The Quest, the Road, Gender, and Race
In "Searching for Angela Shelton" the road is more of a focal point. It is right there as part of the story and part of the emotional journey. The whole "road trip" itself is focused on quite a bit in the movie, whether it be by shots of road signs or Angela moving the RV around on a map of the United States. In "The Grace Lee Project" however the road is barely seen. Instead the quest of finding the other women named Grace Lee is focused on. The journey is much more internal with no external or physical road representing it.
In both movies the road is gendered simply by the fact that it is women traveling the road to find other women. At the same time the road seems gendered to a greater degree in "Searching for Angela Shelton". Angela talks almost exclusively with women and shows very few men unless they are being confronted. The film and therefore the road in the movie is definitively dominated by women. In "The Grace Lee Project" however the road and journey seem less gendered because she talks to men quite often. She asks their opinions of the women named Grace Lee and gets lots of information from them and they are treated as equals, not as abusers.
"The Grace Lee Project" is much more raced. Every woman with the name Grace Lee was Asian and even many of the men Grace talked to were Asian. She focused quite a bit on the fact that all of these women are Asian and causes the road to become raced. In "Searching for Angela Shelton" on the other hand she makes a point that the women are of more than one race. Angela seems to purposely un-race the road by making it a point that she is speaking with black women as well as white. She also does not mention any stereotypes based on race as Grace does.