Route Decisions

As of today, we're officially 2 months and 1 day away from beginning our journey across the US!

One of the things that we've been looking at for a while now is what route is going to be the best to take. We know that March can mean freak snowstorms, thunderstorms, or bright sunny spring weather. And since we're going to be going across the entire nation, we're probably going to end up hitting at least 2 out of the 3.

When I typed our locations into google maps, this is what they said would be our best route to take:

Neither of us has ever driven cross country before, so we were a bit wary about going across the Rockies in March based on what friends have told us. But after keeping an eye on the weather for the cities we'll be going across, everything looks pretty safe! Then again.. there could be another polar vortex. Ugh.

It was suggested to us that we should take a southern route instead, and this is the one that I was able to tweak to what I think would be the best:

Neither Jared or I have ever seen the desert, so both think that it would be an interesting route, but it is a bit longer and out of the way.

We're both pretty sure that we're just going to have to wait til about a week before we leave to make the choice based on the weather.

Has anyone made this kind of trip? What route would you suggest?