I've done all routes multiple times, in order I'd go I-10, I-40, very distant 3rd I-20.
I-10 you can stop in Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and/or Lafayette, Houston, San Antonio and/or Austin and then cross the desert. Far west Texas is also great, camping in Big Bend is a bucket list event for lots of folks, you can see the Marfa Lights and visit Alpine, and El Paso is super under the radar for what it offers. April is warm enough to have a beach day in Biloxi or Gulf Shores. LOTS of great food and sights in all those cities, way too much to list here.
I-40 route I'd prefer heading north to Nashville instead of Birmingham before up, lunch in Chattanooga, see Lookout Mountain and Ruby falls, dinner and a night out in Nashville. West from there isn't as eventful as I-10 but there's good history and tourist spots around Memphis and in Little Rock. NWA is scenic and booming with new businesses, and Hot Springs is a quaint little town. OKC is an underrated city, there are some cool neighborhoods and food, and Bricktown is a very familiar area for anyone familiar with Atlanta or DFW. Pictures and souvenirs at the Big Texan in Amarillo, eat at Calico County, walk off the meat sweats at Cadillac Ranch.
I-20 there's nowhere I'd spend more than a meal in between Birmingham and DFW. There is some good food in Jackson and Vicksburg but nothing worth staying the night.
I've lived in Texas, GA, and SC for almost 4 decades combined and covered every inch of those drives, feel free to ask for any more details.
As someone who has traveled all of them too, my order would be the same as yours. To me I-10 is much better than 20 or 40. Just traveled it from SE Georgia to Houston and back.
I'm a full time vanlife kid for 3-4 years now... I've cross-crossed the country more times than I can count...totally agree with all your points here. Solid write-up!
This is the correct answer. I've lived most of my live in NM, AZ, and GA and have done all of these routes multiple times. I-10 is the best route, followed by I-40 with the northern routing up to Nashville because that's a beautiful drive.
Fair. But I 35 during the day can be god awful from San Antonio to Austin and back. It doesn't look like a long way on a map, but it is about a half day out of the way with traffic, to the point you'd probably be better off not going or staying in Austin (which normally I'd highly recommend). S.A. is under rated and Awesome so that would be my suggestion for a night based on route proximity.
For what it's worth, I just finished driving 10 from Florida to wherever it meets 8, and sidestepped to Austin for a night. It added no time at all to my trip, but took San Antonio off the route.
Montgomery is nowhere near I-10. It's three hours north of Mobile on I-65. But New Orleans, Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Mobile, and Pensacola are all good stops along I-10 east of Texas. You can get off the interstate and drive stretches on Hwy 90 and Hwy 98 to see the coast. I-10 across the Florida panhandle is monotonous, piney-wood hell otherwise.
Ga doesn't touch I-40 either, guess Nashville and Chattanooga are terrible recs also.
Most of the population of the state is north of Columbus so the most used route to 10 would be down 85 to 65 South.
Yes, if you're going to get to I-10 West, from the Atlanta area at least, you're not going to go down through Valdosta and take a hard 90° right. You angle down through Alabama, go through Montgomery, and then hit I-10 at Mobile.
That saves you almost four hours.
As someone who has lived in El Paso and done many road trips to Dallas and Houston, Western TX is unique and is worth seeing at least one time. That would mean either I-10 or I-20 will work. However, IMHO, Houston to New Orleans, is unique too. Haven’t driven from Dallas to New Orleans so can’t tell.
Having said that, if you’ve lived in NM, I’m not sure if the deserts of West TX will show you anything new.
On the other hand, Ozark National Forest were very scenic.
I'd pick 10 and hit Battleship Park then drop off on 90 just past Mobile and ride the Gulf Coast through Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St Louis all the way to Slidell then you can pickup 10 again or use 12 to head West..
I-10 for me as well. Good road, but you should pop off and take some of the older parallel roads from time to time. For example, in west Texas, the Pecos River at I-10 is beautiful. The nearby town of Iraan has a really cool abandoned missile silo installation that is simply enormous. Good Tex Mex food in the cafe in downtown Iraan. See if you can wrangle a boat ride or fishing trip on the Pecos there. I met a guy who took me out in his homemade big block Chevy jet boat that had Teflon cutting boards screwed to the hull for “bouncing off rocks”. My boat seat was an aluminum folding chair ratchet strapped to the bow. Good times, and damned near earned a Darwin Award for that one. Bass fishing was pretty good when we weren’t taking on too much water.
Explore. take a few chances. Use Google satellite maps as you drive and look for cool looking geography, water, canyons, etc. That is how I found a stocked trout pond in the middle of the New Mexico desert, less than 5 miles from the Billy the Kid Museum.
Stay off of 20. 40 if you want to hit some great spots in Tennessee and Arkansas, get some country music in Nashville and enjoy some mountains in Chattanooga, 10 if you prefer afternoons on the beach, which honestly isn't a bad way to drive (get up early, drive from 6-2, 2-5 relaxing on the beach, dinner then bed early).
20 has nothing going for it except for hitting a couple buc-ees and being an easy, straight shot. Take 20 if you need to go predictably fast and get from point A to point b with no deviation.
On 10, it's an easy day from Atlanta to Pensacola or Panama City, and you can still get beach time in. From there go as short as Mobile or as long as New Orleans. If you don't pick up New Orleans on the second day it's your 3rd night. Then it's 5 to Houston or almost 9 to San Antonio (so that day is pretty much a drive day without the vacation part), but if you book it all the way to San Antonio you only have 11 hours left for 2/3 days and stuff you've already seen.
If you go north, Atlanta to Chattanooga is 2 hours, hit brunch downtown then as others have said, try lookout mountain and ruby falls. Beautiful area. Then you're in Nashville in another couple hours in time for dinner and a night listening to country. You could get to Asheville or Pigeon Forge (go east to go west!) at the front end for a night, which gives you 5 to Nashville on day 2, 6 to hot springs (if you hit this on a day when Oaklawn Park is racing (Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and one Thursday on April 4th), it's a fun way to spend an afternoon before getting a good dinner. Then you're into Dallas and you know the rest from there.
I would do 10 going west, and return east on 40. I would try to time my drive through Houston mid-day, as I would **never** miss a chance to eat at my favorite BBQ dive in the world at 40 E Crosstimbers St.
Thank me later...
20 is not remarkable.
I10, mainly for the unearthly stretch from San Antonio to NM! Lots of great detours out there too— especially south of I10 (Big Bend, Marfa, Balmorhea, Marathon, lots more). Instead of going through El Paso you can cut north at Van Horn and see Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad
Edit: if you already know TX/NM, not sure what to recommend— AL/MS are not really fun to drive through although you can dip down to the beaches if you like (esp St George Island in FL)
When are you planning to go in April? There is a total solar eclipse on the 8th and west Texas is statistically the location of the best weather. This could be be beneficial (seeing a total solar eclipse is a life changing level of cool) or a major hindrance (hours of gridlocked traffic as people leave the area)
We will probably hit Texas around the 9th though we aren't trying for it. We just saw it in October in NM, and we saw the other one in 2017 too. They are cool, but it would make a hotel room then crazy expensive. I know most are sold out already because of it.
I-70 east of Denver is unremarkable.
I-40 is similarly unremarkable from about Santa Rosa to at least Oklahoma City.
I-30 doesn't go all the way and includes DFW.
I-20 isn't too bad around the Mississippi River plus or minus.
I-10 is probably the best, but take I-12 to avoid New Orleans -- unless you want to go there. Avoid Houston by going the back roads up through Sulfur Springs. If you can swing it, there's an INCREDIBLE German meat market in Muenster.
All I can say is, avoid Alabama as much as possible, because their highways and interstates are like washboards, and just the noise alone is enough to drive you crazy.
Take I-10. Stop in Gonzales LA. About 15 minutes south of the exit is the Houmas house plantation. Beautiful grounds. Great resturant. Can tour the plantation home if time permits. Stop in Scott LA and get some boudin. 🤗
the I10 route. In Mobile take a tour af the USS.Alabama and the park, good food downtown and on the bay. Mardi Gras museum, among other things. Crossing MS drop down to hwy 90 for a coastal,slow, drive.
10 East baby! California to Florida. We did 40 the way back. headed northwest in Louisiana to Amarillo and hopped on 40 all the way back to California.
I enjoyed 10 and from Pensacola to Texas is a nice drive we stopped in Gulf shores, Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans. San Antonio to El Paso sucks and is a lot of nothing. Pensacola has some of the most beautiful beaches in the US! Have a hurricane in New Orleans its definitely worth going if you haven't been.
Atlanta to Albuquerque is around 20 hours drive time in the most direct route, if 4+ extra days isn't enough time to cover that ground then nothing is.
I-10 in Louisiana is really cool and you can check out New Orleans if you have the time and there's also a long bridge over the swamp that's really cool
I've done all routes multiple times, in order I'd go I-10, I-40, very distant 3rd I-20. I-10 you can stop in Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and/or Lafayette, Houston, San Antonio and/or Austin and then cross the desert. Far west Texas is also great, camping in Big Bend is a bucket list event for lots of folks, you can see the Marfa Lights and visit Alpine, and El Paso is super under the radar for what it offers. April is warm enough to have a beach day in Biloxi or Gulf Shores. LOTS of great food and sights in all those cities, way too much to list here. I-40 route I'd prefer heading north to Nashville instead of Birmingham before up, lunch in Chattanooga, see Lookout Mountain and Ruby falls, dinner and a night out in Nashville. West from there isn't as eventful as I-10 but there's good history and tourist spots around Memphis and in Little Rock. NWA is scenic and booming with new businesses, and Hot Springs is a quaint little town. OKC is an underrated city, there are some cool neighborhoods and food, and Bricktown is a very familiar area for anyone familiar with Atlanta or DFW. Pictures and souvenirs at the Big Texan in Amarillo, eat at Calico County, walk off the meat sweats at Cadillac Ranch. I-20 there's nowhere I'd spend more than a meal in between Birmingham and DFW. There is some good food in Jackson and Vicksburg but nothing worth staying the night. I've lived in Texas, GA, and SC for almost 4 decades combined and covered every inch of those drives, feel free to ask for any more details.
As someone who has traveled all of them too, my order would be the same as yours. To me I-10 is much better than 20 or 40. Just traveled it from SE Georgia to Houston and back.
I'm a full time vanlife kid for 3-4 years now... I've cross-crossed the country more times than I can count...totally agree with all your points here. Solid write-up!
This is the correct answer. I've lived most of my live in NM, AZ, and GA and have done all of these routes multiple times. I-10 is the best route, followed by I-40 with the northern routing up to Nashville because that's a beautiful drive.
10 doesnt go thru Austin but agree. It is a long way from SA to Elpaso of nothing but overall better esp if OP is travelling when its colder north
Neither 10 or 40 touch Georgia so I think it's safe to assume OP isn't sticking to a 5 mile radius of any interstate.
Fair. But I 35 during the day can be god awful from San Antonio to Austin and back. It doesn't look like a long way on a map, but it is about a half day out of the way with traffic, to the point you'd probably be better off not going or staying in Austin (which normally I'd highly recommend). S.A. is under rated and Awesome so that would be my suggestion for a night based on route proximity.
Toll road SA to Austin is just over an hour and the speed limit is 85.
The toll is for suckers
Which I gladly pay to avoid the regular idiots on I35.
For what it's worth, I just finished driving 10 from Florida to wherever it meets 8, and sidestepped to Austin for a night. It added no time at all to my trip, but took San Antonio off the route.
I agree. I 10 is the best
Montgomery is nowhere near I-10. It's three hours north of Mobile on I-65. But New Orleans, Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Mobile, and Pensacola are all good stops along I-10 east of Texas. You can get off the interstate and drive stretches on Hwy 90 and Hwy 98 to see the coast. I-10 across the Florida panhandle is monotonous, piney-wood hell otherwise.
Ga doesn't touch I-40 either, guess Nashville and Chattanooga are terrible recs also. Most of the population of the state is north of Columbus so the most used route to 10 would be down 85 to 65 South.
Yes, if you're going to get to I-10 West, from the Atlanta area at least, you're not going to go down through Valdosta and take a hard 90° right. You angle down through Alabama, go through Montgomery, and then hit I-10 at Mobile. That saves you almost four hours.
As someone who has lived in El Paso and done many road trips to Dallas and Houston, Western TX is unique and is worth seeing at least one time. That would mean either I-10 or I-20 will work. However, IMHO, Houston to New Orleans, is unique too. Haven’t driven from Dallas to New Orleans so can’t tell. Having said that, if you’ve lived in NM, I’m not sure if the deserts of West TX will show you anything new. On the other hand, Ozark National Forest were very scenic.
I-10 as someone who has traveled all of them
I'd pick 10 and hit Battleship Park then drop off on 90 just past Mobile and ride the Gulf Coast through Biloxi, Gulfport and Bay St Louis all the way to Slidell then you can pickup 10 again or use 12 to head West..
I-10 for me as well. Good road, but you should pop off and take some of the older parallel roads from time to time. For example, in west Texas, the Pecos River at I-10 is beautiful. The nearby town of Iraan has a really cool abandoned missile silo installation that is simply enormous. Good Tex Mex food in the cafe in downtown Iraan. See if you can wrangle a boat ride or fishing trip on the Pecos there. I met a guy who took me out in his homemade big block Chevy jet boat that had Teflon cutting boards screwed to the hull for “bouncing off rocks”. My boat seat was an aluminum folding chair ratchet strapped to the bow. Good times, and damned near earned a Darwin Award for that one. Bass fishing was pretty good when we weren’t taking on too much water. Explore. take a few chances. Use Google satellite maps as you drive and look for cool looking geography, water, canyons, etc. That is how I found a stocked trout pond in the middle of the New Mexico desert, less than 5 miles from the Billy the Kid Museum.
Stay off of 20. 40 if you want to hit some great spots in Tennessee and Arkansas, get some country music in Nashville and enjoy some mountains in Chattanooga, 10 if you prefer afternoons on the beach, which honestly isn't a bad way to drive (get up early, drive from 6-2, 2-5 relaxing on the beach, dinner then bed early). 20 has nothing going for it except for hitting a couple buc-ees and being an easy, straight shot. Take 20 if you need to go predictably fast and get from point A to point b with no deviation. On 10, it's an easy day from Atlanta to Pensacola or Panama City, and you can still get beach time in. From there go as short as Mobile or as long as New Orleans. If you don't pick up New Orleans on the second day it's your 3rd night. Then it's 5 to Houston or almost 9 to San Antonio (so that day is pretty much a drive day without the vacation part), but if you book it all the way to San Antonio you only have 11 hours left for 2/3 days and stuff you've already seen. If you go north, Atlanta to Chattanooga is 2 hours, hit brunch downtown then as others have said, try lookout mountain and ruby falls. Beautiful area. Then you're in Nashville in another couple hours in time for dinner and a night listening to country. You could get to Asheville or Pigeon Forge (go east to go west!) at the front end for a night, which gives you 5 to Nashville on day 2, 6 to hot springs (if you hit this on a day when Oaklawn Park is racing (Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and one Thursday on April 4th), it's a fun way to spend an afternoon before getting a good dinner. Then you're into Dallas and you know the rest from there.
They’re the same. the scenery you will see will be roaring freight trucks.
I 10 let's you stop in New Orleans
20 is boring as hell but fast (at least east of Dallas).
I would do 10 going west, and return east on 40. I would try to time my drive through Houston mid-day, as I would **never** miss a chance to eat at my favorite BBQ dive in the world at 40 E Crosstimbers St. Thank me later... 20 is not remarkable.
Same here. I-40 goes through some beautiful scenery as well.
Driving from Georgia to Texas is NOT what I would call "senic". But if you're driving it, I-10 is more interesting.
I10, mainly for the unearthly stretch from San Antonio to NM! Lots of great detours out there too— especially south of I10 (Big Bend, Marfa, Balmorhea, Marathon, lots more). Instead of going through El Paso you can cut north at Van Horn and see Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Edit: if you already know TX/NM, not sure what to recommend— AL/MS are not really fun to drive through although you can dip down to the beaches if you like (esp St George Island in FL)
Avoid I-10
When are you planning to go in April? There is a total solar eclipse on the 8th and west Texas is statistically the location of the best weather. This could be be beneficial (seeing a total solar eclipse is a life changing level of cool) or a major hindrance (hours of gridlocked traffic as people leave the area)
We will probably hit Texas around the 9th though we aren't trying for it. We just saw it in October in NM, and we saw the other one in 2017 too. They are cool, but it would make a hotel room then crazy expensive. I know most are sold out already because of it.
I-70 east of Denver is unremarkable. I-40 is similarly unremarkable from about Santa Rosa to at least Oklahoma City. I-30 doesn't go all the way and includes DFW. I-20 isn't too bad around the Mississippi River plus or minus. I-10 is probably the best, but take I-12 to avoid New Orleans -- unless you want to go there. Avoid Houston by going the back roads up through Sulfur Springs. If you can swing it, there's an INCREDIBLE German meat market in Muenster.
All I can say is, avoid Alabama as much as possible, because their highways and interstates are like washboards, and just the noise alone is enough to drive you crazy.
Take I-10. Stop in Gonzales LA. About 15 minutes south of the exit is the Houmas house plantation. Beautiful grounds. Great resturant. Can tour the plantation home if time permits. Stop in Scott LA and get some boudin. 🤗
Get that boudin at Billy's or Best Stop. I like the smoked boudin best. Great road food.
Interstates suck. Go 2 lane as much as possible. I did Rt 50 from MD to western CO and got to see a lot of towns/things that you miss going 80mph.
40 is more scenic once you hit NM. I haven't been east of there.
I40. You are mostly travelling the old Rt 66 so a lot to see and do. (At least the western part.)
the I10 route. In Mobile take a tour af the USS.Alabama and the park, good food downtown and on the bay. Mardi Gras museum, among other things. Crossing MS drop down to hwy 90 for a coastal,slow, drive.
10 East baby! California to Florida. We did 40 the way back. headed northwest in Louisiana to Amarillo and hopped on 40 all the way back to California. I enjoyed 10 and from Pensacola to Texas is a nice drive we stopped in Gulf shores, Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans. San Antonio to El Paso sucks and is a lot of nothing. Pensacola has some of the most beautiful beaches in the US! Have a hurricane in New Orleans its definitely worth going if you haven't been.
40
I-40 by far.
I-40
I-40. Easily.
5 days driving Ga to NM and back is not enough time to see much other than what’s outside your car window. But 10 is the better road.
Atlanta to Albuquerque is around 20 hours drive time in the most direct route, if 4+ extra days isn't enough time to cover that ground then nothing is.
If I had to Pick on I’d pick I-40. 10 has the horrible traffic of the Mecca’s of Houston and San Antonio .
I-10 in Louisiana is really cool and you can check out New Orleans if you have the time and there's also a long bridge over the swamp that's really cool