🛣️ Back roads to Missouri

Quiet roads, few towns. Trip planning only.

1 · Start

Score: 100 = never near a town. Details in “How scores work”.

Signal drops in forests and farm country. Download offline maps first.
Google Maps → your photo → Offline maps. Or free apps Organic Maps / OsmAnd: import the GPX file.
Carry a paper atlas (state road atlas), water, and a full tank.
Fill up whenever you pass a station and the tank is under ½.

Best effort only. “Avoiding people” means fewer towns, not none. Roads still pass through small towns and farms.
You drive legally and openly. There are no border checkpoints between states, but traffic stops, cameras and plate readers exist. This is for scenery, low stress and resilience.
Routes come from OpenStreetMap data. Roads may be closed, seasonal, gravel, or flooded. Check state 511 sites the day before.
Winter: snow and ice on rural roads, plows come last. Late fall to spring needs a real winter kit.
Camps are public campgrounds; many close for the season (often late Oct). Call or check the link first.
Fuel stops come from OpenStreetMap when loaded, and can be wrong or out of date. If a day says “not loaded”, plan fuel yourself.

How scores work

Town miles: route miles inside the official Census boundary of a place with 5,000+ people (2024 estimates).
Near-town miles: route miles within 1 mile of such a boundary. Big cities (25,000+): within 3 miles.
Score = 100 − 6 × (near-town miles per 100 route miles). Higher is quieter. Unincorporated places (CDPs) have no population data here, so they are not counted.
Detours: the planner tried to push the route around towns using extra waypoints. That adds miles. It checks a few options, so it is not guaranteed to be the very best route.
Your own start town: the approach to the planned route is routed live and shown as “~ estimate”.

Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Routing: Valhalla (OSM Germany demo server). Places: US Census. Private trip planner, not for navigation.

⛺ Camps ⛽ Fuel 🏘 Towns 5k+

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