24th August 2009 – The different types of roads in the USA

What is an Interstate? What is a highway? A turnpike? Is a freeway free?

I was certainly confused by the different types of road in the US, so I did a little researching.

Here is my quick guide (with thanks to far too many websites to mention).

Interstate. This is a country wide system of limited access major roads very similar to the motorway system in the UK. The Interstate system serves nearly all major U.S. cities and comprises about 47,000 miles of major roads. As the name implies, Interstates cross state boundaries.

These are white numbers on a blue background and the numbering system of Interstates is as follows.








US Highway. This is an integrated system of roads and highways numbered within a nationwide grid. North to south highways are odd-numbered, with lowest numbers in the east and highest numbers in the west. Similarly, west to east highways are even-numbered, with the lowest numbers in the north and highest numbers in the south.

US Highway signs are generally black numbers on a white shield shaped background as below.








State Highways. These are the main roads within a state The signs for these are generally black text on a white background in a variety of shapes. Here is one for Florida.







Freeway. Is a general term for a type of road designed for safer high-speed operation of motor vehicles through the elimination of at-grade intersections, with no cross traffic junctions. Such highways are usually divided with at least two lanes in each direction. This can be an interstate, a US highway or a state highway.

Turnpike. This is a toll road.

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23rd August – Detailed Route Planning Part 5 – Time for Reflection

I spent a few hours today planning the detailed route for Utah. What a stunning State this will be!

I did take time to reflect and take stock about the journey I was planning.

Including Utah, I had now done the detailed planning for about 7500 miles to be done in what I calculated up to that point, including a few rest days, to be about 63 days. That is an average of just 119 miles per day and I was beginning to wonder if I had judged this correctly. I wanted to make sure I had the right balance between estimating too many miles a day and too few. Did I have enough time to visit the places I wanted to see, or was I estimating too much time for this and I should be planning to do more miles each day?

The answer was simple. I didn’t know! It felt about right, but did I need to change what I had already planned? I decided that I couldn’t decide, so I needed a compromise. I would continue to estimate how far I planned to travel each day on particular roads – 75 to 125 miles per day on roads that were twisty or with many places that I wanted to stop at, or 150 to 250 miles per day where I had no choice but to use main US Highways or even worse, the Interstates. More on the different types of roads in the USA in the next post.

To maximise the flexibility I felt I needed, I decided that while I would have a good idea how far I would travel each day, I wouldn’t pre-book any accommodation, except for in really busy areas. I would only try to find accommodation each day and this would entirely depend on how far I would travel that day. I might do this on the web (I will be taking my laptop) or simply risk it and try to find somewhere by just riding around the area I arrive at that day.

On the whole, my reflection told me I was doing this planning in the right way for the sort of tour I wanted and I should carry on.

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16th / 20th August 2009 – Detailed Planning Part 4

I had a few days to spare, so it was back to the detailed route planning. So far I had planned two of the major parts of the tour (the Atlantic Coast and the Central States) but for me, I was now about to start the most interesting part – travelling south down the Rocky Mountains.

The mountains themselves, the lakes, rivers and of course the twisty, winding roads that result from such geography will make this the most interesting part of the trip.

I spent these few days doing the detailed route planning through two of the States in this region, South Dakota and Wyoming. Just thinking about the places I would visit in these two States evoke strong memories of watching films set in these places when I was a boy – Custer, Crazy Horse Memorial, Boot Hill Cemetery, Sundance and other cowboy related towns. Combine those with Mount Rushmore, the Devils Tower (where they filmed the alien landing scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Yellowstone Park and the Teton Mountains, and this stacks up to be one of the parts of the forthcoming tour that I am most looking forward to.

Total miles planned so far = 6950

I should mention one website that I found to be incredibly useful in this detailed planning stage and that is Mapquest (www.mapquest.com). This is both an electronic map site, but even more useful is its “Directions” section. This allows you to type in the names of two towns or cities and the website then calculates and displays a route between those two places, giving mileages, times, road names etc. There are a number of websites that do this but Mapquest has one feature that is incredibly useful. This is the ability to drag the route shown with your mouse to a different road, say one that you want to use. The software then instantly re-calculates the distances and time. This is excellent when route planning.

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8th / 9th August 2009 – The SOFER Rally

This was the weekend of SOFER, the South of England Rally, a multi-chapter Harley Owners Group (HOG) event held at Bisley in Surrey. This was a 3 day long event and my eldest son and I decided to camp. I hadn’t actually slept in a tent for years and I now know why! This weekend made me decided that camping on the USA tour was definitely not for me! I woke in the morning after a very uncomfortable night eased only by the amount of beer that I had to drink the night before. Camping whilst touring on a motorbike is certainly possible and many people do this, but carrying all the equipment needed if camping cannot be easy.

The rally itself was great fun. This is organised by five HOG Chapters (1066, Invicta, Oxford UK, Hogsback, and Thames Valley) and is probably one of the bigger HOG events with bands, retailers, games, a custom bike show (I won best radical custom for my red bike) and lots more.

Over the weekend I met Marjorie Rae, the Manager of HOG for UK and Ireland when she presented me with my custom bike prize, so I took the opportunity to discuss with Marjorie the USA Tour I was planning and it was suggested that I might write a blog about the tour. Hence that is the reason this blog came to fruition!

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18th / 31st July – Detailed Route Planning, Part 3

My wife Jackie is American and each year we try to take a family holiday somewhere near Seattle in Washington State. Seattle is where most of Jackie’s family live so it is an obvious location for us to holiday to. This year, 2009, we rented a house at Lake Whatcom, near Bellingham and this gave me an ideal opportunity to do the detailed route planning for a considerable number of States. Being an early riser, I had a good few hours each day on my own, so at about 5.30am each morning, the maps came out for some planning!

One great benefit of doing the planning in the early mornings in the house overlooking the lake was the peace, quiet and sheer tranquillity of the setting. The picture below shows the view from the house we rented.















The only problem was, in order to do the detailed route planning I needed access to the Internet and there was a problem with the Internet service to the house we had rented. This was fixed after a couple of days but to make up for this, the owner of the house took a couple of us for a quick trip in his – wait for it – private plane! Wow, that was fantastic and we flew over the San Juan Islands and landed on a grass strip on one of those islands and took a walk around.

In the house at Lake Whatcom, I was able to do the detailed planning for the States of Connecticut, New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. Each State took the equivalent of about a full morning to plan and type up on my spreadsheet. The total amount of miles planned so far is now 4720.

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27th / 28th June 2009 – Detailed Route Planning Part 2

From this point on for about 3 months, I periodically got out my State maps, books and spreadsheet and I worked my way through each State that I would be visiting.

This weekend I did the detailed route planning for the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and one of the smallest States, Rhode Island.

My tour was to start in the top right hand corner of the USA and work down to the bottom left. For me this meant the tour would actually start in the small town of Calais on the Atlantic Coast where the USA meets Canada.

From what I had read and researched on the internet, I decided to ride down the coast of these 4 States, hugging the Atlantic wherever I could. Comprising a rugged coastline with many old fishing villages, this would be a perfect start to the tour comprising some 1500 miles.

There would be much to see, stop and do along this coast, so I decided not to plan too many miles each day. I based this part of the tour on an average of 125 miles per day, so this part would take about 12 days.

What I wasn’t doing yet was researching and deciding where I would stay each night – that would come later.

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20th / 21st June 2009 – Detailed Route Planning, Part 1

I had decided back in April that I would need to do some detailed route planning to determine which roads I would use to go through each State, rather than just deciding n the route as I went along. I had bought maps of each State and I had started to mark on those maps in pencil which roads I would take. To help do this, I used the two books “The Most Scenic Drives In America” and the “Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways” which gave me some very good information about what I might see on the way.

As well as the detailed State maps marked in pencil with my intended route, I needed to also be able to record what the road names / numbers are that I would be using, how many miles there are between towns or places I would visit, what places of interest I would expect to see along the route and how many days each part of the tour was likely to take.

Due to my love of lists, I created a spreadsheet that I would use to store all of this information. In the end, this turned out to be 20 pages of details that I would need on the tour. To me, this was essential as there was no way I could ever hope to remember all of the detail I was going to need. For me personally, a spreadsheet was just what I needed. For others, a simple list might be adequate.

If you want a copy of this spreadsheet, send an e-mail to me asking for it and I will send it as soon as possible.

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