Google maps- satellite or hybrid view. Zoom in and decide for yourself.
Check the states you're passing through
at this site for Highways under construciton.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/trafficinfo/index.htm
Have a fine trip!
Hey, wasn't Deliverance filmed on that road?
I stay on the interstates when I am in WV. They are bad enough. Unless I'm having a craving for being sodomized by toothless hicks.
Use the Interstates. Any two lane road through the mountains is a risk, especially traveling with kids. Go with your first instinct.
Maps online are not always accurate.
Also, be sure to wear shoes while traveling through West Virginia, so they will know you are a tourist!
I live in Columbus O and travel 35 to Charleston and points south pretty often. 35 is good in Ohio, a few spots of two lane still though. In WVA it's mostly winding two lane but only for 35 miles (very few light at all). If you go this way exit 35 and take 34 over to I-64 its faster.
Isn't Robert Byrd from WV? If so, I'd guess the road is as smooth as glass and 8 lanes wide.
I drove US 35 from west of Charleston to the Dayton area about 12 years ago. Didn't have a problem. In WV it was a decent two-lane road, not twisty at all. You'll have the usual crapshoot about whether or not you get stuck behind slow-moving traffic, but it's a good road. I also used to travel to Columbus a fair bit, and took a back road for some of the way (US 33 I think) up through to Pomeroy, Ohio, and then US 33 on to Columbus. If you're coming from Dayton, US 35 is faster.
Once you get on I-64 west of Charleston (St. Albans, if I remember correctly) remember that I-64/77 (the West Virginia Turnpike) between Charleston and Beckley is a toll road. It's a hilly and twisty interstate, so watch for trucks and enjoy the views.
And if you REALLY want to see the barefoot-and-dirt-poor side of West Virginia, when you get to Charleston, jump off the WV Turnpike and get on US 60. US 60 sort of forms the hypotenuse of the right triangle formed by the WV Turnpike to Beckley and then I-64 east toward Virginia. It is two lanes, tiny, twisty, up and down, and cuts through the deepest parts of central and eastern WV coal country. Avoid it. I had to take it once coming back from Ohio when I didn't have the $2.50 for the tolls on the Turnpike and even though it's about 30 miles shorter, it cost me an extra HOUR because I got stuck behind some 120-year-old fart doing 17 mph in his old Horizon. And there was nowhere to pass for FIFTEEN MILES.
}:-)4
Years ago when we went to Chicago from Norfolk, I stayed on the interstates, so I can't tell you about US 35.
However, I can give you a warning. When you get to Goochland County on I-64, between Charlottesville and Richmond, WATCH YOUR SPEED!!!! The local cops are notorious in that area. And on I-95, near Emporia (Greensville County) they're real tight on speeders, too.
BTW, like the screen name...reading about the American Revolution right now....great patriot.