You can have a great adventure on any road. But if you're planning an epic trip specifically to challenge man and machine, the Pan-American Highway — 30,000 miles of road from Alaska to Argentina — isn't the way to go. Beyond a particularly impressive total length the fabled PAH really is nothing more than, well, "any road."
Traveling the official expanse of the Pan-American Highway and its unofficial continuations from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay to Tierra Del Fuego at the bottom of Argentina always sounded like a classic bucket-list trip to me. In fact, Tim Cahill's sprint down the route was one of the first stories that inspired me to take road trips for a living.
That's exactly why I feel morally obligated to tell you, now that I've driven a good chunk of it and researched the rest, that you should forgo traversing the entirety of the Pan-American Highway "just because it's there." Because you will be bored.
It's well-paved, well-signed, and well-populated. The only challenge to driving it is keeping your eyes open to a boundless horizon for days on end.
A viable transport route between places? Certainly. But there are so many more exciting routes between the USA and the effective "end of the western hemisphere" that you shouldn't waste you time questing to conquer the PAH.
Now bring on all your Pan-American Highway questions into the comments! Had an amazing adventure on this relentlessly straight and long road yourself? I want to hear about that too!