US-50 from Clarksburg west to Parkersburg is a great drive, excellent road with a 65-mph speed limit, no traffic, and no traffic lights for about 80 miles. Ms1995hoo and I used it last October on the way home from Dayton on the recommendation of folks here and we liked it enough that it's the way we will go in the future. Far more pleasant than the Interstate.
I agree that's a much better drive than the interstate. I'm planning on taking Corridor H to US 50 the next time I go to Dayton. I'm not sure which way I'll go from there. I've already taken US 35 and OH 73 so I may try something else next time.
I've also taken OH 32 from the Cincinnati beltway to the east. I like it a lot since it's a leisurely drive.
We haven't gone that way because it'd put us further south than we'd need to be. Next time we head out there I think from Athens I may continue west, instead of cutting north towards Columbus, and take US-35 past Chillicothe up to Dayton from the southeast. If US-35 is comparable to most of US-33 between Athens and Columbus (Nelsonville excluded!), then it should be an excellent route.
I'm glad we took US-33 last time, though, just because we passed the BGSs pointing the way to the town of Logan. We have a four-year-old nephew named Logan who liked the pictures of those signs.
Frankly, to me the nicest thing about any of the routes using Corridor D (US-50 west of I-79) is that you can completely avoid Pennsylvania and its substandard Interstate network. The new PA-43 Turnpike near Uniontown is a very nice new modern road, but it's all too short and you wind up back on crappy old I-70. Using the Corridor H route, the only portion of road that was truly outdated like that was the segment of US-50 right around Clarksburg. It's just an old road. But it's a short segment and once you're west of there it opens right up. I didn't go much above 65 on there because it was raining and I didn't know the road, but on a dry day I imagine you could make very good time. Unlike I-70, you're not constantly struggling to pass trucks while dealing with people who like to make a "cruise control pass."
BTW, on our trip home last fall we used Corridor D to I-79 to Corridor H (I avoided the corridor letters in favor of numbers in my previous post so as to help the OP spot the roads on a map), though we detoured off the latter since Ms1995hoo had never seen Seneca Rocks. I didn't recommend that route in this thread because the OP is coming from Baltimore and that route is considerably further south and likely slower than I-70 to I-68. I think I-68 is a pretty nice drive as it is.
For the OP....my brother drives to a lot of music festivals and other concerts (he generally gets photo passes from Ratdog) and he warns that if you're going to a music festival, don't even consider speeding in Garrett County, Maryland (last one on I-68 before you reach West Virginia). He says a lot of his friends have run into trouble there.
