Here's the route I took from Berkeley to NY on my cross-country road trip. 

I got creative in Omaha, and went around the center of the city on 680 at the recommendation of a reader. This was a very good idea.  

There was a detour around the Davenport crossing of the Mississippi River, the bridge on I-80 is out.  

Then after Chicago I headed northing on I-94 through Flint and Port Huron through Ontario to Niagara Falls. This is a bit out of the way, but I avoided some heavy traffic on the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes, a route I am all-too familiar with having traveled many times back and forth between Madison and NYC. Got to see the falls from the Canadian side, and went through customs twice, always a fun time. 

I stopped in Elko, Laramie, West Des Moines, Kalamazoo and Niagara Falls. 

McDonald's has the best coffee and they all had free wifi. Still, I prefer to log on at Starbucks. No kids, and they're nicer places to get caught up on what's going on in the world. However, there's no comparison between on-the-road connectivity today and a few years ago. You can get online almost everywhere. 

The Droid has a nice feature. If you type "starbucks" into the main screen and click the search icon, it shows you the closest Starbucks. An obvious feature, but it was obvious a few years ago too -- now it's here and it works. (The iPhone has it too.) 

The trip took six days. A little snow crossing the Sierra, but nothing too bad, otherwise the weather was good. It was cloudy and cool the whole way. Only rain was on the last day driving through Syracuse and Pennsyvania. As always driving in New Jersey headed into NY is the sucks! ">