Road Trips
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98 free Road Trips trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free road trip trivia questions with answers. Hit the open road with 50 trivia questions spanning legendary highways like Route 66 and the Pacific Coast Highway, classic road trip movies from Easy Rider to Little Miss Sunshine, quirky roadside attractions, the history of the U.S. Interstate system, and the culture of motels, diners and endless asphalt. Built as trivia questions for long car rides, the early ones are easy enough for kids in the back seat; the later ones are road trip trivia for adults, on the people who built the highways, the films that made them famous and the records set along them. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so the argument in the car can be settled before the next exit.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1939 novel popularised 'the Mother Road' as a nickname for Route 66?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath was publicly banned and burned when it came out, including in the California county where its migrant family ends up.
Q 02What 1969 film follows Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as bikers on a cross-country road trip?
Easy Rider
Easy Rider cost little and earned a fortune, which showed the big studios that cheap films by unconventional young directors could pay.
Q 03Which president signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, launching the freeway network that bears his name?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it quietly in hospital, with no ceremony, while being treated for an intestinal illness.
Q 04What is the surname of the family in the National Lampoon vacation movies?
Griswold
Griswold family trips began in John Hughes's magazine story 'Vacation '58', where the drive ended at Disneyland, which the film changed to Walley World.
Q 05Which Amarillo, Texas art installation, created by the group Ant Farm in 1974, has ten cars buried nose-first beside Interstate 40?
Cadillac Ranch
Cadillac Ranch encourages visitors to spray-paint its cars, so a fresh coat rarely survives a day before someone paints over it.
Q 06Which 1957 Jack Kerouac book was first typed on a scroll roughly 120 feet long?
On the Road
On the Road's original scroll used his friends' real names, such as Neal Cassady, which the published novel swapped for characters like Dean Moriarty.
Q 07Which travel-trailer brand did NASA convert into a quarantine unit for the returning Apollo 11 astronauts?
Airstream
Airstream's converted trailer was kept at lower air pressure than outside, so any lunar germs Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins carried could not escape.
Q 08Which South Dakota roadside attraction is famous for its hundreds of billboards?
Wall Drug
Wall Drug struggled until Dorothy Hustead suggested a roadside sign offering free ice water, and thirsty travellers soon came pouring in.
Q 09Which state officially named its Route 375, the road past Area 51, the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Nevada
Nevada unveiled the name at a 1996 ceremony with Independence Day stars Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, as 20th Century Fox promoted the film.
Q 10The Blue Ridge Parkway connects which two national parks?
Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains
The Blue Ridge Parkway's 469 miles link Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina–Tennessee line; construction began in 1935.
Q 11Which 1991 Ridley Scott road movie ends with its two fugitive heroines driving off a canyon cliff?
Thelma & Louise
Thelma & Louise's Grand Canyon finale was actually shot in Utah near Moab, as Ridley Scott filmed the Arkansas-to-Arizona story in California and Utah.
Q 12Which Canadian prime minister officially opened the Trans-Canada Highway at Rogers Pass in 1962?
John Diefenbaker
John Diefenbaker opened it at a pass so prone to avalanches that snowsheds shield the road and crews set off slides on purpose to keep it clear.
Q 13Which Interstate, running from Seattle to Boston, is the longest in the United States?
I-90
I-90's last traffic light hung in Wallace, Idaho, until a 1991 viaduct carried the highway past the town, and officials there held a funeral for it.
Q 21Which German band had a 1975 international hit with 'Autobahn', a song celebrating motorway driving?
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk's German refrain about driving was widely misheard by English speakers as 'fun, fun, fun', a Beach Boys homage the band denied intending.
Q 22Which 1988 film has Tom Cruise driving his newly discovered older brother from Cincinnati to Los Angeles?
Rain Man
Rain Man's airport scene, where Raymond refuses to fly, was cut from in-flight screenings by at least 15 airlines, which feared it would alarm passengers.
Q 23The 1925 Milestone Mo-Tel, source of the word 'motel', stood in which California city?
San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo's Mo-Tel was meant to launch a chain of 18 motels a day's drive apart, but the Great Depression left architect Arthur Heineman short of backers.
Q 14Which Australian coastal drive was built by returned First World War soldiers as a war memorial?
Great Ocean Road
Great Ocean Road crews cut it largely by hand along a coast whose towns had until then been reached mainly by sea or rough track.
Q 15Which Steppenwolf song, written by Mars Bonfire, became a biker anthem?
Born to Be Wild
Born to Be Wild grew partly out of the freedom Mars Bonfire felt driving around in his secondhand Ford Falcon.
Q 16Which brand's rhyming jingles were spread across a series of small roadside signs?
Burma-Shave
Burma-Shave signs grew harder to read as driving speeds rose, and they were taken down after Philip Morris bought the company in 1963.
Q 17The Darién Gap breaks the Alaska-to-Argentina road in which Central American country?
Panama
The Darién Gap, some 60 miles of roadless rainforest between Panama and Colombia, is the only break in the roughly 19,000-mile road from Alaska to Argentina.
Q 18Which Los Angeles-area landmark carries the sign marking Route 66's western End of the Trail?
Santa Monica Pier
Santa Monica Pier marks only a symbolic finish, since Route 66 officially ended a little inland, at the corner of Lincoln and Olympic boulevards.
Q 19Which brand introduced the Wagoneer in 1962 to replace its postwar station wagon?
Jeep
Jeep's old Station Wagon was facing newer truck-based 4x4 rivals, so Willys had designer Brooks Stevens create the Wagoneer as its replacement.
Q 20In Forrest Gump, the hero ends his cross-country run on a highway through which landscape?
Monument Valley
Monument Valley's stretch of U.S. Route 163 near Utah mile marker 13 draws fans who re-create the moment Forrest finally stops running.
Q 24Which city marked the eastern end of Route 66?
Chicago
Chicago's road west was first mapped as US 60, but Kentucky's governor fought for that number and its backers settled for the unused 66.
Q 25Which state does John Denver's 1971 hit 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' celebrate?
West Virginia
West Virginia was a state co-writer Bill Danoff had never visited; the song's title line came to him on a drive along Clopper Road in Maryland.
Q 26The Tail of the Dragon, with 318 curves in 11 miles, runs from Deals Gap, North Carolina, into which state?
Tennessee
Tennessee's stretch runs between protected park and forest land, so no intersections break its curves.
Q 27Which classic American roadside restaurant chain, begun in 1925, was known for its bright orange roofs?
Howard Johnson's
Howard Johnson's turned to franchising after the 1929 crash stalled growth, letting an acquaintance open its second restaurant in Orleans, Massachusetts, in 1935.
Q 28Which Interstate runs the length of the East Coast, from Miami to the Canadian border in Maine?
I-95
I-95 only became continuous from Maine to Florida in 2018, when a Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange bridged the gap left by New Jersey's canceled Somerset Freeway.
Q 29Which actor headlined the 1981 ensemble comedy inspired by the outlaw coast-to-coast Cannonball Run, alongside Dom DeLuise and Roger Moore?
Burt Reynolds
Burt Reynolds's ambulance ruse copied the real 1979 race, in which Brock Yates and Hal Needham drove a disguised Dodge ambulance, the same van used in the film.
Q 30The Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide in which national park?
Glacier
Glacier's heavy snow at Logan Pass keeps the road's alpine stretch closed until summer each year.