A little less than two weeks ago while visiting my mother-in-law in Manchester, Tennessee, the dogs and I took a road trip from Manchester and headed south along U.S. Highway 41 to Monteagle Mountain on the Cumberland Plateau.
This stretch of U.S. 41 is perfect for a two-lane road trip. The traffic is light to almost non-existent; most of the traffic now goes on Interstate Highway 24. The Interstate is far enough away from U.S. 41 so you don’t even know it’s there. As a result, you can relax and take your time without feeling pressured by other traffic. This is the type of road that Bill Bryson described while driving around Australia in his book, In a Sunburnt Country.
A road like this rare. A few years ago I read an article in The New Yorker about Jack Kerouac and his 1957 novel, On the Road. The article mentioned that the book was actually nostalgia for driving in the 1940s, right after World War Two, when there were three million miles of highway for 38 million vehicles. Today the number of cars is close to 250 million while the highway mileage has only grown to a little over four million miles.
No wonder so many of today’s roads are too wide, too crowded, too fast, and too disconnected from the landscape for a relaxed and pleasant drive. So when you find a quiet and pretty two-lane highway, drive it.
U.S. Highway 41 south of Manchester, TN
