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Tags: Green Travel / Road Trips / Cars / Nissan LEAF / Travel News / Electric Cars / → All Tags

Can Road Trippers Embrace Nissan's New 100% Electric LEAF?

Another day, another sleek electric car with a futuristic design and eye-popping mileage. This time it's Nissan unveiling their slick new, purely electric LEAF. 100 miles on a single charge and a mere 30 minutes to recharge via a specialized charging station. No hybrid engine so zero emissions. Who wouldn't want to get in on some of this environmental goodness?

For starters, anyone who uses their car for road trips. The Midwest isn't exactly a forest of recharging stations, and even electric cars stop moving when they run out of juice. It takes 16 hours to recharge the LEAF on a standard household plug away from home. It's simply impossible for environmentally-conscious road trippers to go greener than hybrids.

The way we travel was different a few years back, before the recession; people drove their cars inside cities and took airplanes when they wanted to leave. The recession has however caused more and more Americans to choose the road over the friendly skies. The traditional response from pure electric advocates — "how many road trips do people really go on after they get out of college?" — just doesn't work any more.

This unfortunately means there's a tradeoff between the tangible environmental benefits of going totally electric now and the medium-term benefits of having a robust hybrid market.

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Tags: Dublin Field Trip / Road Trips / Ireland Travel / → All Tags

Take a Road Trip Off The Beaten Path Along Ireland's Southern Coast

All this week, Jaunted contributor CMB will be giving us notes on her Dublin Field Trip. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

Most visitors to Ireland have the obligatory Guinness, mack on the Blarney stone, and take a self portrait along the Cliffs of Moher, but sadly never make it to the southern coast, which is one of the best drives on the island.

Several small fishing villages and resort towns dot Ireland’s southern coast, including Courtown, located about 75 km south of Dublin on M11. This harbor town is popular with locals for its 3 km of sandy beaches. In the town, there's the usual coastal fare of ice cream stands, take-out restaurants and, of course bars. It is still Ireland after all.

If you continue south along R742, you’ll find Rossiare, another beach resort town that offers several hotel and restaurant options. You can also take a ferry to Wales and Northern France daily from Rossiare harbor, but will need reservations as the ferries tend to fill up quickly.

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Tags: Road Trips / Las Vegas Travel / Drives / Travel Tips / → All Tags

Pick Your Departure Time Carefully When Driving To and From Vegas

Last week we drove out to Las Vegas from Los Angeles and boy, was it a doozy. While we were happy to save on airfare (weekend tickets to Vegas start at around $150 round-trip; gas was about $75), we just happened to choose the worst times to leave Los Angeles on the way out there and to leave Las Vegas coming home.

We left on Thursday at 4:25pm from Santa Monica which is prime traffic time in L.A. but we couldn't skip out of work any earlier. This was also the day that Michael Jackson died and everyone was flooding the Westside to camp out at the UCLA Medical Center. So try to avoid departing on a day that a major pop icon dies in Los Angeles. For instance, when Britney kicks the can in Malibu, put off your trip for another few hours or possibly a day, if her death was "too soon."

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Tags: Airstream Trailers / Victorinox / Swiss Army Knives / Road Trips / → All Tags

Victorinox is Making Tricked Out Airstream Trailers

If you don't go anywhere without your trusty Swiss Army knife (or watch), then you'll appreciate the limited edition Victorinox Airstream Trailer that will be created to commemorate the brand's 125th anniversary. From The Autoblog:

Airstream trailers have always occupied the ultra cool end of the travel trailer spectrum with their sleek aluminum shells and retro vibe. Throw in some Swiss Army cues that include Victorinox timepieces, kitchen cutlery and Swiss Army Knives themselves, and we feel safe saying the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

The trailer also comes complete with sitting area and a small bed (with a Victorinox wool blanket of course.) But you have to really cherish your Swiss Army brand to want one of these trailers. Only 125 of them will be made and the starting cost is $59,000. It does however, come with a commemorative serialized plaque with the Swiss Army cross and shield emblem and all the Swiss Army accessories you could ever want.

Related Stories:
· Airstream [Official Site]
· Airstream and Victorinox Hook Up for Limited Edition Swiss Army Trailer [AutoBlog]

Tags: Memorial Day Travel / Road Trips / Weather / Terminator Salvation / Movie Travel / → All Tags

Can Memorial Day Kill the Staycation?

Is this the weekend we finally get over the staycation hump? Forecasters say low gas prices (and restless traveler syndrome?) will reignite the great American road trip this summer, with the AAA predicting a 1.5 percent increase in road travel over last year's Memorial Day weekend.

Of course, just when travel might be getting a much-needed boost, that frequent Memorial Day irritant – rain – is back on the horizon to ruin it all. Florida and most of the Gulf Coast will get dumped on this weekend, as will much of the South, Plains, and West. Which is great news for cyborgs, as Christian Bale's Terminator Salvation tries to bump Angels & Demons and Star Trek from the top of the box office.

So how's it looking out there? Is America done with the staycation? Or will the weather forecast keep you home once again this weekend? If you haven't already taken off for the weekend, let us know what your travel plans are in comments below.

Related Stories:
· More Americans hit the road to kick off summer [Reuters]
· A slow moving weather pattern continues [weather.com]
· Memorial Day travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Atwater Village]

Tags: One-Way Road Trip / Rental Cars / Road Trips / Tulsa Travel / → All Tags

Four Days and 1,407 Miles Later, We Turn In The Rental Car

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

If 24 hours before, we'd been dreading a six-hour drive, the final leg of our one-way road trip started with a bit of melancholy of a different sort. Not because we'd been having a bad time but because it meant my trip--through South America, through the Gulf Coast and onward to Oklahoma--was about to end. It'd been so long since I'd stayed in one place, I didn't know what might happen when we arrived in Oklahoma.

But I put facing doubt about my future on hold while Pat Faser at the Fairfield Place served up a big plate of veggie frittata, sausage links, fresh fruit and a truly Southern biscuit alongside orange juice and coffee. I'd say the emphasis at this B&B was on breakfast if the bed hadn't been so comfortable.

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Tags: One-way Road Trip / Rental Cars / Road Trips / Restaurants / Beignets / → All Tags

Driving From New Orleans to Shreveport, With a Stop for Beignets

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

Day three of our trip dawned, and my girlfriend and I woke with a sense of dread. Another 300+ miles to cover? And on this stretch, which a number of New Orleans natives told us was mind-meltingly dull? We needed a vacation from our Road Trip.

Luckily, breakfast in Nola was much better than it was at the Coombs House. After asking the all-knowing Twitter for a breakfast recommendation--trendy, right?--we headed to Morning Call in Metairie after @alexanderbasek pleaded "Do not miss." He didn't send us there for the extensive menu: You'll be having coffee and beignets like we did. But how tasty they were--and we might've been the only tourists in the crowd of cops, little old ladies and middle-aged men mentally drowning in their tiny porcelain cups. It was, as we'd hoped, the anti-Cafe du Monde.

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Tags: One-way Road Trip / Rental Cars / Road Trips / Space Travel / → All Tags

Driving From Apalachicola to New Orleans...with a Lunar Lander!

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

At nearly 400 miles, the second leg of our trip, from Apalachicola to New Orleans would clock in at more than six and a half hours, but on the upside--I thought, anyway--my girlfriend and I would get a killer breakfast from our hosts at the Coombs House Inn to start the day right. But though the sausage and apple stratta was tasty, the atmosphere in the deathly silent dining room was more chilly than a morgue in Siberia.

Eager to get on to a town with a bit more life to it, we set out for New Orleans, planning to stop for nothing but gas or bathroom breaks. But cruising past signs for the USS Alabama--presumably a battleship!--we were intrigued and decided, in true Road Trip style, to drop in. Totally. Worth. It.

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Tags: One-way Road Trip / Rental Cars / Road Trips / Alligators / → All Tags

Driving From Orlando to Apalachicola... with Alligators!

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

When I was young and on a family vacation involving a rental car, my dad would spend at least 10 minutes in the garage after our interminable flight, getting acquainted with his temporary ride while my mom and I would moan and beg for him to get on the road already. Thanks to that childhood trauma, I never do that, even if it means I have to figure out how to work the car while doing 70 through a construction zone on choked Orlando highways.

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Tags: One-way Road Trip / Rental Cars / Road Trips / Alamo / → All Tags

A Rental Car Road Trip on a Shoestring Budget

Jaunted editor Paul Brady is back on terra firma in the U.S. after nearly a year away in South America. So how did he get back here? By taking the ultimate road-trip. All this week, he'll be telling us just how he did it. Any questions or suggestions? Let us know.

There's something uncanny about planning a one-way road trip through the southern United States from an internet cafe in Cartagena, Colombia. But plan ahead you must, if you want to take advantage of the incredibly cheap one-way rental car deals out of Florida on offer right now.

Why the bargains? As the companies gear up for summer road trip season, they realize all their inventory is at Florida airports, dumped there by snow bunnies who drove down for sun and fun but flew back home. By offering super-cheap rides to people like me--north-bound drivers with flexible travel plans--they can easily repopulate the country with rentals.

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Tags: GPS Travel / Travel News / Road Trips / Cars / → All Tags

How The Phantom Alert Might Help You on Your Next Road Trip

Aside from finding alternate routes in traffic, traversing a strange city's streets with confidence, and approximating drive time, there is now another huge benefit to investing in a GPS: it will help you avoid dreaded red light cameras. We usually check our mental rolodex of local camera locations when we hesitate to blaze through intersections, but this doesn't work on road trips.

Before your next confusing drive through the roundabouts of Boston or the stop-start traffic of Beverly Hills, look into downloading "Phantom Alert," new software for GPS systems with the purpose of diverting you from traffic cameras and even DUI checks—not that we advocate detouring around drunkenness.

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Tags: Know the Law / Driving Laws / Road Trips / → All Tags

"OMG. BRB. 5-0 Just Pulled Me Over"

This could be the last text message you send from your cell phone if you get caught in the state of California under its newest driving law. As of January 1, it's been illegal to text while behind the wheel in the state. You can't even read texts or emails while you're on the road. And no Facebook status updates or Twittering while you're driving, either.

According to the California DMV:

This new law makes it an infraction to write, send or read text-based communication on an electronic wireless communication device, such as a cell phone, while driving.

Your first offense will cost you $76, with penalties going up if you've been busted before. One thing we're not clear on: Is it illegal to text or read texts while at a stoplight? (Probably. How many idiots have you seen who either don't know the light is green or move ahead too soon because they were texting?)

California now joins New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota and Washington, along with Washington, DC, in banning texting while driving. Those places also require a hands-free device while talking on cell phones as do a few other states. And while we're at it, in the state of California you can't smoke in your car if there are children under 18 riding with you. Louisiana and Arkansas also have similar laws.

Some places where you can talk on your phone and drive with one hand without the fear of the law on your tail? Hawaii, Nevada, Wisconsin and Wyoming. There are a few others too, so if you plan on visiting all 50 US states this year, consult this mega-list of state laws concerning cell phones before backing out of your driveway.