You know what the interstate routes offer—no stop signs and lines of semis, occasional moseying RVs, smaller vehicles driven by the attentive and not-so-attentive—a regular assortment of conveyances zipping down two or more lanes (umhem, carriage ways) traveling with you. And, on the other side of a green ditch or concrete wall, a parallel universe traveling in the opposite direction.
To break the monotony, we hit the side roads after several states, to see what serendipity might bring us. We mostly found the open road.
However, we did find obstructions you’d never see on the interstate. We encountered two lumbering cargo trains one after the other in a town that hosts the crossing of a north-south and an east-west line. We also found flood waters. Thnx to goo-maps we successfully detoured a couple of miles to a parallel route with an elevated right-of-way, and resumed our trek.