Preferred Paper U.S. Highway Map for Tracking Drive Coverage

[davmillar]

Couldn't find any prior threads about this topic, but does anyone have a preferred paper U.S. highway map that's good for annotation and such? I saw a thread where folks were drawing over or highlighting the highways they've driven and I'd like to do the same, but there were several different maps being used. Figured I'd ask here before picking a random one.

[Scott5114]

I wouldn't imagine most nationwide atlases would be at a scale that would allow for comprehensive highway tracking. Rand McNally omits routes, for instance.

You're better off getting a bunch of state officials or DeLorme state topo atlases and going with those.

[1995hoo]

Bear in mind whatever you use will get outdated or superseded unless you plan to copy over your highlighting every year. I'm still using a 2005 Rand McNally that's on the bookcase in my home office because it would be too much trouble to transfer all the highlights to a new one. While that means various local routes get omitted, that doesn't much matter to me because I'm less interested in tracking the hyper-local level stuff than the big picture.

[M3100]

does anyone have a preferred paper U.S. highway map that's good for annotation and such?

I am using the 2021 Rand McNally Large Scale Road Atlas.  As noted there are some omissions [for legibility purposes], but it will get you many of the detailed routes.  I am only noting numbered (and decommissioned) routes; I am not tracking major roads that lack numbers.  If you are also including those, the suggestion to use DeLorme state atlases would be a better choice. Also, if you are tracking all kinds of local roads along the coast, or blocks of streets in cities, you would need more detailed maps. 

[sparker]

Back in the '80's and early '90's when I was doing 2-3 cross-country trips per year, if I planned to deviate significantly from Interstate or major US routes I'd stop at the first available AAA outlet in each state and scarf up as many local maps as they would allow (Even though I preferred Gousha atlases until their discontinuance, backing them up with McNally, I always kept a recent AAA atlas around, since their field offices were indicated on those maps).  That normally got me by regarding less major state and county routes.  Don't know if the various states' AAA organizations are presently as diligent as they have been in the past about commissioning and stocking local maps, but if one is a AAA member, it's a lot less expensive than a set of DeLormes for every state necessary.  While I used them to determine rather than record routes, the AAA maps should be more than adequate for that purpose as well.

[davmillar]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone! I ended up getting the large-print Rand McNally 2021 atlas for navigation purposes and am using my old undated Postel atlas as the one I'm highlighting and marking up.

[M3100]

Sounds good.  I have used sparker's approach (and obtaining other free or low cost state maps) while in the filed collecting routes, and that works well too, however the single atlas works if you want to centralize everything. 

The DeLorme atlases work well for detailed exploring of adjacent non-highway points of interest if you are into that too, but agree collecting all those books would get really pricey.  (I like the 90s and older DeLorme atlases that resembled old USGS topo maps).

[Scott5114]

DeLorme atlases are also excellent to have around if you enjoy exploring old alignments, too. They're usually pretty easy to identify at that scale.