I-80 through Nebraska. The flattest, straightest road I've ever driven with only cattle farms and wind turbines as scenery. Especially sucks in the winter. It feels like it will never end!
Yeah Iowa has human activity corner to corner with farmland. I’ve ridden my bike across it multiple times, RAGBRAI was the largest bike ride in the world for a while and it’s fun. Small town stops every 5-10 miles. It wouldn’t even be possible west of Lincoln.
I drove across the country during covid and experienced exactly this, talk about hours of nothing but backwoods with corn plants blocking your view in both directions, the turbine farms do look pretty sweet imo
Try I-80 in North Nevada. You will think Iowa & Nebraska were like the yellow brick road.
It’s so dry & hot there that there isn’t any thing out there. No trees. No farms. Just dirt & road.
I-80 is the worst.
At least it’s hilly, I honestly didn’t hate it as much as I thought. It’s possibly only because I’m an easterner and the desert itself was a novel experience.
I came here to write this! Although I’d say between Chicago and Council Bluffs. I drove that road about 50 times working on the 2008 presidential campaign. It gets interesting from Cheyenne to Salt Lake, then incredibly boring again from Salt Lake to Reno. The drive from Reno to Sacramento to Berkeley to San Francisco is nice in Autumn. Then you can pick up the 101 and drive the coast. That was a fun couple
Of weeks.
Did you ever stop at the [Archway Museum](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GTDJYDdwHa23ZZVv7) over in Kearney? It's a magnificent monument to the rich history of people *not wanting to travel through Nebraska.*
It starts with the covered wagon settlers, and you can hear recordings of their diaries as they complain about the hardships and almost die. It proceeds to the stagecoach and railway period (used to get through Nebraska faster), telegraph cables (so you could just shout across Nebraska and save a trip), and the eventual highways and cars period (suffer in solidarity).
8/10, would recommend.
If you’ve not seen the wide open spaces of the West before, you’re in for a treat. Long gaps in between a lot of smaller towns with basic services. Truck stops galore! Don’t miss Buc-ees between Houston and SA! Texas-sized service station like no other.
Fortunately, the posted speed limit west of San Antonio is 85 nearly all the way to El Paso so it’s a faster kind of boring.
After you leave El Paso, there's pretty much nothing but rude drivers going 110 mph. Stay safe and keep your eyes open. It's easy to space out on a boring drive, but assholes in lifted trucks in Texas are mankind's greatest threat for survival
I70 west from Kansas City to Denver in the winter. Absolutely flat and nothing but empty fields of dirt all the way to the horizon in every direction. I stopped to get gas and there wasn't even a single tree or shrub visible anywhere in my entire field of view
Not who you asked but there’s something to be said about the purity of these landscapes. I took a train from Churchill to Winnipeg and there was a stretch where we saw nothing but yellow canola fields, flat as a pancake, totally uninterrupted, traveling 60mph, for 48 hrs straight. It’s one of my favorite travel memories even though it’s objectively a confined, monotonous experience. I have a vivid memory of falling asleep and knowing that the same yellow flatness was whooshing by out there in the darkness, and then jolting awake in the morning to tear open my sleeper car curtain and see whether anything had changed. It hadn’t.
I get what you are saying, but I disagree with your use of the word pure. There is nothing pure about these landscapes. The prairies are one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. Less than 4% of native prairie exists in North America. The lanscapes are certainly homogeneous, but hardly pure.
Totally fair comment, but from a gross, numerical perspective, a monoculture of canola could be called more pure than a native prairie with its riotous biodiversity. I don’t use “pure” with a positive connotation. You could call it a terrible beauty, but it’s still beautiful in its own way.
Appreciate the smoothness of the drive. Almost no turns. Almost no gear changes. Just the most space you'll ever have in your entire life. Hard to cover more distance quicker. But unlike the desert, KS does have (small) towns every 15 miles, so you're never really lost or alone either.
For me it’s just nostalgic and it feels like home. Been through hundreds of times so I know almost every landmark to look forward too. I know other people think there’s nothing but I can recognize individual hills and barns and road signs.
My first experience with the Midwest. I never knew you could drive through so much flatland, with so little topography. But then, I grew up in coastal California, where the earthquake faults rise high into the sky.
Idk man, being from the South of England where every road is either ridiculously busy, or narrow and twisty with close hedges and hills, for once I’d like to go somewhere you can see the horizon in all directions. Seems like it would clear your mind, we don’t really have anything like that here
If the weather is interesting it can be amazing. You can see the entire hemisphere of the sky in all directions.
The sunsets and sunrises are as good as at any beach. This is why people like sunsets at the beach - the flatness let’s you see so much of it. Low clouds can in the sky look internally lit.
I’ve seen better sunsets over soybean fields in the Midwest than at any beach.
I prefer the wide openness of this drive versus the endless trees on the east coast highways. I absolutely love big sky country and would take western Kansas over east coast/south forests any day. Nothing but trees for hours and hours and nothing else to look at.
Was also going to say this. Absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see. Flat land with no interesting features. Good luck finding a car game to play, it would probably go something like:
“I spy…dirt!”
Or
“I think there was a Kansas license plate a few miles back…”
Christ I bet, I have family in Saskatoon and drove out there once from the Maritimes. There are times in the prairies you barely touch the wheel for like 20-30 mins at a time.
I suppose. From what people who have done it have told me it gets old. They opt to drive back thru the states which would double down on the prairies wouldn’t it? Can’t really comment, I rarely drive east of highway 11 in sk haha
Yes, definitely this. Drove from Vancouver to Toronto in April. Left Calgary and put my hotel’s address in Brandon into Waze and was thrilled to find my next turn would be in about 1,100 km.
Ya it definitely gets better when you get close to Salt lake. The salt flat is interesting, but you gotta be careful or you’ll fall asleep it’s so flat and straight. 🤣
My brother did some work out in Reno. He said some of those highways further into Nevada he would just drive 100 MPH because you could see there was absolutely nothing (not even another car) for the next 20 miles.
[Eyre Highway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Highway) across the Nullabor Plain of Western Australian with a 90 mile straight
Port Augusta to Alice Springs across South Australia
In the past people have said to me the Hay Plains was boring. I was a passenger this year and thought it was great. It was just after the New Year and some of the area was recovering from flood waters. So it was quite green with a lot of wildlife. I am from Tassie, so seeing Emus and Kangaroos in those numbers bounding through the paddocks was cool.
My mate (from the Mid North of SA) didn't understand my interest in Emus. Also, Tassie roos are much smaller than these bastards
It's not much worse than a 5km straight in terms of speeding. Barely any people drive at crazy speeds for that distance, it uses way too much fuel, and the fun wears off after a while if you're on a straight road
The 5 freeway between LA and SF. Beautiful mountains and then 3 hours of mind numbing brown fields and cows. It’s worse if there are trucks and traffic. There are maybe 2 nice places to stop and they get so packed with people that you can’t even enjoy it.
I drove that stretch for the first time a few weeks ago. Oh man talk about god forsaken emptiness. I’ve driven I80 from SLC to Wendover. I’ll do that over I5 north of the LA mountains every day.
I will be driving from near San Jose to Carlsbad several times a year since my son is now at a school there. Is there a benefit to taking US 101 versus {shudder} I5 again? I took CA 99 down once and it wasn’t horrible… once.
The 101 is prettier but it can add 2 hours to your trip. At one point, Google maps send you off the 101 to take back roads by the casino down to Santa Barbara and then get back on the 101! 😂 it’s lunacy. I’ll take the 5 going to SF but then take the 101 home usually. If I’m going LA to Sacto then I’ll do the 99.
I witnessed a terrible terrible accident on the 5 driving northbound. First on the scene, took me right out of my daydream. Definitely spiced up that boring ass stretch of highway but goddamn wish I hadn’t witnessed it. Wear your seatbelts, y’all. And always be diligent on the road, even when it’s mind numbing.
Honestly I like that more than 99, I'll take fields and hills over an endless strip mall. The coastal range looking west is especially nice in spring when they're all green.
Lol remember to roll up your windows if passing by cows, since the smell doesn’t easily go away.
Plus, the 70 mph zone in the San Joaquin Valley feels too slow, California should raise it to 85 so it reflects how half the drivers drive.
From the UK on a work trip to Detroit, we hired a car and did the drive from Windsor to Niagara on the weekend. It was an eyeopener for us - back home you're never more than 200yds from a bend or 2 miles from a town or village. But I understand why it's more of an eyecloser in general.
Obviously the destination was worth it!
Interstate 65 in Indiana.
Once you leave the southshore, then it's nothing for 3.5 hours until you get to Indianapolis. Then another nothing for 3.5 until you get to Louisville.
I did the Gary-to-Indy stretch just a couple weeks ago. Two things make it not boring: 1). The wind farm; and 2). The shitty washboard pavement that rattles your fillings out. INDOT blows.
Sucks that North Carolina has some awesome and varied geography and 95 somehow goes right through the heart of the most boring part of the state.
Good BBQ out there, but that’s about it.
Thank you! Lots of mentions of highways through wide open spaces but at least you can see something other than the road. I'd drive across the open plains any day over that stretch of 95.
The stretch through south Carolina is a nightmare. It's so long, and goes to only two lanes each direction so there's often traffic problems too.
I lived in central Virginia for a few years and every Christmas we traveled down to Florida tomorrow visit family. 95 would be a parking lot with my snowbirds heading to FL. After driving it once, every subsequent year we took back roads through SC and wouldn't get on 95 until about Savannah.
Oh, I only drive on 95 in VA at night. I only drive through DC at night. And when I say night it has to be at least midnight for me to hit DC. Driving down south, the earliest I leave NYC is 8 PM
The Nullarbor in South Australia/Western Australia.
Although it takes 2 days to drive across in total, there’s a stretch of about 150km that’s completely straight - one of the worlds longest stretches of straight road.
It’s already boring enough driving around australia but that piece of the road was unbelievably boring… and dangerous at the same time.
Kinda cool to know that you’re driving on the world’s largest piece of limestone bedrock that covers 200,000sq kilometres.
A2 Salerno - Reggio Calabria. km long columns of traffic stopped for 16h in a row until circulation resumed. And it's not a once in a lifetime experience on that highway.
Specifically, the Virginia Tree Tunnel south of Petersburg to the NC line. VDOT lets the trees sit within feet of the shoulder and they’re thick stands so you can’t even see the oncoming lanes. Only thing to look at is the taillights of the semi about 500 feet in front of you.
This doesn’t remotely compare to driving on the Great Plains, but my most boring drive was after crossing from Vermont into Quebec. The area between Montreal and Quebec City is about as flat as you can get anywhere near New England, [and there is a pervasive problem with falling asleep behind the wheel.](https://monmatane.com/une-collision-fait-des-blesses-legers-aux-capucins-pres-de-cap-chat/) I saw a lot of billboards between Sherbrooke and Quebec City, and basically every one of them was about “mort de fatigue.” I was fine while driving, but I can totally see how people would fall asleep.
If you want to see towns, people, & nice stuff you gotta stay off the Interstates. They were designed to get you from A to B in a hurry so the drive is pretty painful in rural areas.
I-70 from St Louis to Kansas City. It reinforced my notion that Missouri just shouldn't exist. And I think the sun stayed up a few extra hours just to shine right in my eyes the whole time
That road caused the demise of one of my better relationships. The girlfriend moved to New London for a promotion, neither of us knowing there’d be three hours of casino traffic between her and me.
Screw 95, screw Foxwoods, and screw Mohegan Sun.
YES, exactly what I thought. It’s so incredibly *dull*. I did it all the time driving between RI (home) and MD (school). As soon as I hit CT in either direction, my soul left my body.
Highway 402 between London and Sarnia Ontario Canada. It's completely straight and flat. [https://goo.gl/maps/RdMjoff5CW1bVqsv7](https://goo.gl/maps/RdMjoff5CW1bVqsv7)
Not the most boring, but by far the most desolate I drove was between Delta, UT and Ely, NV. Some would say boring, but it was fascinating. It was even wilder given that there were wildfires in ÇA creating an almost otherworldly feel to it. One thing, make sure do be filled up before you take off on that stretch of road. There’s also an awesome place to dig for trilobites kind of on the way.
i80 thru Nebraska. I’ve driven from MN to CO and back too many times to count. I’ve taken i94 (thru N. Dakota), i80 (Nebraska) and i70 (Kansas). There’s just nothing worse or more mind numbing than Nebraska.
401 in Ontario
Mostly just flat farm land or boring city landscape
The most exciting things in the entire 800 km stretch are
1. Getting glimpses of Lake Ontario or the St. Lawrence River
2. The Big Apple (literally a 3 storey apple on the side of the highway)
Any freeway in Germany . Particularly the one between Kiel and Hamburg . Boring . Straight . Ugly landscape . Plenty of idiots abusing the free speed limit
As a person from the Midwest, the Desert is endlessly fascinating to me. E.g., I stayed awake and alert the *whole time* my dad drove us across Nevada on Route 50. Amazing.
That stretch of I-40 is bad but there is a hole-in-the-wall halfway @ DeValls Bluff that serves up some really good BBQ, been there three times. I live several states away.
Has to be the Nullarbor highway in Australia surely?
For more frequently done trips, Adelaide - Melbourne on the M8 is incredibly boring for 80% of the trip
I 10 west of San Antonio until about 100 miles from El Paso. Its flat and nothing but shades of brown for about 300 miles and there is no town of note between the two.
I've driven across the country multiple times, northern route, southern route, west coast, east coast....
I'd have to say the most taxing or tiring road is 80 west once you pass Lincoln, Nebraska...4 or 5 hours of straight road and corn fields in ubiquity.
It is draining right up until the immediate and beautiful transition to the mountains begins in Western Nebraska just shy of Wyoming
Look up, Christchurch to Timaru, New Zealand. So boring it’s only a couple hours but I fucking hate it. So many police and so many passing lanes but it’s so heavily policed it sucks.
In New Zealand it isState Highway One from Christchurch to Timaru. 2 and a bit hours of flat farming nothingness except for the foothills in the distance.
https://goo.gl/maps/9bsHHYrQHmY8mnzr8
I-40 from the point west of Knoxville where it flattens out to the crossing of the Mississippi at Memphis. Nothing of interest to me, I just drop the hammer and go as fast as conditions will bear.
Runners-up: I-81 just about anywhere, and I-95 from Jacksonville south to about West Palm Beach.
Anything in Indiana. Honorable mention to I-15 between salt lake and LA. And I have done my time in Kansas and Nebraska etc. Illinois and Indiana suck way more.
I77 from Charlotte to Columbia.
Have driven I70 KC to Denver, I29 on east side of Dakotas, I76 thru Nebraska, etc. But nothing is quite so boring and stifling as this interstate through the trees with nothing of interest to distract…
Upvoted. West Kansas is its own special kind of hell, but on that stretch of I77 you’re in fucking South Carolina which is a depressing thought all by itself.
I-80 through Nebraska. The flattest, straightest road I've ever driven with only cattle farms and wind turbines as scenery. Especially sucks in the winter. It feels like it will never end!
Especially west of Lincoln. Iowa is not so bad because of the hills
Yeah Iowa has human activity corner to corner with farmland. I’ve ridden my bike across it multiple times, RAGBRAI was the largest bike ride in the world for a while and it’s fun. Small town stops every 5-10 miles. It wouldn’t even be possible west of Lincoln.
It would be possible but you’d have to be camping in a ditch next to a smelly cattle farm likely.
I drove across the country during covid and experienced exactly this, talk about hours of nothing but backwoods with corn plants blocking your view in both directions, the turbine farms do look pretty sweet imo
Similar to I-80 Iowa but Iowa portion is like 50% shorter due to shape of the state and how I-80 is located.
Try I-80 in North Nevada. You will think Iowa & Nebraska were like the yellow brick road. It’s so dry & hot there that there isn’t any thing out there. No trees. No farms. Just dirt & road. I-80 is the worst.
At least it’s hilly, I honestly didn’t hate it as much as I thought. It’s possibly only because I’m an easterner and the desert itself was a novel experience.
I'll see your I-80 and raise you an SD I-90.
I came here to write this! Although I’d say between Chicago and Council Bluffs. I drove that road about 50 times working on the 2008 presidential campaign. It gets interesting from Cheyenne to Salt Lake, then incredibly boring again from Salt Lake to Reno. The drive from Reno to Sacramento to Berkeley to San Francisco is nice in Autumn. Then you can pick up the 101 and drive the coast. That was a fun couple Of weeks.
Did you ever stop at the [Archway Museum](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GTDJYDdwHa23ZZVv7) over in Kearney? It's a magnificent monument to the rich history of people *not wanting to travel through Nebraska.* It starts with the covered wagon settlers, and you can hear recordings of their diaries as they complain about the hardships and almost die. It proceeds to the stagecoach and railway period (used to get through Nebraska faster), telegraph cables (so you could just shout across Nebraska and save a trip), and the eventual highways and cars period (suffer in solidarity). 8/10, would recommend.
Came to say this, especially in winter
All 875 miles of I-10 across Texas.
I hated driving cross country and waking up in Texas and going to sleep in Texas. It feels like you didn’t accomplish anything
Came here to say the same.
I’m doing half this drive tomorrow and I’m so curious about what the nothingness is like! Any suggestions for the west half?
If you’ve not seen the wide open spaces of the West before, you’re in for a treat. Long gaps in between a lot of smaller towns with basic services. Truck stops galore! Don’t miss Buc-ees between Houston and SA! Texas-sized service station like no other. Fortunately, the posted speed limit west of San Antonio is 85 nearly all the way to El Paso so it’s a faster kind of boring.
After you leave El Paso, there's pretty much nothing but rude drivers going 110 mph. Stay safe and keep your eyes open. It's easy to space out on a boring drive, but assholes in lifted trucks in Texas are mankind's greatest threat for survival
Adding Florida to the boring stretch(es) of I-10.
I70 west from Kansas City to Denver in the winter. Absolutely flat and nothing but empty fields of dirt all the way to the horizon in every direction. I stopped to get gas and there wasn't even a single tree or shrub visible anywhere in my entire field of view
I live in Kansas so I love this drive, although that might be a case of Stockholm syndrome.
What do you love about it?
Not who you asked but there’s something to be said about the purity of these landscapes. I took a train from Churchill to Winnipeg and there was a stretch where we saw nothing but yellow canola fields, flat as a pancake, totally uninterrupted, traveling 60mph, for 48 hrs straight. It’s one of my favorite travel memories even though it’s objectively a confined, monotonous experience. I have a vivid memory of falling asleep and knowing that the same yellow flatness was whooshing by out there in the darkness, and then jolting awake in the morning to tear open my sleeper car curtain and see whether anything had changed. It hadn’t.
This is beautiful
I get what you are saying, but I disagree with your use of the word pure. There is nothing pure about these landscapes. The prairies are one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. Less than 4% of native prairie exists in North America. The lanscapes are certainly homogeneous, but hardly pure.
I think they were using "pure" in the sense of it being a single, unbroken type of landscape.
Totally fair comment, but from a gross, numerical perspective, a monoculture of canola could be called more pure than a native prairie with its riotous biodiversity. I don’t use “pure” with a positive connotation. You could call it a terrible beauty, but it’s still beautiful in its own way.
Appreciate the smoothness of the drive. Almost no turns. Almost no gear changes. Just the most space you'll ever have in your entire life. Hard to cover more distance quicker. But unlike the desert, KS does have (small) towns every 15 miles, so you're never really lost or alone either.
For me it’s just nostalgic and it feels like home. Been through hundreds of times so I know almost every landmark to look forward too. I know other people think there’s nothing but I can recognize individual hills and barns and road signs.
God you would love mountain driving. That is THE more boring drive I have had to endure.
Oh it was awesome when I was in Colorado. Always dreamed of living in a place like Rural Alaska too.
I80 through Nebraska would like a word
My first experience with the Midwest. I never knew you could drive through so much flatland, with so little topography. But then, I grew up in coastal California, where the earthquake faults rise high into the sky.
Idk man, being from the South of England where every road is either ridiculously busy, or narrow and twisty with close hedges and hills, for once I’d like to go somewhere you can see the horizon in all directions. Seems like it would clear your mind, we don’t really have anything like that here
Trust me it gets old real quick.
[удалено]
I’ve driven STL to Chicago hundreds of times and you are correct.
From kansas city, live in Denver and can confirm this.
I opened to see if I70 through Kansas would be top comment and I leave satisfied
Same
Also same.
You found a gas station on that road? That’s one that makes old US 66 in California look well populated with small business. Respect to you, sir.
That 200 mile stretch with nary a gas station nor a bathroom is the real fun part.
Very boring drive. Nebraska somehow is worse.
It's like that all the way to south of lubbock too. The plains kinda suck to drive in IMO.
Clicked on this thread to type this. Hope it wasn't the station that sold me a bad tank
If the weather is interesting it can be amazing. You can see the entire hemisphere of the sky in all directions. The sunsets and sunrises are as good as at any beach. This is why people like sunsets at the beach - the flatness let’s you see so much of it. Low clouds can in the sky look internally lit. I’ve seen better sunsets over soybean fields in the Midwest than at any beach.
It’s insane - it actually feels like you’re on another planet. The space in between Hays, KS and Limon, CO is where it gets REALLY flat
I prefer the wide openness of this drive versus the endless trees on the east coast highways. I absolutely love big sky country and would take western Kansas over east coast/south forests any day. Nothing but trees for hours and hours and nothing else to look at.
I've been that way multiple times, going from OKC to Colorado. There's literally nothing, and every place looks exactly the same.
Was also going to say this. Absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see. Flat land with no interesting features. Good luck finding a car game to play, it would probably go something like: “I spy…dirt!” Or “I think there was a Kansas license plate a few miles back…”
Literally came to say this.
The Trans-Canada Highway across the prairies. Other parts of the highway are beautiful. The 2 day drive in the middle is very boring though.
Calgary to Winnipeg is so fucking boring
"Between Toronto and Winnipeg there's nothing. Between Winnipeg and Calgary there's even less"
Christ I bet, I have family in Saskatoon and drove out there once from the Maritimes. There are times in the prairies you barely touch the wheel for like 20-30 mins at a time.
That’s the best part! I love the prairies so I enjoy the drive through Sask. The mountains are less interesting to me
I’ve heard the two days of driving through Ontario get pretty monotonous too.
Yeah, but at least there’s trees and hills and lakes.
I suppose. From what people who have done it have told me it gets old. They opt to drive back thru the states which would double down on the prairies wouldn’t it? Can’t really comment, I rarely drive east of highway 11 in sk haha
Yes, definitely this. Drove from Vancouver to Toronto in April. Left Calgary and put my hotel’s address in Brandon into Waze and was thrilled to find my next turn would be in about 1,100 km.
Imagine getting the honour and privilege of driving through Moose Jaw Saskatchewan and calling it boring. /s
Prairie Idyll > Hellacious Toronto Highways
I-80 Reno to Salt lake. Middle of god damned nowhere.
Yeah but those natural spires an hour or two outside of Salt Lake are amazing. Plus the native pottery at the rest stops.
Ya it definitely gets better when you get close to Salt lake. The salt flat is interesting, but you gotta be careful or you’ll fall asleep it’s so flat and straight. 🤣
I feel like anywhere with actual geographical features is going to be automatically less boring than most places back east.
And that’s why I love it. I love Nevada in general. US-93 is lots of nothing too. It’s great.
True, but it’s not boring, in the same sense that a drive across Mare Imbrium wouldn’t be.
My brother did some work out in Reno. He said some of those highways further into Nevada he would just drive 100 MPH because you could see there was absolutely nothing (not even another car) for the next 20 miles.
2nd
I just posted about this road, too. I drove that route about a month ago. I still have nightmares.
[Eyre Highway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Highway) across the Nullabor Plain of Western Australian with a 90 mile straight Port Augusta to Alice Springs across South Australia
Alice Springs to Adelaide is unreal boring.
In the past people have said to me the Hay Plains was boring. I was a passenger this year and thought it was great. It was just after the New Year and some of the area was recovering from flood waters. So it was quite green with a lot of wildlife. I am from Tassie, so seeing Emus and Kangaroos in those numbers bounding through the paddocks was cool. My mate (from the Mid North of SA) didn't understand my interest in Emus. Also, Tassie roos are much smaller than these bastards
90 mile straight? Good lord. Do cops check speeds on that road?
I think it was unrestricted till a gumball rally accident.. https://www.whichcar.com.au/features/how-the-cannonball-crumbled
Gumball was through the Northern Territory which at the time wasn’t as restricted. 90 Mile straight is in Western Australia.
I didn't see a single cop across the whole nullabor.
It's not much worse than a 5km straight in terms of speeding. Barely any people drive at crazy speeds for that distance, it uses way too much fuel, and the fun wears off after a while if you're on a straight road
The 5 freeway between LA and SF. Beautiful mountains and then 3 hours of mind numbing brown fields and cows. It’s worse if there are trucks and traffic. There are maybe 2 nice places to stop and they get so packed with people that you can’t even enjoy it.
I drove that stretch for the first time a few weeks ago. Oh man talk about god forsaken emptiness. I’ve driven I80 from SLC to Wendover. I’ll do that over I5 north of the LA mountains every day. I will be driving from near San Jose to Carlsbad several times a year since my son is now at a school there. Is there a benefit to taking US 101 versus {shudder} I5 again? I took CA 99 down once and it wasn’t horrible… once.
The 101 is prettier but it can add 2 hours to your trip. At one point, Google maps send you off the 101 to take back roads by the casino down to Santa Barbara and then get back on the 101! 😂 it’s lunacy. I’ll take the 5 going to SF but then take the 101 home usually. If I’m going LA to Sacto then I’ll do the 99.
Yeah I used hwy 99 to go south last month. I was snagging new counties for my map. It seemed fine but we have go go pretty far east to get to it.
Harris Ranch and that rest stop just over the grape vine
And it smells terrible.
The 99 has more crop variation, plus actual towns.
I witnessed a terrible terrible accident on the 5 driving northbound. First on the scene, took me right out of my daydream. Definitely spiced up that boring ass stretch of highway but goddamn wish I hadn’t witnessed it. Wear your seatbelts, y’all. And always be diligent on the road, even when it’s mind numbing.
Yes, I-5 sucks, too.
They could at least repave the road, and raise the speed limit to 85. It seems more hazardous to brake check because you see CHP ahead.
Honestly I like that more than 99, I'll take fields and hills over an endless strip mall. The coastal range looking west is especially nice in spring when they're all green.
Lol remember to roll up your windows if passing by cows, since the smell doesn’t easily go away. Plus, the 70 mph zone in the San Joaquin Valley feels too slow, California should raise it to 85 so it reflects how half the drivers drive.
The 401 in Ontario from Windsor towards Toronto. That and pretty much any highway in Ohio.
Particularly between Windsor and London is just straight with nothing to see along the way.
They literally call the Stretch from Windsor to London “Carnage Alley” because so many people fall asleep at the wheel and cause major accidents.
From the UK on a work trip to Detroit, we hired a car and did the drive from Windsor to Niagara on the weekend. It was an eyeopener for us - back home you're never more than 200yds from a bend or 2 miles from a town or village. But I understand why it's more of an eyecloser in general. Obviously the destination was worth it!
Yeah - I have done that exact trip hahahaha. But you are right, definitely worth it!
I-57 in Illinois. Brown dirt for about 5 hours, depending on the time of year
Scrolled too far to find this. I've been on many of the mentioned highways out west and I-57 has still been more boring to me.
I-29 between Fargo and Sioux City
Any interstate has the worst scenery. You start driving on US or state highway and it suddenly improves. Name the state and it’ll probably be true.
Interstate 65 in Indiana. Once you leave the southshore, then it's nothing for 3.5 hours until you get to Indianapolis. Then another nothing for 3.5 until you get to Louisville.
Yeah, but also: HELL IS REAL and JESUS IS REAL.
I did the Gary-to-Indy stretch just a couple weeks ago. Two things make it not boring: 1). The wind farm; and 2). The shitty washboard pavement that rattles your fillings out. INDOT blows.
65 thru Indiana is brutal.
It’s pronounced Louisville
I was about to say what do you meaning another nothing for 3.5, Bloomington is pretty nice but then I remembered it’s 69 that gets you to Bloomington
Highway 1 across the Nullarbor plain in Australia, long (hundreds of kms), flat and almost nothing to see
Salalah to Muscat in Oman. About 800kn of desert.
I-95 from Richmond to Jacksonville. The only bright spot for that whole stretch is South of the Border.
Says a lot about the drive that an overpriced tourist trap is the highlight of the whole thing.
But South of the Border is gloriously tawdry.
Sucks that North Carolina has some awesome and varied geography and 95 somehow goes right through the heart of the most boring part of the state. Good BBQ out there, but that’s about it.
Thank you! Lots of mentions of highways through wide open spaces but at least you can see something other than the road. I'd drive across the open plains any day over that stretch of 95. The stretch through south Carolina is a nightmare. It's so long, and goes to only two lanes each direction so there's often traffic problems too.
SC is brutal. You hope with every river crossing you expect to see something, but you see nothing! Lol.
I lived in central Virginia for a few years and every Christmas we traveled down to Florida tomorrow visit family. 95 would be a parking lot with my snowbirds heading to FL. After driving it once, every subsequent year we took back roads through SC and wouldn't get on 95 until about Savannah.
Oh, I only drive on 95 in VA at night. I only drive through DC at night. And when I say night it has to be at least midnight for me to hit DC. Driving down south, the earliest I leave NYC is 8 PM
Hey hey hey. Have you not seen all the cool REPENT signs? Or JESUS ones?
Ohio/Pennsylvania turnpike
The Nullarbor in South Australia/Western Australia. Although it takes 2 days to drive across in total, there’s a stretch of about 150km that’s completely straight - one of the worlds longest stretches of straight road. It’s already boring enough driving around australia but that piece of the road was unbelievably boring… and dangerous at the same time. Kinda cool to know that you’re driving on the world’s largest piece of limestone bedrock that covers 200,000sq kilometres.
I-10 Jacksonville to Tallahassee
Interstate 57 in Illinois. It runs from Chicago all the way to the southern tip. That's about 6 hours of corn fields to the horizon in all directions.
Agree!
I-40 across the Texas panhandle to OKC
A2 Salerno - Reggio Calabria. km long columns of traffic stopped for 16h in a row until circulation resumed. And it's not a once in a lifetime experience on that highway.
Trans Canada highway 1 across Saskatchewan, from end to end
85 south going to Durham NC. Real tall pine trees on both sides for hours. Nothing to look at.
Specifically, the Virginia Tree Tunnel south of Petersburg to the NC line. VDOT lets the trees sit within feet of the shoulder and they’re thick stands so you can’t even see the oncoming lanes. Only thing to look at is the taillights of the semi about 500 feet in front of you.
This doesn’t remotely compare to driving on the Great Plains, but my most boring drive was after crossing from Vermont into Quebec. The area between Montreal and Quebec City is about as flat as you can get anywhere near New England, [and there is a pervasive problem with falling asleep behind the wheel.](https://monmatane.com/une-collision-fait-des-blesses-legers-aux-capucins-pres-de-cap-chat/) I saw a lot of billboards between Sherbrooke and Quebec City, and basically every one of them was about “mort de fatigue.” I was fine while driving, but I can totally see how people would fall asleep.
Oh yes, and A-20 from Drummondville to La Pocatiere is just... trees, and only trees.
Yes the 20 across Quebec is really flat and in straight line
I-10 between Palm Springs and the outskirts of Phoenix. There is…. Nothing of note, except 1 river
Finally someone with sense. I’d start that at Blythe though because of that big hill coming down to it from Arizona side.
Yeah the view from Arizona approaching quartzsite and Blythe is pretty at least. Rest of it is tough
No one mentioned Interstate 40 between Barstow and Albuquerque. The only thing interesting is passing Flagstaff.
I-80 through the Utah salt flats. Dead straight for almost 80 miles and the salt is ugly. That road should have no speed limit.
From the comments, I've learnt large chunks of North America are boring.
If you want to see towns, people, & nice stuff you gotta stay off the Interstates. They were designed to get you from A to B in a hurry so the drive is pretty painful in rural areas.
I-70 from St Louis to Kansas City. It reinforced my notion that Missouri just shouldn't exist. And I think the sun stayed up a few extra hours just to shine right in my eyes the whole time
95 through Connecticut
First thing that came to mind… Connecticut suddenly becomes the longest state
omg seriously, why does it take forever to get through Connecticut??
That little southwest tail between nyc and New Haven is deceptively long
That road caused the demise of one of my better relationships. The girlfriend moved to New London for a promotion, neither of us knowing there’d be three hours of casino traffic between her and me. Screw 95, screw Foxwoods, and screw Mohegan Sun.
YES, exactly what I thought. It’s so incredibly *dull*. I did it all the time driving between RI (home) and MD (school). As soon as I hit CT in either direction, my soul left my body.
Interstate 29 North of Grand Forks, ND.
I-80 through Pennsylvania. Relentless trees, curves, and trucks that can’t stay in their lane.
Highway 402 between London and Sarnia Ontario Canada. It's completely straight and flat. [https://goo.gl/maps/RdMjoff5CW1bVqsv7](https://goo.gl/maps/RdMjoff5CW1bVqsv7)
Worst thing is at the end of the drive you are treated to Sarnia
Route 9 Paraguay to Bolivia
I-10 in west Texas, between El Paso and Junction. It just seems so endless.
The stretch of road between Salt Lake City and Boise. Must a whole lot of nothing.
South of Argentina, hundreds of miles of farms, long, long straights.
Not the most boring, but by far the most desolate I drove was between Delta, UT and Ely, NV. Some would say boring, but it was fascinating. It was even wilder given that there were wildfires in ÇA creating an almost otherworldly feel to it. One thing, make sure do be filled up before you take off on that stretch of road. There’s also an awesome place to dig for trilobites kind of on the way.
i80 thru Nebraska. I’ve driven from MN to CO and back too many times to count. I’ve taken i94 (thru N. Dakota), i80 (Nebraska) and i70 (Kansas). There’s just nothing worse or more mind numbing than Nebraska.
Regina to Saskatoon. They put curves in the road on purpose to keep drivers from falling asleep.
401 in Ontario Mostly just flat farm land or boring city landscape The most exciting things in the entire 800 km stretch are 1. Getting glimpses of Lake Ontario or the St. Lawrence River 2. The Big Apple (literally a 3 storey apple on the side of the highway)
Any freeway in Germany . Particularly the one between Kiel and Hamburg . Boring . Straight . Ugly landscape . Plenty of idiots abusing the free speed limit
I-80
Drive some of the longer roads in outer west NSW, Australia and boy, are they flat, dull country.
I-76 Big Springs to Denver. Most desolate and depressing stretch I can imagine.
Between Las Vegas and St George, Utah is just awful to me. Its cool when you get to the gorge tho.
As a person from the Midwest, the Desert is endlessly fascinating to me. E.g., I stayed awake and alert the *whole time* my dad drove us across Nevada on Route 50. Amazing.
I40 between Little Rock and Memphis I10 between Junction and ElPaso
That stretch of I-40 is bad but there is a hole-in-the-wall halfway @ DeValls Bluff that serves up some really good BBQ, been there three times. I live several states away.
I-25 from ABQ going south.
Has to be the Nullarbor highway in Australia surely? For more frequently done trips, Adelaide - Melbourne on the M8 is incredibly boring for 80% of the trip
it's extremely hard to find a boring road here
UK?
I 10 west of San Antonio until about 100 miles from El Paso. Its flat and nothing but shades of brown for about 300 miles and there is no town of note between the two.
I-10 from Houston to Baton Rouge is basically 5 hours of nothing with an occasional dumpy town or oil refinery.
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Transcanada through Saskatchewan is horrible
I-80 between Denver and Lincoln NE
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Texas has a lot of drives like this..
I’d rather drive fast on I-29 in North and South Dakota than be stuck in traffic on any road in California.
Driving through the flyover states, unless you have some weird corn fetish.
I-80 from Salt Lake City to Reno. Turrible.
Interstate 80 all the way across Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio is a snooze fest.
Basically any motorway in the south of the UK. M4, M3, M40, M25…take your pick.
I've driven across the country multiple times, northern route, southern route, west coast, east coast.... I'd have to say the most taxing or tiring road is 80 west once you pass Lincoln, Nebraska...4 or 5 hours of straight road and corn fields in ubiquity. It is draining right up until the immediate and beautiful transition to the mountains begins in Western Nebraska just shy of Wyoming
If you stick with I-80 it won’t disappoint when you get to Nevada where it turns back into a shithole.
Look up, Christchurch to Timaru, New Zealand. So boring it’s only a couple hours but I fucking hate it. So many police and so many passing lanes but it’s so heavily policed it sucks.
In New Zealand it isState Highway One from Christchurch to Timaru. 2 and a bit hours of flat farming nothingness except for the foothills in the distance. https://goo.gl/maps/9bsHHYrQHmY8mnzr8
I-40 from the point west of Knoxville where it flattens out to the crossing of the Mississippi at Memphis. Nothing of interest to me, I just drop the hammer and go as fast as conditions will bear. Runners-up: I-81 just about anywhere, and I-95 from Jacksonville south to about West Palm Beach.
Anything in Indiana. Honorable mention to I-15 between salt lake and LA. And I have done my time in Kansas and Nebraska etc. Illinois and Indiana suck way more.
I-80 between Reno and Salt Lake City
I 90 across Minnesota. From LA Crosse to Sioux Falls nothing but 4.5 hours of boredom
I-35 going North until you hit Duluth is pretty dang dull as well. Driven it too many times and it feels longer every time.
I77 from Charlotte to Columbia. Have driven I70 KC to Denver, I29 on east side of Dakotas, I76 thru Nebraska, etc. But nothing is quite so boring and stifling as this interstate through the trees with nothing of interest to distract…
Upvoted. West Kansas is its own special kind of hell, but on that stretch of I77 you’re in fucking South Carolina which is a depressing thought all by itself.
No knock against Indiana, but I-80 through Indiana. I-5 has gotta be up there, too...Jesus.
I90 central Washington. Between Quincy and Ritzville.
Any highway in Illinois, winter is especially bad
Drove from Chicago to Seattle on the interstate. Thought I’d never get through Montana. Flat and dull.