Here at HoneyTrek, we absolutely LOVE road trips. In fact, we have road tripped through all 50 US States (not to mention countless Canadian Provinces, Mexican states, and nearly 100 countries). The feeling of cruising down the backroads of America, windows down, solid tunes on the radio…that’s a vibe!
Below you will find our favorite USA road trips. If you want to dig deeper into any of these locations, just click the photo or the text link that says “take me on this road trip.”
We lived in New Jersey for 11 years, but after this 7-day road trip, we realized how much we had taken for granted. Nicknamed the Garden State, it boasts numerous outdoor recreational opportunities, including 130 miles of beaches, 12 national park sites, and the first national reserve. It’s the only state in the US where all the counties are considered metropolitan areas, so you are never shy of fine dining, cultural happenings, and things to do.
And did we mention it’s the Diner Capital of the World? You’re in for some good eats! Too often, people judge New Jersey by what they see from the turnpike…but hop on the backroads, follow our travel guide below, and you’ll see that a New Jersey Road Trip is full of fantastic and unexpected things to do.
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Did you know that Orlando is America’s most-visited vacation destination? People, a Florida road trip has so much more going for it than amusement parks! More freshwater springs than anywhere in the world, the one and only Everglades, the oldest European city in the U.S., a melting pot of cultures from around the globe, and beach weather when most of the States is shoveling snow…why wouldn’t we spend our winter here? We set aside one month to road trip the Sunshine State, from the southernmost point to the northwestern border, and discover the places even more magical than Disney.
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After 3.5 years and 74,000 miles of road-tripping around North America, we’ve reached our 50th State! We started this grand USA road trip in April 2017, ventured everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the Florida Keys, and have finally made it to the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin! With Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and 15,000 other lakes scattered around WI, they are known for their freshwater adventures, but we quickly realized that’s just the beginning.
They have an International Dark Sky Park, billion-year-old rock formations, a 1,200-mile hiking trail, IMBA-ranked mountain biking, and more fruit and veggie farms than a vegan could dream of. For our 50th-state celebration, we went big and partnered with Travel Wisconsin for a 1,300-mile, two-week road trip around the state—in peak fall foliage, no less! We had an absolute blast and are excited to share our must-see stops for the ultimate Wisconsin road trip.
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Tennessee! Not only is this state home to The Great Smoky Mountains, their famed whiskey, and the birthplace of country music, blues, & rock n’ roll, but it’s also home to the majority of Anne’s family! With aunts, uncles, and cousins on one side of the state and our siblings and nieces on the other, this called for a cross-state road trip! Tennessee has 16 self-guided driving routes connecting 95 counties, plus Tennessee Music Pathways, tracing the state’s music history and legends. With plenty of inspiration for our route, we zigzagged from Knoxville to Memphis and discovered so many wonderful off-the-beaten-path places.
On our 10-day Tennessee road trip, we were struck by the volume of historic little towns finding their mojo. From the former mining boomtown of Monterey to the college town of Cookeville, locals all talked about the recent influx of creative people and hip businesses turning their sleepy cities around. Tennessee seems to breed and attract artistic people, and its towns are proud to celebrate them. We stumbled upon so many festivals, art workshops, free concerts, and community events that endeared us to these places even more.
See our favorite things to do across the state and start planning your own Tennessee road trip!
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“So, you two are in Chicago and driving to LA…are you gonna take Route 66?” My dad posed this question, and we felt silly that taking the country’s most iconic road trip hadn’t even crossed our minds. We had just hit our 50th state, and the Main Street of America was a brilliant homecoming. Zigzagging 2,448 miles across eight states, it’s a highway many of us have driven on–whether we’ve known it or not.
It was decommissioned in 1985 and slowly paved over by major interstates or bypassed entirely, putting many of its gems off the beaten track. Though that’s the beauty of the Mother Road, it’s a treasure hunt reserved for those with a sense of adventure and an appreciation for the past. Stay the course and you’ll be rewarded with neon motel signs, classic cars, glass-tank gas pumps, hole-in-the-wall diners, and the wonderful people keeping the spirit of the road alive.
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The Grand Circle road trip is like wrapping the best of the Southwest’s national park system up in a bow. Ancient volcanic mountains, protruding plateaus and buttes, and deeply carved canyons reveal themselves in a rainbow of colors. Civilizations dating back thousands of years, followed by the Navajo, Apache, Spanish, Mormons, crystal readers, and adrenaline junkies have created a multicultural mix unique to this part of the world. The Colorado Plateau has the densest concentration of national parks in the US and this Grand Circle tour connects the best of them.
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Everyone knows about iconic US road trips…like the Pacific Coast Highway or Route 66…but hugging the curves of the Cascade Range? This Oregon road trip has easily been one of our favorite legs on our 130,000-mile journey around the States. Within the Pacific Ring of Fire and running from Northern California to southern British Columbia, this mountain range is stunning across the board.
Though to tackle it without crampons or a month of vacation time, we’d vote for the Oregon route between Ashland and Terrebonne. Spunky towns, glaciated mountains, high desert, craft beer country, and more adventure than an adrenaline junkie knows what to do with, our Oregon Road Trip through this slice of the Cascade Range has it all.
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“Please close the gate behind you; don’t let the cows out,” said the note field on our back-country camping app. We shut it behind us and inched down the dirt road, hoping the heifers would clear a path. “Could this really be the way?” I said to Mike. We rounded the bend, and a river flowing around a rippled mountain with dashes of red and purple appeared, with a perfectly level campsite. It was one of the prettiest we’d seen in our first 500 days of our USA road trips, and no one was around. This was the theme of our Idaho road trip: beauty under the radar.
For example, they don’t have any national parks, though when you’re going through Patagonia-style mountain ranges with 40 peaks over 10,000 feet or rafting the deepest river gorge in North America, it seems the National Park Service must have made a mistake. And even crazier, this gorgeous state is mostly known for its potatoes! Something had to give…so we set the record straight with a month-long Idaho road trip. Here are our highlights from 1,500+ miles through the wildly underrated Gem State.
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“I had a dream of RVing Alaska,” said our mechanic and camper namesake, Buddy. With a slew of health issues, work, and grandbabies keeping him close to home, this forlorn 72-year-old man instilled an Alaskan wanderlust in us from our first day of RV ownership. We had to do an Alaska road trip for him and ourselves, we just didn’t know if this 1985 four-cylinder relic could make the arduous journey. Two summers of road-tripping went by, and, save for the southernmost ghost town of Hyder, the Last Frontier evaded us.
We’ll admit, it sounded intimidatingly far, rugged, vast, and out of our league, but you never know until you try. Trying to give Buddy the Camper the best odds, we got new tires, a brake job, and a full tune-up…and by July 7th, we were heading towards the Alaska Highway. Scaling the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and braving the unpaved roads of the Yukon, Buddy took the slow and steady approach. But after driving to the base of glaciers, boondocking on riverbanks, and blazing the gravel trail into the Arctic Circle, Buddy won the race.
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Everyone wants to visit Glacier National Park…like 3 million people a year. But what many park-goers don’t realize is that most of Western Montana was carved by the same glacial activity, offering so many other stunning mountains, lakes, rivers, and forests, with a fraction of the tourists. To help more people find the lesser-known gems and keep them pristine, we took our experience as off-grid RVers with a green heart and partnered with Glacier Country Tourism for a Montana road trip.
Over the course of 12 days, we traveled from the Bitterroot Mountains to the far north of Kootenai County, through three national forests, dynamic Native American territories, charming small towns, the biggest freshwater lake in the West, and a ton more in between. Here are some of our favorite Western Montana road trip destinations and the ways you can leave these places better than you found them.
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Who’s got a friend who moved to Colorado recently? Just about everyone…because it’s awesome. It’s a state where mountains erupt from the earth with red cliffs, snowy peaks, and sand dunes. Cities are as cosmopolitan as they are granola, with bankers leaving work early to hit the mountain bike trails and farm-to-table waiters serving to sustain their ski habit. Coloradans have got it figured out, between natural beauty, great weather, and a healthy lifestyle that leaves room for a few craft beers.
We’re perfectly happy as nomads, but towns like Denver, Fort Collins, and Steamboat Springs had us looking up real estate. We drove over 1,200 miles, zigzagging in every direction, and the state never ceased to amaze. We didn’t mean to be on a Colorado road trip for two months, but check out our favorite places and adventures, and you’ll see why it was so hard to leave.
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The California Gold Rush changed the country forever. 300,000 people came from across the US and every corner of the world to strike it rich. Dozens of towns sprang up overnight in what was once the backwaters of Mexico, sparsely populated with Native Americans. While the 1849 Gold Rush had terrible consequences for the indigenous people, a fact that can’t be overstated, the Rush is what gave California its foundation as the most diverse state in the country, its entrepreneurial spirit, and its love of adventure.
To get back to California’s Wild West roots and many of my favorite places as a Cali kid, we took a three-week Gold Country road trip! CA Highway 49 winds through the Sierra Nevadas, connecting dozens of 19th-century Gold Rush towns from Yosemite National Park to north of Lake Tahoe. So, in addition to historic sites, this route serves up gorgeous mountains, raging rivers, alpine lakes, and wine country for a trip that’s got it all!
See our guide for the best things to do in Gold Country, California, and get ready for one of the best USA road trips!
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Upper Peninsula Road Trip
For over a century in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it was wilderness vs. industry. Mining, logging, and shipping dominated through the 1960s, but the UP has reemerged as the beautiful place it was meant to be and with battle scars that make it even cooler. The ruins of copper smelters crumble with the rocky shorelines, overgrown railroads appear deep in the forest, and shipwrecks add a sense of mystery to its Great Lakes.
The world’s largest freshwater lake by volume, Superior whips up some wild wind and waves, carving gorgeous cliffs and churning up gemstones. Agates are everywhere and florescent sodalite had us hunting the beaches until 3am. Going snorkeling, we weren’t looking for fish; the lake has rocks as colorful as coral and even sunken treasure to be found. And maybe what we loved most about the UP is the people’s pride for this place.
When we told our Facebook fans we were going on an Upper Peninsula road trip, comments poured in like we announced a trip to the moon. Anyone vaguely from the Midwest and beyond, chimed in with favorite hikes, must-try sandwiches, secret camping spots, and unforgettable moments…and now we’re just as proud to share our own UP stories and tips with you.
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Nevada Road Trip: Loneliest Road in America
Don’t let the title “Loneliest Road in America” fool you. Nevada’s Highway 50 has been a major thoroughfare since the Pony Express connected the West. And when mail by horse faded with the dawn of the telegraph and automobile, the route blazed a new trail as the first transcontinental highway, from New York to San Francisco. We’ll admit that we thought Route 66 held that claim to fame, but the Lincoln Highway came first, and Nevada’s section was a lynchpin to guiding travelers through the desert and over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Why is Nevada’s Highway 50 called “The Loneliest Road in America”? In 1986, Life Magazine did a feature, damning this 287-mile stretch, saying, “There are no points of interest,” and warned that motorists would need “survival skills” to make it through this high desert. Well, as seasoned road trippers who’ve driven the Alaska Highway, the entirety of The Mother Road, and nine cross-country road trips, we knew better than to let some persnickety editor keep us or Nevada down! We’d taken a bite out of The Loneliest Road in America on previous Nevada trips and were excited to finally drive its full length and explore all its wonders with an eight-day road trip!
Follow our Route 50 Road Survival Guide from Great Basin National Park, through eight historic towns to numerous hot springs, sacred Native American sites, sand dunes, sagebrush saloons, and so many stops to make The Loneliest Road in America a bucket-list road trip.
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North Florida Road Trip
We thought we’d do our North Florida Road Trip for maybe three weeks…it turned into nearly six! And we didn’t lollygag anywhere either; we explored 36 different regions, and unique they were…from white sand beaches to swamps, springs, islands, savanna, hardwood hammocks, villages, and various “capitals” of the world. This is a bit of a Florida phenomenon; it’s home to the world capital of…manatees, sponges, shark bites, springs, cigars, horses, lightning–you name it. There are numbers to back up these claims, but you’ve also gotta credit the gusto of Floridians. They are proud of the wonders they have and, as semi-resident explorers of Florida this winter, we feel that pride too.
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SLO CAL Road Trip
We’ve driven Central California’s jaw-dropping section of the Pacific Coast Highway a few times, but never gave San Luis Obispo County the credit it deserves. Halfway between LA and San Francisco, it’s the heart of the Central Coast but often overshadowed by its big-city neighbors and legendary ocean road. We’ve even hopped out to wildlife watch at their unbelievable elephant seal colony, gawk at the ultra-luxe Hearst Castle, and marvel at the volcanic Morro Rock jutting out of the sea, but didn’t realize so many gems we’re hiding on this SLO CAL Road Trip.
This California road trip was going to be different. In partnership with the San Luis Obispo County tourism board, we dedicated 10 days to discover its vibrant little cities, beach towns, wine country, farmers markets, hiking trails, art exhibits, and down-to-earth people. Proven to be one of the happiest and healthiest places on Earth, the county seat of San Luis Obispo is among the few cities in the world to be designated a National Geographic “Blue Zone.” Why do its people live longer with fewer health complications? Check out our article “SLO CAL: Best of California’s Central Coast” and see what the good life is made of!
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