Originally Posted by
axolotl
If you look at the historic weather data for towns along the Southern Tier route, there are places in AZ & especially NM with some pretty cold average low temperatures (in the 20s) this time of year. There's a pass in NM over 8,000 feet high.
It can get pretty cold.
However, my suggestion would be to bypass 8200ft Emery pass and instead go from Silver City to Deming on US 180 and then follow I-10 between Deming and Las Cruces. I did that route in 2001 and there were frontage roads for all but ~12 miles of the I-10 stretch. Journal page for that day:
http://www.mvermeulen.com/oneyear/Jo...11.htm#March20
Looking at Ryan's remaining distance and time, it looks like he would need to approximate distances I did in 2001 (
http://www.mvermeulen.com/oneyear/usa.htm). I passed through Julian on March 11th and came into St Augustine 37 days later. He would need to go at approximately similar pace to have enough time to get north to Washington DC after that, though he doesn't need to go south all the way to St. Augustine. So I think it is do-able though arguably December is more challenging than March and I wasn't running into as many issues early. Worst comes to worst, Amtrak parallels much of this route not too far off.