Travel ... Here & There
Touring Roadside America

Since we already have a section devoted to on-line content for Auto & Travel, we suppose that an article here about travel sites on the internet is a little like cheating.  But that's what we're offering this month.

Let's face it, not many of us will be heading out the door on vacation before the holidays.  And besides, we're not going to present you with the usual travel sites here.  {That would be cheating.}  Instead, we've rounded up a couple of off-beat sites about traveling through the States.  ...

So, while you're planning next summer's vacation, consider this.  ...

America: Love It and Leave It?
First off, we want to applaud the folks who vacation here in the States.  Not that we object to foreign vacations, mind you.  Not at all.  But it strikes us as something at least a little bit ironic that, while tourists from every conceivable country on the globe come to the States for vacation, or yearn to, many Americans take the States and what they have to offer for granted.

But even for those who don't, too often, the destinations are the usual ones -- the packages that take you to all the recently-built attractions that have become part of the staple diet of American vacationing.  In one sense, this is, or at least it's become America, mostly through lots of advertising and the resulting lots of tourists.  But we urge you to leave this America in search of another one, an America that emerged after WWII, as more and more of us took to the roads, an America that's synonymous with highways and shiny stainless-steel-and-formica diners.  ...

So, as an anti-dote to Disney World and all the rest of that ilk, one site we'd urge you to take a look at is something that reminds us, for obvious reasons, of John Travolta as the Archangel Michael in the film of the same name.  ...

Roadside America ...
Roadside America delivers on what its name promises -- a seemingly endless list of roadside attractions.  To give you some idea of what this site is about, let's consider what they recommend right here in Vermont.

The Vermont list is topped by The World's Largest Happy Bee ... "a 12-foot-long [construction] that originally stood outside the Honey Museum in Wilmington."  But that's only the beginning.  In addition, there also the World's Largest Granite Quarry in Barre, the World's Largest Ladderback Chair in Bennington, the Floating bridge in Brookfield, the World's Only Spider Web Farm in Williamstown, and Santa's Land in Putney.

Closer to home, we also rated a couple of attractions, including the Dog Catching Frisbee Memorial at Middlebury College in front of Monroe Hall, the Gorilla Holding the VW on 7 North in Brandon, the Champ Monument at Perkins Pier in Burlington, some Yard Sculptures in Charlotte, and on a more traditional note, the Lord's Prayer Rock right here in Bristol.

In addition to these kinds of stops, Roadside America also offers a few specialty sections, including its Pet Cemetery which will guide you to such features as the Noble Dog Mausoleum, Mascots, Pet Vets, Celebrities Behemoths, an Elephant Burial Ground, a sub-section entitled Quarantine, and, of course, Faithful Steeds, which includes info on the burial sites and historical backgrounds of Gen. Phil Sheridan's war horse, Rienzi, the Little Big Horn survivor, Comanche, Man O' War, and, of course {how could it not!?!}, Trigger.  There's also a section called Hall of Immortals, a "Tribute to Unsung Heroes of the American Road," as well as an off-beat listing of attractions from around the world ... which have somehow {by theft or great cost or imitation} ended up here in the States.

Well ... You get the idea.

Of course, if the Roadside America site inspires you to start planning next summer's vacation a bit differently, there's another site that just might be indispensable.  ...

SPEEDTRAP.com -- Information for Efficiency
The Speed Trap site is about as  straightforward as it gets.  ...

As you plot your route across the States, of course you'll want to make good time.  {Not that we recommend speeding, mind you.  It's just that some speed limits -- like 40mph on a straight-as-an-arrow two-lane in the middle of miles of cornfields -- might be verging on the unreasonable, constructed just to catch unsuspecting motorists.}  Toward that end, SpeedTrap.com provides a searchable database of all reported speed traps, not only here in the States, but all over the world.  {A search for all traps ever reported for Vermont turned up about 60 traps, including a number on Route 7 and I-89, as well as one on 30 South out of Middlebury.}

In addition to providing you with its "information for efficiency," you can also contribute to the database.

Be aware that, if you monitor cookies in your borwser, there's one annoying element of this site -- it proposes at least 4 cookies every time you browse to a new page, even while looking through the database results.

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If you would like to submit something for our Travel Here & There feature, or if you simply  would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... autotravel@downstreetmagazine.com.

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Lou Colasanti, Editor & Laura Wisniewski, Associate Editor
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