New edition of road trip guide out with trip ideas
BERKELEY, Calif. -- If you're thinking about a road trip and you need more than a map to help you plan, Avalon Travel Books is out with a new edition of "Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways" by Jamie Jensen($29.95).
Chapters break the options for border-to-border and coast-to-coast cross-country drives into 11 routes:
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Pacific Coast, 1,500 miles on a mostly two-lane route through California, Oregon and Washington.
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Border to border south to north, from the Rio Grande in Mexico to Jasper National Park in Canada, along US-93 through Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Montana.
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The "road to nowhere," US-83 north to south across the heartland of the Plains states, between North Dakota and Matamoros, Mexico, through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, past sites ranging from Sitting Bull Memorial to the Alamo.
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The Great River Road, following the Mississippi from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana.
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Appalachian Trail -- or the auto equivalent, from Maine to Georgia, with stops at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina.
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Atlantic Coast, a two-lane alternative route to I-95 down the Eastern seaboard from New York to Florida, with 2,000 miles of sightseeing that includes stops at the Jersey shore, Chincoteague, Va., known for wild ponies, and Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina, ending at Key West.
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Heading west to east across the continent from Seattle to Acadia National Park in Maine along the "Great Northern" route, following US-2 with stops in Glacier National Park and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
--The Oregon Trail, using US-20 to follow the footsteps of pioneers and pilgrims from Oregon's Columbia Gorge to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore to Niagara Falls and Cape Cod, Mass., with a stop at Iowa's "Field of Dreams" along the way.
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A coast-to-coast route dubbed "The Loneliest Road" through the middle of the country along US-50 through a dozen states, heading east from San Francisco to the Maryland shore.
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The "Southern Pacific," following old US-80 and its equivalents 3,000 miles from San Diego to the Georgia coast, from desert to delta.
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Last but not least, Route 66, the Mother Road, between Chicago and Hollywood, where you can still find diners, motels and kitschy landmarks like the World's Largest Catsup Bottle in Collinsville, Ill.
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