• Cross-country adventures on America's two-lane highways.
  • Avalon Publishing Group

Roadtrip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways

by Jamie Jensen
Avalon Travel, 2006, 4th edition; $29.95

This guide provides eleven very flexible routes that allow for hundreds of possible itineraries. Just about anyone can create the ideal, one-of-a-kind road-trip vacation from this guide. It covers the details—the best radio stations to tune into, which restaurants are worth pulling over for and overall sound travel advice.

Snapshots of maps are included to get your bearings, along with information pages dedicated to major cities and a “practicalities” section, which points out where to stay and what to do.

Right on route

You may think a road trip across the United States has to be just that—across. One thing this book does well is that it offers not only east-west routes, but north-south ones as well. For instance, Jensen describes the Pacific Coast route from the northwest tip of Washington at Olympic National Park down to San Diego where the light rail Tijuana Trolley now runs. Always wanted to do the Appalachian Trail? Now you can—no hiking boots required. One of the guide’s routes parallels the famous hiking trail from the top of New England to the heart of Dixie. And as the book boasts, “without the sweat, bugs or blisters.” Want to go west to east? The Oregon Trail might be the road for you.

Aside from providing great suggested routes, one of my favorite aspects of this guide is the call-out facts, which let us outsiders in on the local lore or just interesting relevant trivia. Did you know that you can stop to enjoy some lucha libre—professional wrestling—in the Mexican border city Ciudad Juarez? And keep an eye out for livestock on the highway while driving through the open ranges of southeastern Arizona. Into extreme skiing? Stop at Jackson Hole Ski Resort to experience the country’s longest vertical drop—4,139 feet!

Potholes

The Jensen guidebook is 850 pages—a bit daunting for one about to plan a roadtrip. That said, the book is in its fourth edition, so better to add to it than take away. I was pleasantly surprised to find that nearly all those pages were enjoyable and almost necessary. While I may not have needed to fill my head with the fact that the exploited Dionne Quintuplets became Canada’s No. 1 tourist attraction in the 1930s, I did make a note that if my family is ever on its way to Mt. Rushmore, we should pull over at Carhenge, which features three dozen late-model American cars, copying the famous Druid ruin.

Worth buying?

Most definitely. This thick guide offers all the information one could ever want, without preaching. Easy-to-follow, well-written and full of details, this guide will put you well on your way to tailoring the road trip of your dreams.

One of the great things about road trips is that you can answer a resounding ‘YES’ each and every time, to that repetitive question coming from the kids in the back, “Are we there yet?” After all, life is about the journey, not the destination.