Scenic Byways exist in every state.  My intent is to share experiences gathered while driving around the country, using the Interstate Highway System as seldom as possible. Touring red states and blue states, I will seek the purple that binds us all together on America’s scenic byways.

Mattole Road, Humboldt County, California--Surely A Scenic Byway by anyone's definition

Scenic byways have always been part of my life.  Growing up in a rural state before the Interstate System criss-crossed America, I only knew byways, most of which were scenic.  The advent of four lane divided highways brought excitement and speed to the art of highway travel.  At the same time, they homogenized travel, allowing the scenic wonders and curiosities to blur.  You can’t see the two-story outhouse in Greycliff Montana from Interstate 90, but you could see it on old US Highway 10.

Scenic byways force us to slow down.  They allow us access to the smaller communities bypassed by the Interstates.  The US Department of Transportation has a Scenic Byways website that lists the one hundred twenty-six federal highways designated as America’s Byways, but they acknowledge that other federal, state and local entities have their own designations.  In my native Montana, for example, only one highway has the federal designation, US 212, Beartooth Pass, which Montanan’s call the Red Lodge/Cooke City Highway, or The Top of the World.  The US Forest Service, however, has designated four more highways for being especially scenic, and the US Bureau of Land Management four more.  Montana’s official state travel site lists twenty-seven “scenic drives,” which includes all those mentioned by the feds as well as one that is actually within the state of Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park.  My point is that scenic byways are found throughout the country and are so designated by a variety of public offices.

Over the next year I will be driving cross country at least twice and will be traveling on these scenic roads.  It is my intent to share my experiences, town by town, and thus take as many virtual friends along as possible.  As the Department of Transportation notes in their Scenic Byways website, “America's Byways® are gateways to adventures where no two experiences are the same. The National Scenic Byways Program invites you to come closer to America's heart and soul.”  I hope you’ll join me as we drive America’s Scenic Byways.