Through huge rocks and small canyons we roar, through picturesque desert and slowly melting, sticky-to-the-touch, two-lane blacktop.

BBC: Trick of the light: A California road trip

It finds its victims at a prairie gas station, on a two-lane blacktop, and at a scruffy motel that is the stage for the final showdown with the law.

NEWYORKER: Rubber

We were into open country now, running straight up the coast about a mile from the ocean on a two-lane blacktop road across the dunes with no clouds in the sky and a full moon blazing down on the Pacific.

CNN: Doomed Love At The Taco Stand

After an hour, he left the wide state highway for a snaky blacktop road, and deep in the woods he made a left turn down a gravel lane that ran as straight as a railroad for ten miles.

NEWYORKER: Idols