Tag: Road Trips

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Buy This: Retro Road Maps

December 13, 2011 at 3:15 PM | by | Comments (0)

While we're extolling the virtues of Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood, we can't neglect to drop a holiday gift suggestion that's both cheap and easy. Yes, cheap and easy can actually be good.

Browsing at Brimfield, we came across a tin brimming with vintage road maps and hotel ads, the sort once handed out by gas stations to motorists on road trips or who were just frequent patrons. This is the 1960s of modernist design and good highways, so the flimsy pamphlets are both gorgeous and entertaining.

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Oh Great. The TSA is Now Doing Highway Stops

November 7, 2011 at 12:12 PM | by | Comments (2)

You missed it if you blinked, but there was an incident over the summer where TSA agents entered an Iowa Greyhound bus station and conducted a security sweep. For this they were roundly derided, which is what you'd expect given that many people, much of the time, don't particularly enjoy their encounters with the nation's airport security organization.

Now TSA is expanding its surveillance efforts beyond airports and bus terminals, and onto the nation's highways. The agency held an exercise recently, deploying teams to 5 weigh stations and 2 bus stations in the state. Because if there's one thing Americans have been clamoring for, it's more TSA.

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A Weekend on the Isle of Man: Driving a Mountain Race Circuit Without Speed Limits

October 12, 2011 at 10:14 AM | by | Comments (0)

The Isle of Man is a mysterious place, a nearly sovereign territory out in the middle of the choppy Irish Sea between England and Ireland. What sort of people live there? What's there to see and do? These are all questions we wanted to answer, so we went ourselves...because why not? All this week we'll be sharing our experiences in this curious island destination.

Step off the jet catamaran ferry from Liverpool onto the pier in Isle of Man's capital of Douglas, and you'll immediately figure out why so many people enjoy venturing out to this island and especially with their cars and motorcycles: it's home to one of the most prestigious street race circuits in the world, a mountain course celebrated each year with a motorcycle race called the TT (Tourist Trophy).

The Isle of Man TT happens in late May or early June each year, and though our visit fell with about ten more months to go until the next one, TT souvenirs and flags were everywhere. The famous Manx roads—"Manx" is the word for anything Isle of Man-ish—are a year-round attraction, and you know we weren't leaving without some time spent on the race-striped curves and speed limitless roads. That's right—there's no speed limit in some parts of the island!

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Get the Blues at the Mississippi Delta's Robert Johnson Festival

Where: County Road 518 [map], Greenwood, MS, United States, 38930-7324
October 5, 2011 at 2:48 PM | by | Comments (0)


You, Robert Johnson’s ghost, and some live blues artists. Just what the doctor ordered.

Last time we were down in the Mississippi Delta we were getting stuck in on local radio, but now here’s a reason to go back down there (and it’s not even related to The Help).

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of father of the blues Robert Johnson; and to mark it, next weekend, the people of Greenwood are throwing a blues festival. Not only that, but it’s a festival right in the cottonfields next to where Johnson is purportedly buried.

The King of the Delta Blues 100th Anniversary Remembrance Festival takes place October 15-16 on Money Road, outside Greenwood and by the premises of the fabulous WABG radio station. The lineup includes Rory Block, Dr Feelgood Potts, Maria Muldaur and Bobby Rush, and there will be tributes to blues artists who died this year, like Honey Boy Edwards, Pinetop Perkins and Mississippi Slim.

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The Wisconsin Cheese Trail is a Pretty Sharp Idea—Ha!

September 22, 2011 at 11:46 AM | by | Comments (0)

We’ve seen wine trails, beer trails, and even a green chile cheeseburger trail, but the latest foodie map is all about dairy delights. Residents of Wisconsin have another claim to fame, as the state just released a traveler’s guide to help you discover and explore some of the state’s greatest cheese options.

Whether you’re looking for an afternoon of the stinky sharp stuff or a whole week filled with curds, they have you covered. "A Travelers Guide to America’s Dairyland" is available for download, but if you need something to add to your kitchen they’ll even send you one for free.

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Seeing a Different Kind of Golden Arches in Reno, Nevada

September 21, 2011 at 11:07 AM | by | Comments (0)


It may not be as famous as the Golden Arches, but here’s an arch we always wanted to see: “The Biggest Little City In The World” on Virginia Street in Reno.

We always wanted to go to Reno to check it out as a grubby Vegas but were sold on the idea when we came across a postcard from the 1940s of Reno, with old cars passing under this glorious arch. And we knew we really had to go.

The Reno Arch was built in 1926 in advance of the Transcontinental Highways Exposition the following year, but it was only in 1929 that the slogan was coined, after a competition (the winner got $100 for inventing the phrase).

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Rolling Back Decades with the Postcards of Rural Nevada

September 19, 2011 at 10:49 AM | by | Comments (0)


So you expect things to be a little bit backward when you leave the bright lights of Vegas for the expanse of nothingness that is the Nevada desert—but 30 years backward? 40, even? That comes as a surprise.

But that's just about how old these postcards of the Las Vegas Strip are that we found on sale in Beatty, NV. Two hours northwest of Vegas on the 95, Beatty's best known for its proximity to Death Valley, its neighboring ghost town, Rhyolite, and its brothels.

What we didn't realise till we got there is just how tiny it is. Scarily tiny. Bad-things-might-happen-to-you tiny. Luckily, a Reno native had advised us to stop at the candy store, so we did. The candy store, by the way, is called Eddie's World and has a massive photo of Eddie the owner on the gas pumps outside. FYI.

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A Rental Car Company That Only Has Hybrids? It's in California, Of Course.

September 15, 2011 at 9:25 AM | by | Comments (0)

Some of the big rental car companies have gotten on the green travel bandwagon, but now there’s a new company in the neighborhood. Out in the Los Angeles area, MPG CarRental is only doing hybrids and electric automobiles, and they’ve even got some which are way cooler than a Prius.

A few of the cheapest options we found for a weeklong rental in the upcoming weeks were around $320, for the aforementioned Prius. However, they only include 150 miles per day, so just keep that in mind if you’re planning to use the hybrid for its true road trip potential.

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The Least Shady Part of Nevada's Famous Brothel, the Shady Lady Ranch

September 14, 2011 at 10:46 AM | by | Comments (0)


Much has been written about the Shady Lady Ranch, one of the most famous of the Nevada brothels and the place that played brief home to the one and only prostidude.

So you can imagine our innocent excitement when we realized that our Vegas-Reno roadtrip would not only pass several brothels, but the very Shady Lady itself.

We have no idea how the girls of the Shady Lady make a living because it is miles out in the middle of nowhere. Beatty itself is about 2 ½ hours northwest of Las Vegas, and the Shady Lady is another 31 miles north of that.

Maybe people come for the view? Because the 95, which runs pretty much parallel to Death Valley at that point (it’s just the other side of the mountains, here) is pretty spectacular.

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A Different Way To Go Nuclear In Las Vegas

September 12, 2011 at 2:11 PM | by | Comments (0)


Nevada probably isn’t top of many people’s lists for road tripping (in fact we lived in Vegas for 18 months without ever venturing north, thinking Arizona and California were better bets), but when we had to drive from LV to San Francisco last week, we took the opportunity to make a drive we’d always thought about doing – Vegas to Reno.

One of the first things we came across on the road was the Nevada Test Site, the site of hundreds of nuclear tests from 1951-1994, just 71 miles northwest of Vegas. It's where tourists from Vegas used to be driven out to see the blasts - you could even see the mushroom clouds from Fremont Street in Downtown Vegas back in the day.

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Wrap Up a Rental Car Deal Thanks to Budget's New Ad-Mobiles

August 11, 2011 at 8:37 AM | by | Comment (1)

We love a nice rental car, but what we don’t love is the cost associated with one. After the airfare and the hotel the travel budget is usually running on empty, but now there’s one rental car company looking to help us out. However, there’s definitely a little bit of a catch.

Budget Rental Car is offering even better deals than with an online coupon, and that’s because they want to wrap your car with advertisements. As long as you don’t mind driving around a moving billboard, you might just be able to save a few additional bucks.

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Moonlighting as a DJ on a Mississippi Blues Radio Station

Where: County Road 518 [map], Greenwood, MS, United States
August 3, 2011 at 1:13 PM | by | Comments (0)


WABG and the surrounding plantation

One thing you’ll notice as you road trip through the Mississippi Delta is that listening to the radio can be a problem. There are country stations, pop stations and talk stations—but finding a blues station takes a bit of work. Which is silly, because the reason you’ve come to blues country is to hear the blues, right?

Luckily, one station hears your pain: WABG, aka The Awesome AM, based in Greenwood. You can listen to it on 960 AM or online at awesomeam.com, where it plays blues and classic rock. Not that it’s always been that way—at launch in 1950 it was a “farm/talk/country station” and when the present owners bought it in 2007 it was all talk.

But the very best thing about WABG is that it’s open to visitors. “Poe," the sole DJ and one of three owners of the station, spends half his life in the little whitewashed shack in a field in the middle of a plantation on the outskirts of Greenwood. And what may be bad for his social life is great for you, because it means that if he’s around when you pop by (and he most likely will be), he’ll invite you in, give you a little tour of the station, interview you about your travel plans live on air and even, if you're well behaved, let you indulge in a spot of DJing.

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