Three years ago my family drove to Chicago and drove to Santa Monica via Route 66.
Couldn’t believe it but the guide book said that when you get close to East St. Louis to get on the freeway and go around or quite possibly get “mugged or worse”.
LOL!
I wish I had a similar guide book in 1993 when two of us drove NY-DC-Chicago-St. Louis-Points west to Las Vegas and home to Marin County Calif.
On the New York to DC leg, I thought I would treat my European guest to the historic (such as it is) Philadelphia. I was driving, and took a random exit aiming at the center of town.
I took about ten increasingly scary minutes before managing a quick U-turn, the national monuments in the distance behind us as we reached the main highway and continued on to D.C.
DC was a pleasant experience that year.