Scary Road That Crosses CA, WA, and OR Takes 6 Months To Drive

Do you need to burn some of that use-it-or-lose-it vacation time you have built up? Do you like road trips? Do you live for adventure? Get your passport, put your vacation time in, and put together a playlist because this is going to be a very long but epic road trip along the Pan-American Highway, the longest drivable road in the entire world.

Before you make this drive, you will need to determine a starting and ending point. If you want to go all out and fly to Alaska to pick up the starting point, you can, but it isn't cheap. In addition to the rental car, with which I would suggest an unlimited miles plan, the flight can be expensive. From Boise, flying to the closest airport to the start of the highway is in Utqiagvk. It's not exactly a high-demand airport, so flights are few and far between. Still, Alaska Airlines does service the city, and to fly there from Boise, expect to pay about $1000. You could skip the Alaska and Canada portion of the trip and pick up the drive in Seattle, but you'd be missing out on some fantastic scenery.

Once you get into Washington, you'll be on I-5, and you'll drive through Bellingham and Seattle, then into Oregon, where you'll drive through Portland and Eugene. You'll see the not-so-scenic California cities of Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno before you're rewarded with the traffic of Los Angeles and San Diego.  

Once you cross into Mexico, you'll see ancient ruins and colonial towns. Eventually, you will find yourself in the beautiful tourist cities of Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta before going to Mexico City. You'll go through Acapulco before getting out your passport again to enter Guatemala.

Safety isn't exactly the hallmark of many of these countries, so you'll want to be prepared. Your trip will take you through Mayan ruins, volcanic peaks, and rainforests. You'll drive through El Salvador and Nicaragua before you find yourself in San Jose. It is not the San Jose you typically think of in California; this San Jose is in Costa Rica. Next, you'll continue south into Panama, stopping in Colon.  

This is where the continuous drive ends. If you want to go the rest of the way, you have to take a flight or a boat into Columbia. The road eventually ends after winding through Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, and the southern tip of Argentina. 

It would be an epic journey, but most people don't have 4 to 6 months of vacation time saved up to make the trip. So, when do we leave? I call shotgun!