The concept of a road tripper is as American as apple Proto-Indo European , and yet , devising the “ best ” U.S. driving route is a bit of a oral sex scratcher . Much depends on time parameter , personal druthers , and frankly , how long you want to expend behind the wheel .
In 2015 , Tracy Staedter atDiscovery Newsdecided to take on that challenge , enlistingRandy Olson — the data scientist behind the far-famed ( and super helpful)Where ’s Waldoalgorithm — to machinate what you might call the platonic apotheosis of the United States road trip-up . The parameter were : It had to hit all of the 48 continental province ; every full stop had to be a National Natural Landmark , a National Historic Site , a National Park , or a National Monument ; and of course , had to be limit to cartraveland within U.S. border .
With a stop in Washington , D.C. and two in California , the result is 50 head of all American awesomeness . Here are the name and address :
That lean take off with theGrand Canyon , but you could theoretically begin anywhere as long as you beat back in sequence after that . Staedter guessed it would take a petty over nine day of driving flat through , but more realistically is a two- or three - month trip .
For the item on how he add up up with the route , check out outOlson ’s blog . After determining the stoppage , the main goal of the algorithm was to find the unretentive distance between points .
Olson wrote to Staedter : “ Instead of exhaustively looking at every possible solvent , genic algorithms start with a handful of random solution and continually tinker with these answer — always strain something slightly different from the current solution and keep the best one — until they ca n’t witness a better solution any more . ”
And whether or not you understand the specifics of how it was create , the single-valued function is truly a marvel and the variety of itinerary you ’ll belike spend all winter dreaming about . See the maphere , and for additional travel destination , gibe out Olson ’s road trip maps forSouth AmericaandEurope .
A variant of this story run in 2015 ; it has been updated for 2023 .
