Where can I get one of the USA for Cheap? borders dont have one, Barns & nobles Donnt have one. I want to pick it up and look. or should I just get a regular road map and work things out on my own??

I don't know if such a thing exists. My LBS sells maps of the bike routes designated on my city streets, but that's about it...useless to me because my goal is to get OUT of the city when I go on longer rides. Are you scouting local routes or trying to find something that's not in your area? If it's the former, pick a Saturday morning when the weather's no good for riding and head out with a map and large coffee and explore in the car. If it's the latter, maybe post in some of the regional forums here.

there has to be an atlas in order for cyclist to go cross country. I found one yesterday for motorcycles but not for cycling. as for exploring goes, I much rather get lost and find a different route home. But I teach tennis 7 days a week so getting out and riding is a little tough.

there's plenty for cross country routes

http://www.adv-cycling.org/routes/index.cfm

but like texass4 says it's probably not what you're asking for - and no they don't exist (that I am aware of) except on the local level

use a regular street map...

Where can I get one of the USA for Cheap? borders dont have one, Barns & nobles Donnt have one. I want to pick it up and look. or should I just get a regular road map and work things out on my own??

Take a look at some of the internet routeing utilities
http://www.bikely.com/
http://routeslip.com/index.php

There's maps like this available in my region.
http://www.littletransport.com/

There's also some government resources available in my region:
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/sti/map.html

See if any of that works for you or you have something similar in your area.

Scot

there has to be an atlas in order for cyclist to go cross country.

There has to be? That's interesting. Regardless of your certainty, there is no such thing. Like M.J. noted, Adventure Cycling has route maps for sale, with over 30K miles of detailed routes - 3 from coast to coast, 3 from north to south, and a bunch of interconnects.

There is a project underway to develop national corridor plan for interstate bike routes under the direction of AASHTO (American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials): http://adventurecycling.org/routesandmapping/NBRN-pp.pdf It will be several years before this corridor plan is converted to additional fully implemented interstate routes.

Many states have online maps of either routes or cycling suitability, though some are pretty hard to find. Go to http://cms.transportation.org/?siteid=59&pageid=852 for links to all the state web sites.