The map just went up on the wall, which means it’s official: I’m going on a roadtrip this summer!
The last road trip I went on was in ’05. Over the course of three weeks, three friends and I crossed the country via Route 20 to California, shot down on Route 1, zigzagged across the south to Georgia, and then sped home up the coast. It was without a doubt one of the most exciting trips I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been itching to do it again ever since.
The current plan is to cross the country on Route 50, dubbed “The Loneliest Road In America” due to a stretch through Nevada’s Great Basin desert. Route 50 was essentially built on top of the first transcontinental highway in the United States, the Lincoln Highway, and cuts across a ton of states I’ve never visited. As for the return trip, it will likely be pieced together based on various sites we’d like to visit in the south (you can see a few early markers tacked above). Of course, the point is the journey, not the destination. And the cardinal rule: NO INTERSTATES.
The one guide I’m taking along is Jamie Jensen’s insanely thorough Road Trip USA, which I can’t recommend enough. I still have my dog-eared copy from the ’05 trip, though I think I’m going to have to buy a new one – this monster is 3 inches thick, and the spine is finally starting to give. For anyone interested, Jensen details 11 classic cross-country trips, with an eye for all the sort of beautiful, historical, unusual, and quirky details I tend to focus on in my New York travels (I’m really, really jealous that he gets to road trip for a living).
We’ll be leaving in July, and I’m really hoping to blog from the road, if only a few pictures a day. Unfortunately, my stupid Canon Rebel DSLR has been acting up recently, and I’m really hoping to replace it with the 5D Mark 1 between now and the trip. Er, anyone out there able to get me a good deal? I can get you some prime advertising on that ultra hip website, ScoutingNY.com! OK, enough shilling…
So please, give me any and all recommendations you can for the trip! Basically, anything south of Route 50 is a possibility at this point, and I’m looking to cover everything, from the old standards (Graceland, Yosemite) to the unusual and out of the way (ghost towns, etc.).
-SCOUT
PS – From the ’05 trip – this was the license plate at about 2000 miles:
I’ve lived at two points on/near Route 50, in Nevada and Washington, DC. I was always amused by the fact that there are brothels on the road in Nevada, and the Capitol building in DC.
This sounds like loads of fun. We did something similar in Australia last year. The only thing that I didn’t like was not getting to spend more time in the places that turned out to be really awesome.
Whoa. That license plate is seriously foul.
One place you shouldn’t miss: the Crystal Shrine Grotto in Memphis. Photos do not do it justice:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11606
It is SURREAL.
The ghost town of Bodie on the East side of the Sierras is a bit popular, but fascinating nonetheless. Mono Lake with it’s tufa columns (made famous on Pink Floyd’s Wish you Were Here album) is in the same area. You can grab HWY 120 from there and cross over to Yosemite via the high country that isn’t as often visited as the valley, and come down into the valley through the backdoor. In the high country you can literally walk up to a 12,000 peak (because you are already at serious elevation). Lot’s of great sites to see when traveling in that direction. You will find yourself pulling over frequently as the vistas just keep getting better.
One more suggestion: the central coast of CA is great. Anywhere from Solvang up to SF. Highlights are Carmel (storybook architecture), Cambria, San Simeon (Hearst Castle), Monterrey, and plenty of surprisingly rural quaintness along the coast between the bigger towns.
Go to the Garden of Eden in Kansas, it’s a hoot.
http://www.garden-of-eden-lucas-kansas.com/
I’ll second the recommendation to visit Bodie, CA if you like ghost towns. If you haven’t seen Lake Tahoe, that’s also a worthwhile detour- I was astounded at how clear and picturesque the lake is.
On your way back north, I recommend driving at least part of the way along the Blue Ridge Parkway; an incredibly scenic road along the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Good luck!
I dunno how far south you’re willing to go, but i did a trip from new orleans–>memphis–>nashville, and the coolest part (besides new orleans) was driving the Natchez Trace, which it the road Jackson marched his men home on after getting to Natchez, and the war being over.
(a) it was all Foner-ish and cool to be where jackson had marched, and (b) there are all sorts of great little southern towns to stop off at that made you feel like you were in the 40s again. (except for the segregation part.)
also, everyone has their favorite memphis bbq, but Payne’s is objectively the best.
You should think of heading north some day. Magnetic Hill, New Brunswick, Quebec City, Toronto, The Wawa Goose, Sleeping Giant on Superior, and so much more
If you ever head up to the north half, you shouldn’t miss places like Saint Paul and Milwaukee, lots of great buildings there.
How cool. Have a great trip. You’ll be coming right through my hometown, about 300 miles from Ocean City, MD, which is where Rt. 50 begins or ends, depending on the direction you’re heading! Email me if you need any info on WV! Great blog!
Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh, Detroit… the Rust Belt towns will give you all kinds of amazing photographic opportunities. From abandoned industrial buildings to Beaux Arts architecture to urban agriculture, you’ll have a fun time exploring, I guarantee it.
I live on Highway 50 in southwest Kansas. There are such cool old signs on buildings and hotels everywhere here. I could get you a tour of an old theatre.
And if you are driving on the cheap, you could stay at our home and have a good meal! Let me know!
my best suggestion is to buy the next exit. we went on a 6 month road trip last year and the book is an INVALUABLE resource for gas stations, food, etc. covers all interstate highways in the US. We found it to be incredibly accurate and helpful.
As you pass through St. Louis, make a stop at the City Museum. (http://www.citymuseum.org) It’s not a museum in the traditional sense, but a former factory turned into an amazing art/playground. Be sure to go to the roof! Great fun–especially late at night when they turn out all the lights.
http://www.citymuseum.org/phototour.html
If you haven’t been already, I recommend Roswell, NM. We stayed just one night there, but it was very memorable. The town has very strange vibes, as you can imagine. We happened to be there the night a man who claimed he time traveled back in the 60s was speaking at one of the museums. Very weird.
As a native of Chattanooga, TN (now living in NYC), I encourage you to visit that fair city on your ride across country. It’s beautifully situated on a bend in the Tennessee River, surrounded by mountains and historic sites. You will not lack for outdoor fun, great restaurants, a bit of a hipster scene north of the river, and wacky tourist traps such as Ruby Falls and Rock City (See Seven States!).
Safe travels! I’ll be looking forward to your posts.
You may be interested in Tom Brokaw’s recent trip along Route 50: http://www.usanetwork.com/highway50/about/
I look forward to your dispatches from the road. Safe travels!
Bishop Castle in Colorado is near route 50 and well worth a visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Castle
New Jersey. From point to point and coast to coast.
If you swing through Kentucky on your way home, be sure to stop and have a good chuckle at the Creation Museum!
http://creationmuseum.org/
If you want to venture to Texas, Austin is always sure to be fun. BUT-a few years ago we finally went to West Texas, Big Bend National Park country and it is really beautiful and interesting out there. Terlingua is a little town that was deserted for awhile, then people moved back in, but still looks deserted. the cemetery there is awesome. Study Butte is a little town surrounded by weird ash hills (or something really interesting”. Marfa, the NYC/Austin expat desination du jour, is known for it’s small town feel but big art scene draw. Have fun!
Confirmed-The weird hills surrounding Study Butte, TX (pronounced “stoodey butte”) are ash from long gone volcanoes. It is very striking scenery.
ps-sorry for the typos earlier.
I’ll give a second set of thumbs up to the Natchez Trace. If you do choose that route, stop off in some of the towns with Civil War history, on the way — don’t just drive the Trace. Vicksburg, Natchez and Port Gibson (in Mississippi) are all worth the stop. In Vicksburg, you can visit the usual spots, like the military park, Old Courthouse Museum (built by slave labor) and an Episcopal Church that has Tiffany stained-glass windows. There are numerous antebellum homes, but not all can be visited outside of “Pilgrimage”, so check in advance. Parts of Mississippi Burning & O, Brother, Where Art Thou? were filmed in Vicksburg.
Natchez also has a large number of antebellum homes and I think it’s Port Gibson that Grant called “too beautiful to burn”. There are some really fascinating graveyards in all these areas, esp. those that contain graves from the Yellow Fever epidemic.
Not sure if this is on the route you mentioned (but doing this from Australia makes it hard)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
Seen a few photos of this old mining town, that had a massive coal fire, that turned it into a modern day ghost town.
Totally spooky, with huge fissures in the roads,long lost buildings.
Not sure how accessable it is, to general public though.
enjoy
Frothy
Hey, when you get near Memphis let me know. I’d love to share my town with you. Lots of good food you should try (Barbecue especially but don’t rule out Gus’ Fried Chicken – the best in the world) and there’s plenty of weird and fun stuff in town. On your way East of here, you should also stop at Shiloh and see Bloody Pond. And if you’re looking for strangeness, go no farther than Graceland. I’m a native Memphian and still refuse to step foot inside its gates. But man, the people watching is something else.
you know it might be fun to incorporate some diner/forgotten foodie joints. you know mom & pop food joints that are hidden gems or places known for their……
You’ll be going through Utah; you will not want to miss the canyons in the amazing Wasatch mountains; You might also check out the Avenues in SLC for some really cool looking houses and some of the architecture bits that you enjoy.. Definitely tune in to KRCL, also known as Radio Free Zion, for some of the best community radio programming in the country. And if you have time, Zion, Bryce and the Canyonlands all beckon. Really a beautiful state.
Super article. My full admiration for your work at this paper. unfortunately i live in agonizing Zürich (Switzerland) where
life begins to get very very booring. Bruno
When traveling through Utah a great detour would be to go to the Spiral Jetty: http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/spiraljetty
Definitely would recommend a vehicle with 4-wheel drive to get there though, as you’d be driving over unpaved roads with huge rocks. I learned that the hard way!
@artie – I was going to suggest the Creation Museum too! US 50 runs right through downtown Cincinnati and the Creation Museum is only about 20 minutes from there.
All joking aside (I assume Artie was joking), the federal courthouse here in Cincinnati has an absolutely brilliant late Art Deco thing going on (www.gsa.gov/potterstewartct). When it was completed in 1939 it included the post office, and the first floor still has all of the windows and boxes and so on. Just an absolutely gorgeous building. A few blocks west, Carew Tower is similar, but more opulent. (I prefer the understatement of the courthouse.)
And stepping away from architecture for a moment, the King’s Island amusement park in Mason, Ohio (a Cincinnati suburb about 25 miles north of US 50) is a pretty good time. It’s no Cedar Point, but it’s a good way to spend a day.
It’s too bad you aren’t going further north. If you head up the California coast up to Oregon, you can catch the redwoods. All kinds of neat stuff along the Avenue of the Giants. If you got as far north as Newport, Oregon, there’s a great coast aquarium, and on the way there’s dinosaurs and Paul Bunyan.
Dunno if you’ll go near Indiana or not, but you must stop and see West Baden Springs Resort. My brother took me there recently and it’s been restored to it’s turn of the century glory. I actually lost my breath when I walked inside the dome…which was for a long time the largest free-standing dome in the world.
http://www.frenchlick.com/hotels/westBaden/index.jsp
There are signs in both Sacramento and Ocean City Maryland (the starting and end points for Rt. 50) that indicate the miles to the other. Friends that grew up in Sacramento always had this weird fascination with Ocean City. It was the city at the other side of the map!
But one correction. The Lincoln Highway was further north. It went through both my hometown west of Chicago as well as my dad’s hometown in Central Iowa — called State Center, IA to be exact. (Basically I-80 replaced it.) Lincoln Highway connected SF to NYC. While Rt 50 connects DC to SF.
Arches National Park, and if you don’t mind stopping a little more on that south side then Bryce and Zion, too. Those were my tops from a Vegas–>Denver trip. Some wineries in Virginia, too.
You guys should swing by Hot Springs, Arkansas on your way back through. It’s a total redneck riveria, but still has most of it’s old buildings and hot springs baths. The town’s heyday was in the 1920′s, so that’s the era that you’re stepping back into. IThe entire town sits in a national park, and you can explore the old main street. Stay a night at The Arlington Hotel, and sign up for a spa treatment. The uniformed elevator operator will take you downstairs in an old hand-crank elevator, and you’ll enter into a bathhouse that hasn’t changed much since the 1920′s. If you’re not claustrophobic, you’ll get a kick out of all the antique spa devices.
Why don’t you hit up with Route 66 on its way south, or starting in Texas at Cadillac Ranch… ride it out to California and then go up the coast to the Loneliest Road and take that back? Route 66 has alot of amazing stuff on it (Cadillac was my favorite though).
wow, in addition to being envious of your cool job, this trip looks quite awesome as well. looking forward to all of your posts from the road — please figure out a way to post a LOT!
have a great time
in memphis you have to check out voodoo village: http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/voodoo/voodoovillage/
Awesome idea! Ah, to be young and flexible with my schedule again. I did a cross-country trip in ’98, heading out from NJ on the southern route (Maryland, Knoxville, New Orleans, across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona to LA; back through Vegas, Grand Canyon North Rim, Utah, Denver, Kansas, Iowa, Chicago, upstate NY to Boston then Maine before home).
My top recommendations would be: Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah (might want to consider the $85 National Parks annual pass if you might hit any others), the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis (along with Graceland), Hearst Castle in California, anywhere in Austin (best town in Texas), and one ghost town I highly recommend: Mogollon, New Mexico. Pinos Altos has a cool old theater, too, but is not nearly as remote as Mogollon (an old mining town with maybe a few dozen remaining residents).
If you stop in Cincinnati, you should check out one of these “Underground” tours that just began. http://www.urbancincy.com/2010/05/queen-city-underground-tours-through-otr-start-memorial-day-weekend/
This will be out of the way but you’ve got to seen Rachel NV and the Little Alien Inn. Marta Becket and her Amargosa Opera House is must see in Death Valley Junction. The Opera House is treasure. I’ve got a bunch of photos on my blog if you want to check it out http://anotherlasvegasdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-opera-house.html#links
I would absolutely recommend US Route 40 from Columbus to Indianapolis. Check out Daniel Burnham’s now abandoned Penn Railroad depot in Richmond (IN) and the campus of University of Illinois at Champaign. Other great towns to visit include Springfield, OH and Oxford, OH
hope you have a great time.
I would recommend taking along a copy of Road Food, by Jane and Michael Stern. They have several books about food on the back roads of America, and all are really interesting and well-written. Also, Blue Highways, by William Least-Heat Moon, is an excellent journal of a man’s road trip via the “blue highways” across the US in 1979 or 1980. I read it periodically and never tire of it.
Dyersville, Iowa – eastern Iowa out of your way but – movie site ‘Field of Dreams’. The farmhouse, cornfield and diamond are still there. Recently put on the market for $4.5 million. http://www.ghostplayer.us/ If you go, call Joe Scherrman for tour, information and fun. You will not regret this!! And go to the basilica, too.
I rec using http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ for finding odd sites to visit.
Seconding the rec to get the US National Parks Pass – it’s most definitely worth it.
If you’re coming down along the California coast, stop every so often when you see the signs for historical landmarks and the random “view point.” Some of my best memories are from pulling off just because someone in the car read a sign on the side of the road.
If you’re around San Diego at the end of July, you can always try to get some shots of the downtown Gaslamp area while the Comic Conners are walking around.
In general, my experiences have been that if you simply pull over in a random town, you’ll find something interesting enough to photograph.
I recommend a visit to the abandoned PA turnpike! The PA turnpike opened in 1940. However, a tunnel-intensive section northwest of Chambersburg turned out to be a bottleneck for traffic, which quickly outgrew the road’s capacity. In 1968 the PA turnpike was re-routed to bypass 3 of the 7 tunnels, and a portion of the original highway was abandoned. In 2001, it was sold for $1 by the turnpike commission to a conservancy & cycling nonprofit, which hopes to eventually restore it to its 1940′s appearance.
The portion of the abandoned turnpike accessible to the public is 13.5 miles long. It contains 2 tunnels, Ray’s Hill Tunnel which is 2500 feet long, and Sideling Hill Tunnel which is 6600 feet long. (Laurel Hill Tunnel is still owned by the PTC and is under lease to NASCAR for experimental vehicle testing.) Pike2Bike owns the road and cycling is permitted and encouraged by them, although for liability reasons they state “officially closed, ride at your own risk.” It’s used by hundreds of cyclists. Most of the surface is well paved but there are occasional rougher spots. Lights are a must for the dark tunnels.
http://www.pahighways.com/toll/abandonedturnpike.html
This is probably too far south, but camp at Little Talbot Island State Park in Florida if at all possible. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, run by the absolute best park rangers I’ve ever met. I’ll never forget it.
Hey I love this site; I just found it.
I live in DeKalb IL near the old Lincoln Highway; in fact, DeKalb was one of the first seedling miles. When I teach On The Road I like to think that Sal and Dean cruised through DeKalb en route to points west (in fact they likely did).
Here’s a good book on the Lincoln Highway:
http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Highway-Street-across-America/dp/0877456763/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276733556&sr=1-7
Have a blast,
Joe
I’m so jealous! I’ve been trying to get friends and family to take this trip with me for YEARS! Enjoy!
~Tibby
Seconding the vote for St. Louis. There is so much amazing architecture/history/enexplored urban stuff there, and the people couldn’t be nicer.
Definitely go to City Museum while you’re there, along with Union Station (St. Louis’ version of Grand Central, which has since been restored but was abandoned in 1980 when Escape from New York was filmed there). If you’re into cemeteries, Calvary Cemetery in North County is pretty amazing. Also, see if you can get into the Lemp Brewery, one of America’s oldest breweries which has now been abandoned for many years. The Lemp family used the caves under the brewery as a natural refrigeration system (the caves under the city are one of the reasons St. Louis is also home to Budweiser). However, they also built ballrooms and swimming pools down there in the caves– I would die to see them myself!!! The adjacent mansion is reputedly haunted and more of a tourist trap.
Another thought: a good tour guide for the city might be the guy who runs this blog, http://vanishingstl.blogspot.com/, a pretty thorough chronicle of the multitude of gorgeous historic buildings being torn down every day in that city. I urge you to visit this unique city, which has so much potential and so much history!a
Good luck!
Marge
Looks like you’re planning on ending up in the Bay Area. Make sure not to miss downtown Oakland while you’re out here; the area immediately surrounding the Fox theater in particular has a wealth of crumbling art deco (and of course you have to see the Fox itself, which is incredible). The Grand Lake Theater in the Lake Merritt area of Oakland dates back to 1926, and features kitschy, over-the-top auditoriums with Orientalist decor, and an organ player in the main auditorium between screenings. Across the street from that is the Alley, a dive piano bar covered floor-to-ceiling in business cards, where the aging piano player (Tues through Sat) has been playing for over 40 years.
Be sure to bring an extra pair of shoes and toss them over the shoe tree. I believe it’s right outside of Eureka, NV. And, if you can, take a little side-trip to Manhattan, NV. Grab a beer, see the ruins of an old silver boom-town and marvel at the differences between the Manhattans. I’ve driven that rode quite a few times and really love it!
Try the MindField in Brownsville, Tennessee. It’s a metal sculpture that this guy has been working on for about 20 years, and will continue to work on until he dies. It’s right next to the Brownsville grocery store. It’s enormous, and if the guy is there, he will tell you all about it. We even got free copies of his self-published novel. Highly recommended.
Tulsa – Old RT.66 runs through it and one of the largest collections of ART DECO buildings in the country. Frank Lloyd Wright’s only high rise is in Bartlesville, about an hour north of Tulsa too.
http://www.tulsahistory.org/events/deco_tours.htm
I totally agree on the other Natchez Trace Parkway recommendations, and you must must must try to get to Chattanooga it is such a fantastic town you might never want to leave, while in Chattanooga swing by St Elmo, but you also need to try to get to Vicksburg national military park, in Vicksburg Ms. My parents took us there when we were kids, and it truly is amazing. The park commemorates the campaign, siege, and defense of Vicksburg. The city’s surrender on July 4, 1863, along with the capture of Port Hudson, LA, on July 8, split the South, giving control of the Mississippi River to the Union. Over 1,340 monuments, a restored Union gunboat, and National Cemetery mark the 16-mile tour road. And the Cemetery will blow you away. Vicksburg National Cemetery embraces 116 acres, and holds the remains of 17,000 Civil War Union soldiers, a number unmatched by any other national cemetery. So If it was able to keep my interest as a preteen then you will be totally captivated as an adult.
have fun
jess
You may be really, really jealous of Jensen doing Road Trips for a living, but know that I am really, really, really jealous of your job as a scout. Oh yeah, and also this trip you are about to take! I’d send you to Maine or North Carolina, which I know well, but you’ll have blast no matter where you go!
Having just seen your post about the Home Depot graves, I thought you might want to make a detour to Tallahassee, Florida, where a recently constructed Kohl’s department store (there are two in town, the one in question is on Thomasville Road) has had to fence off another early cemetery. This is better hidden than the Home Depot one, but still. Hopefully Kohl’s has ghost problems, too.
Tallahassee has some pretty neat stuff happening even without the department store of the dead, including some nifty-if-tragically-rundown older neighborhoods and some better-maintained National Register neighborhoods, as well as all the things you’d find from a quick web search (such as the Maclay Gardens).
As a native LIer, I very much appreciate a sight which takes me back to places of childhood. Of course, my interest in LI, NYC and NJ history are greater now than then.
I must tell you, though, that Western New York, my adopted home, is RIPE with amazing places and architecture.
One that comes to mind after seeing your Home Depot gravesite is one passed by hundreds of thousands of football fans each year. How many of them know about the iron fence-bordered family gravesite outside Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, NY? A few of my high school buddies and I used to spend some cold, rainy and snowy nights after games cleaning up the parking lots. It only seemed to get colder and a little spookier walking closer to this site seclude in a lot quite close to the side of the stadium.
[...] be heading out on my first road trip in five years soon, and wanted to thank all of you who recommended places to visit – I added a ton of new sites to my big Rand McNally road map. There won’t be any new [...]
This reply is very late, and it looks like you have your plans already set out so I won’t rattle off great locations, but I have to ask what you have against interstates?
There is a 110 miles stretch on I-70 in Utah that is absolutely remote and incredibly gorgeous! You should really give it a shot one time.
[...] blog Scouting NY, has done just that. Earlier this Summer, Carr set out with his girlfriend on an epic cross-country road trip. He’s been chronicling the adventure since early [...]
Take a southern route this time, head through Shreveport, Austin, Marfa, TX, then Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Turn around at that point – don’t assume you have to go all the way across.
Oops – looks like you are already underway. Well’ take my advice in 2015 when you go again.
Solid web site. I bought a great deal of good information. I?ve been preserving an eye on this technological innovation for awhile. It?s intriguing the way it retains varying, yet a few of the core components remain the same. Have you seen a lot change given that Yahoo created their latest acquisition inside the field?
It has been so long since I have been on a proper road trip.
ome of my favorites places are in nebraska/kansas. Getting a little off the road and having nothing but scarily flat land with not a single tree or building in sight. An ocean of earth. These areas are also the best for some star gazing! You will not find clearer skys anywhere in the country.
Don’t forget to bring a camera! I have always found that you end up taking some of the greatest pictures out of a car window for some reason