When I was a Florida resident I often found myself traveling between Tampa and Orlando towards Key West for work. That being the case trips on Interstate 75 through Alligator Alley and Florida's Turnpike wound up getting stale fast. US Route 27 south of Interstate 4 served as a much more placid and scenic alternative to the substantially more boring limited access roads. US Route 27 was extended south of Tallahassee to Miami during June of 1948 and went through a significant number of realignments during the 1950s. US Route 27 today is a well developed surface expressway south of Interstate 4 which traverses some of the more interesting regions of south Florida such as; the Lake Wales Ridge, the south shore of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.
https://www.gribblenation.org/2021/06/us-route-27-in-southern-florida.html
I used US-27 for a little bit around Delray when I was in Florida about 2 months ago.
I thought about going that way on our most recent trip to Broward County earlier this year but ultimately didn't. How many lights are there? Would it take substantially longer than, say, the Turnpike?
Quote from: 1995hoo on June 19, 2021, 05:38:59 PM
I thought about going that way on our most recent trip to Broward County earlier this year but ultimately didn't. How many lights are there? Would it take substantially longer than, say, the Turnpike?
Maybe 60-75 minutes from what I recall towards Orlando, even wash for Tampa and FL 60. There quite a few lights from Sebring north through Haines City but nothing too crazy. US 27, FL 80 and US 441 is a better bet if you want something for Orlando-Miami.
South of Lake Wales it opens up to Avon Park Sebring. Then south of Sebring you have Lake Placid, Moore Haven, Clewiston, and one light in South Bay before almost 50 miles without a light, but then you can pick up I-75 the rest of the way just east of Alligator Alley.
Quote from: roadman65 on June 20, 2021, 01:18:26 AM
South of Lake Wales it opens up to Avon Park Sebring. Then south of Sebring you have Lake Placid, Moore Haven, Clewiston, and one light in South Bay before almost 50 miles without a light, but then you can pick up I-75 the rest of the way just east of Alligator Alley.
Even then, the stretch from Avon Park to FL 66 is 6-lanes. I only took it to FL 29 as I was headed to Marco Island when I went this way.
Thanks. Starting to think about a possible Christmas trip. We'll probably do the Auto Train for that one. We drove both ways this last trip because the train fare was higher than we wanted to pay and they've had a lot of delays lately, but we don't much feel like doing that again soon. At least from Sanford it's easy to loop around west of Orlando to reach US-27 via a variety of routes.
There used to be so fewer lights on this highway. It was a breeze from Broward County to around US 192. Now there are so many lights in Sebring and beyond that it isn't the breeze that it once was. I still prefer this over Florida's Turnpike.