Florida to Oregon this December

[rpviking]

Hello everyone,
My wife and I are relocating from Florida to Oregon and will be driving across after Christmas. There are two main routes we are currently considering: the default one that Google gives us and one that I have altered a bit to take a more southern route. The default one is interesting to us because we haven't driven through many of those states before, we're just a bit concerned about the weather at this time of year. I've included a link to it here:

The other route we are considering is this one:


This should avoid more of the potentially bad weather, but still putting us on roads we haven't trekked before. The only part we are a bit concerned about is the bit between Albuquerque and Salt Lake City: routes 491 and 191 through Utah. Since they aren't Interstate highways, they could be a bit more treacherous if the weather is bad. Does anyone have experience with these roads?

Also, any other general advice about these two routes? What would you do in our position? We'd like to take our time (maybe stretch it to 3-4 days), take in some scenery, stop in some tourist traps, etc. We've got a fairly new, really safe, AWD sedan with good gas mileage, if that makes any difference.

PS - A third route we're considering is one we've done a couple of times, the most southern route: across on I-10 and then up I-5. We'd rather not take this one because it's a bit boring now.