ROAD TRIPPIN’ INSPIRATION

CNBC: 2/28/2022

The highly transmissible omicron Covid-19 variant has some travelers thinking twice about air travel again.

While travel bookings are surging this year, some people are sticking with one of the biggest trends to have emerged from the pandemic: the road trip.

“With driving you can significantly lower your risk of exposure when interacting with large groups … making it a safer option,” said Anja Benson, public relations and marketing manager at the vacation home rental website Holidu.

Road trips also give travelers the chance to “clear their minds — something that many will be keen to do after almost two years of being cooped up inside,” she added.

Holidu is behind a new list to inspire travelers to buckle up and hit the road. Its “Cross-Country Road Trip Index” published in December analyzed factors such as road quality, gas prices and landscape variety in 118 countries.

It also took into account the number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in a given country and the number of cities in the top 100 world ranking, as determined by the website BestCities.org.

These factors, plus others, were weighted equally in the ranking. When countries tied, the country with the best road infrastructure was given the edge because “having decent roads to drive on is something that every ‘road tripper’ will deem important,” said Benson.

Here are the top five countries on that list, along with famous routes in each destination.

United States

Home to 29 of the 100 best-ranked cities in the world, the United States offers road warriors a range of landscapes, from mountains and deserts to glaciers and forests.

The country also ranked eighth in the world for road quality.

• U.S. Route 66
• Popular route: Chicago, Illinois to the Santa Monica Pier in California
• Distance: about 2,450 miles
• The old U.S. Route 66 stretched across three time zones and eight states — Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Known as the country’s “Mother Road,” Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, when American transportation officials decertified it and voted to remove its highway signs. Drivers can still trace much of the old route, though the highways have new names now.