It takes about 5 hours to fly across the US, which is a long time to be strapped into a cramped and poorly padded domestic economy seat.  It takes 7 days to drive the southern route from Seattle to Tampa, leaving time for sleeping and such and 8 hours of driving each day.  You see a lot more of the country driving than from a plane window, but mostly what you see is the other cars on the freeway.

We would like to see the rest of the countryside, the forests and mountains and shorelines, and the resident birds and bugs and frogs and snakes and such.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.