From Knoxville to Pittsburgh is a relatively easy drive, straight up north through West Virginia. After leaving Knoxville you head East a little bit on I-81, then get on I-77. You could take I-77 a little West to Charleston, West Virginia, and get on I-79 and head back East, or you can go from I-77 to US-19 to I-79 and save yourself 2 sides of a triangle. I also had a feeling that US-19 was going to be prettier than the other options, so I decided to go for it.
Now it's time for a little educational blahditty-blah from me. I didn't know the difference until this weekend between US highways and Interstate highways. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm pretty good with maps. When I was 11, my family took a road trip from New Jersey to California and back, and in the process I learned how to read a road atlas pretty well. From there, I've driven from New Mexico to New Jersey (or vice versa) 13 times, and I've made the New Mexico-to-California trip six times, so I've done my fair share of back-and-forths.
So, that being said, I had no idea what the difference was between US-22 and I-22. Naturally, my dad, who knows everything, knew.
Back when cars were coming into vogue, there were thousands of little pieces of road all across the country in small towns - but no easy way to get from one to the other. In 1921, the Federal Aid Highway Act put into effect a numbered naming system of the roads that had previously been marked by colored bands around telephone poles or by long drawn-out names that could vary from state to state or town to town.
Okay, so that's all well and good. The more interesting part is how Interstates came to be.
The Interstate system in America is actually called the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
I know, right? I said the same thing: Defense? But it's true. The American Interstate was indeed designed as a defense strategy.
The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act put the Interstate system into motion. After viewing the German Autobahns during World War II, Eisenhower was so impressed with the roads both as a ways of transportation (both civilian and military!) that he wanted to start something like it in the US. These roads, being limited-access (aka, they have exits and entrances, unlike US Highways, which have cross-streets and stop lights), are more easily controlled by the Federal government. The roads can then be more easily manipulated in times of disaster (if there is a hurricane and a city must be evacuated, the inbound lanes can be switched to outbound for the flow of cars heading out of the area). There is also a very cool urban legend that every five miles of interstate must include a length of road long and straight enough to land a 747 aircraft, but Wikipedia says this is a myth. (Then again, Wikipedia is retarded.)
As a result of all this, Interstates move you a hell of a lot faster and tend to hit more major population centers, while US Highways are often more interesting to travel because they go through small towns and are the conglomeration of hundreds of thousands of little roads that existed way back in the day.
All that being said, this is why I figured that US-19 would be more interesting to travel than I-77 and I-79. Sure enough, US-19 brought me through many small towns - most notably Fayetteville, West Virginia, which was not only a very picturesque little community, but where I also stumbled upon a Memorial Day Weekend Wild, Wonderful 24-Hour Adventure Race at the New River Gorge.
Read more about my adventures in Fayetteville in the next entry, whenever it will be that I get it posted.
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