When I was getting ready to drive to Las Vegas, I would tell someone "I'm going to take the northern route through Wyoming" and they'd act like that was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard.

I wanted to tell them "look at the interstate system some time." One of them was a cousin who grew up back east, and now lives in the Boston area. He is a astrophysicist at Harvard. He flies all over the place spreading the word about the expanding universe, but he has never driven across the United States, much less spent any time on the ground in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, or Nevada. But there he was, trying to argue with me about how to get to Las Vegas from Colorado. Never mind we drive it at least twice a year.

Now, granted, the Wyoming route (I-80 west, take a left on I-15 until you see the lights) is not the shortest. Taking I-25 south to Denver, right turn on I-70, left on I-15 is a few miles shorter.

What you really don't want to do (unless you really have to) is go all the way south through Colorado on I-25 until you hit I-40 in New Mexico, and work your way West to Las Vegas. It's do-able, but a lot further. We only do it if the weather in Wyoming and the central mountains of Colorado is going to be bad.

Of course, this is when the goal is to get this all done in one long day of steady driving.

And yes, it's possible to get there on what some call the blue roads - very scenic, sometimes quite slow. It's okay if it's the two of us, because then it's like a road trip, and we might even stop overnight. If the cat is along, it's better to make the trip all in one day, although he usually does okay staying in motels.