Road bike vs touring bike

We don't see a lot of true touring bikes anymore. A touring bike has a long wheel base, relaxed head angle for stable steering when loaded and has a series of bolts or "braze-ons" on the frame to mount racks for panniers or luggage bags. Touring bikes are also ultra-low geared for climbing up hills when loaded with up to 40 pounds of luggage for loaded touring.

There is a second class of touring bike more common now sometimes called the "sport touring" bike. Effectively, this is half way between a loaded touring bike and a dedicated road race bike. In Europe these are sometimes referred to as "randonee" bikes. These bikes are for long one day supported tours or "credit card touring". Usually the rider carries a wind jacket, wallet, spares, a small camera, some sun screen and maybe a pair of sandals and a towel in a large underseat bag.

A road bike is optimized for performance oriented riding in a group setting where riders are benefitting from the draft of other riders. When you see a big pack of riders on TV in the Tour de France they are on road bikes. Road bikes have quick handling and easily changeable gearing by replacing small parts to "tune" the gearing for flat or mountainous terrain.  

Oh! I just noticed this is your first post! Welcome on board and thanks for joining in. I am relatively new here too and there are a lot of excellent contributors and regulars on this forum.

Good to have you here!  Thanks for coming on board!