Boston to Los Angeles, reccommendations?

My Asian road-tripping friend sent me the following email. Hopefully this will make your fiance feel more comfortable....

Quote:

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In all of my roadtrips, I have never experienced any harrassment or discrimination of any kind. It never crossed my mind that I would, even on the X-country trips. The only thing I've experienced has been positive. In the South, I got southern hospitality. Your friend's fiance shouldn't worry. Just use common sense that you would normally use to avoid "bad" areas and they'll be fine. I know it's not easy to avoid "bad" areas in unfamiliar places but it's not too difficult to figure out. Junkers, bars on house windows, graffiti, etc. are good clues. The majority of people are really nice and no different from the people around here. They'll be fine.

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Hope that helps a bit!

Wow, thank you and your road-tripping friend very much! I haven't been around much so I didn't know what to expect, but this definitely helps!

I'm glad.

I think you should just practice the same personal safety that anybody should use, i.e. pay attention to surroundings, don't get into arguments about anything with a group of strangers, avoid conflict, avoid settings where conflict might occur, etc. When you're on a roadtrip and just want to have fun, it's not worth it.

Colorado. Go through Colorado. Go through the Colorado Rockies. Thank me later. You could go straight west via I-70, or leave the interstate west of Denver and go south and west via secondary roads to Four Corners. The former would set you up nicely to zip across Highway 50, the Loneliest Road, through Nevada. Here is my gallery of my trip across the Loneliest Road (among other places).

http://nivek.smugmug.com/gallery/446322

The latter, going through Four Corners, would of course set you up to see the Grand Canyon. Either way, go through Colorado. Seriously.

We just found out that we have to start and end our road trip two weeks earlier than planned, due to an unexpected and unchangable conflict! That means I will be leaving NEXT WEEK! Good thing I have already started thinking about this, and have gotten lots of help from you all so far!

We have narrowed down our plans to one of the shortest routes, that way we can take our time and enjoy our trip and get to L.A. in time for our plane trip back. We hope to do the other routes some day in the future, since there is so much to see out there!

Like I said, we are following main highways or interstates, but will go off of them and hope to find some alternative but nearby scenic or interesting routes.

Not sure of all our stops yet, but here is our route:

Boston to Chicago on I-90, hopefully a stop at Niagra Falls in between.

Either: Route 80 from Chicago to Denver, crossing Demoines, Omaha, Lincoln, and southern nebraska,

OR: Route 55 to 72 to 70 from Chicago to Denver, crossing springfield, Kansas City (maybe St. Louis), middle of Kansas.

Denver to southwest to L.A. somehow or another. Hopefully we'll have some flexibilty at the end of out trip to do whatever we feel in this portion.

What I really need advice on now is hich route to go in the middle. Which is better in terms of interesting things to see, or what will I see there? I am trying to do my research but any advice will be helpful!

I am sort of interested in Nebraska, but the fiancee is sort of interested in Kansas, but neither of us know why since we dont' know anything about either place!

THANK YOU!!!