Michigan to Arizona route advice

[DustyRooster]

Hi Everyone!

Looking for some advice from some seasoned travelers regarding routes.
My wife and I are on our first trip out west from Michigan in a 30ft Holiday Rambler with car in tow. We have made it past Oklahoma City on the Interstates (currently I40) and I am almost ready to tap out.
The Interstate has been dreadful to say the least. With the 18 wheelers the 30-40mph winds, and my rig barely being able to keep minimum speed, this trip cross country is becoming a nightmare.

Do any of you have any suggestions for a more "relaxing" route that we can both start to enjoy the country as we make our way out West? Or is it a matter of sucking it up and limping out there on the interstate?

I have owned the RV for 4 years and have made numerous smaller trips, but travelling the interstate cross country is a completely different story.

Just looking for some insight/help on alternate routes.

Thanks for any help, its appreciated!

P.S. the search feature on these forums isn't too stellar, but I did try searching for my answer that way.

[Mike_W]

I think you've been pointed to enough weather related apps and you'll be paying close attention. but to address "what kind of snow are we talking about"...I was headed east around Deming NM in October. Started to snow. I thought "it's the southwest, how bad could it get?" In short order you couldn't see well, I had to get right in behind a semi and follow his tracks. Soon after it was hitting my front bumper while i was in his tracks. I could feel slip ice building. Clearly I needed to get off the road. But there are not a ton of safe places to get off on some of those stretches. So stay up on the weather and know your options. Be safe, relax.

[DustyRooster]

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

[rocmoc]

Snow depends on elevation. Most of the time snow is short time in duration and not deep but weather in the Southwest USA is tough to predict as weather fronts can come from any direction. Just this last week a warm front came from the Southwest and hit the cold front from the North producing cold rain and winds. Hit bad snow in West Texas a few years ago and had to overnight at the Walmart in Ft Stockton. Two hour window opened in early morning and we were able to make it far enough West to get out of the snow. Sunny most of the time is the norm.

rocmoc n Southwest USA / Baja

[DustyRooster]

rocmoc wrote:
Been to Roswell in Rv twice. Roads are good, only West out of town is 4 lane. Watch weather closely as it can snow this time of year.

rocmoc n Th Southwest USA / Baja

Thanks for the feedback! In regards to the snow...I'm from Michigan, so what type of snow are we talking here? A night of snow and melt in the morning, or days of snow and accumulation?
We took a couple US-Highways South today, and what a difference in how less stressed I felt. A couple of the roads were bumpier that an Interstate, but tolerable. Was a beautiful day for travel!

[rocmoc]

Been to Roswell in Rv twice. Roads are good, only West out of town is 4 lane. Watch weather closely as it can snow this time of year.

rocmoc n Th Southwest USA / Baja

[rocmoc]

We have traveled these areas many times with our RV and live in the Southwest. Winds are common from West Texas to the California coast. We have had to pull over and hunker down a minimum 1/3 of the times. Winds can gust over 65mph. Look for a box store or rest area and wait it out. Point your rig into the wind if possible and hope it doesn't snow. Yup it can snow East New Mexico border to West Arizona border. Best route is to get to I10 as quickly as possible. Great advice in earlier post, drive FEWER hours per day. Our rule is 6 hours or 300 miles max, whichever comes first. In general we drive 250 miles at 61 to 66 mph depending on conditions. After 3 days, we take a break for a day or two.

rocmoc n Th Southwest USA / Baja

[DustyRooster]

dalenoel wrote:
We did this in October with a 36' HR Neptune and Focus as toad and did not have a problem. We did 250 to 300 miles a day starting at 8 and ending by 4. Dog and I need rest stops. My max speed is 63 mph and use the second lane if there are three. People are not always polite so I let them go. I do like alot of room ahead. I use this GPS which is large and great for our size.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PPFSGZC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also try to avoid I-40 all year and use I-20 or I-10 unless going to Havasu to see family.

Learning to enjoy the travel and not try to get to the destination is the biggest learning curve. We are now in FL so not worried about snow like I-40 might have. Enjoy the trip and be safe. PM for any questions.

Thank you!

Our HR Admiral is a little gasser, so 60mph would be the max I would feel comfortable with, especially with the car in tow. I would have thought the smaller the rig the easier to handle, not the case.
We plan on heading out tomorrow and head South off I-40 on US-81 then eventually hit 62-West --> 83-South. We want to check out the Roswell area first for some possible boondocking. We are going to try and take the US Highways to see if that lets us take it a bit slower and enjoy the ride/journey a bit.
Do you have any experience with the roads I mentioned on the way to Roswell?

[dalenoel]

We did this in October with a 36' HR Neptune and Focus as toad and did not have a problem. We did 250 to 300 miles a day starting at 8 and ending by 4. Dog and I need rest stops. My max speed is 63 mph and use the second lane if there are three. People are not always polite so I let them go. I do like alot of room ahead. I use this GPS which is large and great for our size.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PPFSGZC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also try to avoid I-40 all year and use I-20 or I-10 unless going to Havasu to see family.

Learning to enjoy the travel and not try to get to the destination is the biggest learning curve. We are now in FL so not worried about snow like I-40 might have. Enjoy the trip and be safe. PM for any questions.

[Matt_Colie]

Dusty,

We live by:
Interstate:
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
Charles Kuralt

While our classic (antique) coach never has trouble keeping up with highways speeds, we chose to avoid them.

While the only thing we use that is common to you collection is the Road Atlas and a little Google Maps, we use what we have to target other than interstate highways. Per the above, we usually trying to enjoy the excursion. A few years back we went from SE MI to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta on the route of Rt-66. RT66 has been decommissioned years ago but much is marked.

If you have AAA (or a friend that does) you can order up a USA map and individual maps of all the areas you might transit. You can also order up guide books. They do a lot of that on line now.

There is the bug. Unless you can create your own hotspot with a smart phone (most can do this), any on-line thing is useless most of the time. Even with your own smartphone tether, it can still be useless a great deal of the time. That means that both RV Trip Planer and Google Maps can be counted on to not work when you need them.

There is also the problem that most all GPS can't decide on a decent route. To them, there is the interstate or cow path and no logical mix. Then there is the problem that the tiny screen is a poor planning platform for much travel.

Unfortunately, the good stand-alone planning programs have died off.
So, we use every thing we can and all at once. After dinner is time for the next day's route to be planed and loaded into the driver's GPS. We do that one day at a time. If we have wire, we will take advantage of that fact, but we don't count on it.

When Starlink is fully operational, I may change my opinions.

Matt

[DustyRooster]

BB_TX wrote:
In google maps, set your destination. Then click on the three small dots in top right hand corner. Click on route options. Select “avoid highways”. That shows routes avoiding interstate highways and instead choosing other smaller, but still major, highways.

Thanks for this!

This is another area we have been struggling. We have Google maps, RV Trip wizard subscription, and also have a Rand McNally RV GPS (and a paper road atlas). Between these 3 the directions seem to never be the same and can get very frustrating. Pros and cons to each I guess, but a mistake on our part is having to try and look at all 3.
We have tried to "check" the "avoid highways" and the route it took us was definitely not meant for a motorhome, so I should perhaps make sure if Google (or one of the others) steers me off a US highway, I should really pay attention instead of assuming these directions are considering my RV specs i plugged in.
This is all part of becoming a seasoned traveler I suppose. Lessons learned and asking those with experience to be able to one day pass the knowledge.

Wife and I so much appreciate the feedback and suggestions!

Happy Thanksgiving!

DR

[DustyRooster]

valhalla360 wrote:
Assuming you aren't on a schedule, turn south and slow down.

We shoot for between 100-200miles driving and usually don't drive more than 3 days per week. If the weather isn't nice, we will happily stay an extra day.

Check the wind with www.windy.com. It's not fun driving in 30mph winds. This site allows you to see the wind along your route during the proposed driving time.

Last time we went direct Michigan to Arizona, it took us a month.

PS: what are you feeling is "too slow". If you are struggling to make 50mph, that's a problem. If you are chugging along at 65mph, you are probably fine.

Thank you! We have been hunkered down in Ok for a couple days to let this wind let up some, and we will be heading a bit South now towards Roswell NM instead of directly East to Albuquerque. Appreciate the windy.com suggestion, this will be extremely helpful as the wind has actually been one of the most daunting parts of the trip even though I installed sway bars and a track bar on the rig. Our original goal was ~300 miles per day (but 100-200 sounds MUCH better), and it was nothing but a rushed feeling which is no fun. We plan on really paying much more attention to the weather during the rest of the trip, especially the wind on windy.com and try to enjoy the journey instead of the destination.
Appreciate your feedback and insight.

Happy Thanksgiving!

DR

[valhalla360]

Assuming you aren't on a schedule, turn south and slow down.

We shoot for between 100-200miles driving and usually don't drive more than 3 days per week. If the weather isn't nice, we will happily stay an extra day.

Check the wind with www.windy.com. It's not fun driving in 30mph winds. This site allows you to see the wind along your route during the proposed driving time.

Last time we went direct Michigan to Arizona, it took us a month.

PS: what are you feeling is "too slow". If you are struggling to make 50mph, that's a problem. If you are chugging along at 65mph, you are probably fine.

[BB_TX]

In google maps, set your destination. Then click on the three small dots in top right hand corner. Click on route options. Select “avoid highways”. That shows routes avoiding interstate highways and instead choosing other smaller, but still major, highways.

[DustyRooster]

Thanks for the quick feedback @WE-C-USA. My wife is currently looking at Google Maps at your suggestion.

@ItsyRV We plan on hitting Yuma and Quartzsite areas, and we are taking the winter to do this. We do not have a timeline for this journey