relatively flat, with modestly high speed limits and fairly frequent passing lanes. And using them will save you roughly 250 miles compared to sticking strictly to the Interstates.
AZBuck
Thank you so much.
As a San Diego County resident for umpteen years, I can agree with AZBuck on that route. My husband would probably stick completely to the interstates, but the two-lanes will work just as well as long as you realize that vehicles WILL want to pass you - even if you are doing the speed limit!
Coming into San Diego via I-15 has one drawback: it will be a hot drive between St George UT and Victorville. That is desert, and high desert. The really good thing about that, though, is that it is a gradual climb into the Cajon Pass.
BTW -- welcome to San Diego. :-)
Donna