It takes a long time to drive 9698.8 miles, no matter how fast you're going. This summer, it took me more than 246 hours behind the wheel to log the distance, for a pace of just under 40 miles per hour. At times, I crawled along much more slowly, inching my way through Chicago traffic jams or creeping back to Orlando in stop-and-go bottlenecks after the launch of STS-135. On the empty highways of West Texas, I drove much faster, doing 80 or 85 or 90 and watching for speed traps as if seeing them would absolve my moving violations. Once, I borrowed a car and drove more than 122 miles an hour.

Continue reading The End of Traveling the American Road

The End of Traveling the American Road originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I could see the end of my road trip, on the other side of the deserts of the American Southwest, the sun-parched stretch of near nothingness that conceals some of the country's greatest natural wonders. So after leaving Spaceport America in New Mexico, I prepared for a ironman push to the West Coast, my ultimate destination Los Angeles. Along the way, I'd stop at the Four Corners and the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and probably some dusty, God-forsaken gas station in the middle of a field of rock and scrub and little else. It was going to be a long drive but, weirdly, I was excited.

Continue reading A Grand Tour of the American West

A Grand Tour of the American West originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In the wilderness of New Mexico, set in the dry, scrubby desert under a crystalline pale blue sky, is a construction site with a bombastic and cartoonish name, incomplete but already a monument to the hubris of interstellar exploration or maybe to tax-payer financed public-private partnerships of indeterminate future success.

Spaceport America, a beautiful collection of Googie-inspired hangars and control centers at the foot of the San Andres Mountains, will soon be the fully operational home of Virgin Galactic, the Richard Branson-backed tourism concern that plans to shoot rich people into sub-orbital space for $200,000 a ride.

The Spaceport could be the next Cape Canaveral, drawing tourists and geeks to see the future of manned (and unmanned) American space exploration. It could be a massive government boondoggle, a wasted $209 million investment that never pays back the people of New Mexico who financed its construction. Or it could be something entirely different. So I drove north out of Las Cruces to see it for myself.

Continue reading Dirt-Road Driving To Explore Spaceport America

Dirt-Road Driving To Explore Spaceport America originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"I've been here about a year and a half," says my tour guide, a young yoga instructor who also works at this art museum on the grounds of a former army base in Marfa, Texas. "It feels longer."

Marfa is like that. Pulled from obscurity by the Chinati Foundation, an art museum started by contemporary sculptor Donald Judd, it's now a tiny raft of a town in the sea of the high desert of West Texas, an island of civilization where you can buy feed for your livestock around the block from a gourmet grilled cheese shop.

This October will be the 25th anniversary of the creation of Chinati. With the occasion comes some perspective on what's changed and what remains the same here in Marfa, where time seems to move more slowly than the puffy cotton clouds dotting the deep blue canvas of the giant Texas sky.

Continue reading Getting Weird Where Time Stands Still: Marfa, Texas

Getting Weird Where Time Stands Still: Marfa, Texas originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Seeing the recovery underway in Joplin, Missouri was an end point to a chapter of my trip. I'd done the Great Lakes, the East Coast, the South and, now, the Midwest. As I drove out of Missouri, the great expanse of the West loomed, a monstrous stretch of America to cover in the less than two weeks that remained in my trip.

I wasn't looking forward to it. After eight weeks in the car, on the road, sleeping on floors, in tents, in anonymous hotel rooms and cozy bed and breakfasts, I could feel the end of the trip creeping closer, my end goal of Los Angeles in sight, if more than 2,000 miles away by the sinuous route I'd plotted. But first, I'd spend the night in Oklahoma City.

Continue reading A Short Break From The Road In Oklahoma City

A Short Break From The Road In Oklahoma City originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The most terrifying thing about touring the disaster zone caused by the May 22 EF-5 tornado here is the randomness of the devastation, the sight of a vacant lot where a house once stood, literally across the street from a home still whole. The destruction that the storm wrought is already disappearing from view as the Corps of Engineers and contractors raze what's left of damaged structures. The empty lots, the clean slabs, the bare earth, these vacant holes in the cityscape were made so by backhoes and clean-up teams, not the winds and flying debris.

I downloaded an aerial image file for Google Earth, collected by aircraft on May 24, that shows in sickening detail the tornado's random walk through the city. Much, but not all, of the clean up has been done: A white van tossed against a fence on 24th Street, seen in the imagery, was still sitting there on August 1.

Continue reading Exploring Joplin, Missouri, Recovering From Disaster

Exploring Joplin, Missouri, Recovering From Disaster originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A few days after I explored vibrant post-flood New Orleans, reborn and bustling in the wake of the storm nobody's forgotten, I found myself in the lobby of the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, the largest non-casino hotel in the country.

It's home to the famed Grand Ole Opry, the shrine of country music, and sits along the Cumberland River, which poured over its banks last year, flooding the city and causing more than a billion dollars of damage in an event so severe it's forecast to happen only once every thousand years.

More than nine inches of rain fell on Nashville in 24 hours. By May 3, 2010, the hotel was no longer on the banks of the river. It was in the river.

Continue reading After The Flood: Nashville's Rebuilt Gaylord Opryland Hotel

After The Flood: Nashville's Rebuilt Gaylord Opryland Hotel originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Vitale's bakery in St. Louis makes 25,000 pizza "shells" a week, turning out the flash-baked crusts on a production line in a sturdy brick building on Marconi Avenue. Many go to local restaurants. But as I toured Vitale's recently, a guy snuck in the side door, his granddaughter in tow, picked up a sack of shells and ducked out. No big deal: He's a friend of the family. It all makes sense in this flag-flying Italian neighborhood, simply called The Hill, an ethnic enclave seemingly impervious to change, just a few miles from the Arch.

Continue reading In St. Louis, Finding Family Connections on The Hill

In St. Louis, Finding Family Connections on The Hill originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The National Park Service brags that the Natchez Trace Parkway is a 444-mile drive through nature and American history, all of which sounded interesting enough for me to attempt the drive over a two-day span. The history was there, with the grave of Meriwether Lewis, a ghost town at Rocky Springs and Native American burial mounds.

The natural beauty is outstanding, too, with a cypress-filled swamp, waterfalls, towering trees hanging over the parkway and a gorgeous bridge spanning Birdsong Hollow. But I came upon a shocking revelation: The parkway is only actually 442 miles long, with the final marker at the exit of the Trace near Nashville, proof that my brochure is full of government sponsored lies. It's a parkway conspiracy!

Continue reading Driving the Natchez Trace Parkway: A Road Trip within a Road Trip

Driving the Natchez Trace Parkway: A Road Trip within a Road Trip originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In the past few weeks, I've spent plenty of time in small towns. They're the kinds of places you only visit on a road trip, when passing through, going to bigger cities and bigger sites that aren't sequestered below the Mason-Dixon, far from a major airport or hidden, for example, in rural Mississippi. (I've never heard my friends, otherwise adventurous types, talk about catching the next flight out of New York to Tupelo.)

But there are great travel experiences to be had in small-town America, where you don't need a lifetime to peel back the layers of history like you might in Philadelphia or Boston. These small towns are manageable, navigable and just plain visitable. (It helps that every single person I met was super-friendly too.) These towns, all with fewer than 50,000 residents, have been some of my favorites stops on the trip, and here's how to see them.

Continue reading Three Awesome Small Towns, Best Seen by Road Trip

Three Awesome Small Towns, Best Seen by Road Trip originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 12 Aug 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Mississippi River town of Natchez has been a waypoint for centuries. Like so many voyagers before me, I didn't have much time to spend there. There were 16 hours to spare, enough for a whirlwind tour of a slow-moving town on a rainy Saturday night in late July. I started at the Natchez Visitor Center, overlooking the river and a kudzu-covered hillside. Things got much more interesting from there.

Continue reading A 16-Hour Overnight in Natchez, Mississippi

A 16-Hour Overnight in Natchez, Mississippi originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Driving to the best breakfast spot in New Orleans, a somewhat dingy beignet shop in suburban Metairie called Morning Call, where cops and bounty hunters converse at the corner table, I turned on the local radio. The set picked up AM 690, and a program called Inside New Orleans. The host, Eric Asher, started talking about Tales of the Cocktail, an annual drinking convention for bartenders and liquor brands that's quickly becoming one of the city's banner festivals.

He loves the event, he tells his guest "Mr. Cocktail," because it brings people to the city to see it's not still underwater. Turns out, there are still people, six years after Katrina and the levee failure, who think New Orleans is flooded. On the contrary! The city is building, with an ever-expanding museum, local entrepreneurs starting businesses and, yes, an absolutely unparalleled drinking scene.

Continue reading The Flood's Been Over: Exploring the New New Orleans

The Flood's Been Over: Exploring the New New Orleans originally appeared on Gadling on Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Captain Geoff gives airboat tours of Mobile Bay, leaving from the Original Oyster House on the causeway that goes east out of town, past the retired USS Alabama. On the tours, airboaters often see alligators, birds, leaping fish and the natural beauty of the marshy flats. That is, if you can track down the mysterious captain.

Continue reading Searching for an Airboat Captain, Finding Adventure

Searching for an Airboat Captain, Finding Adventure originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As much as it pains me to write, my road trip across the country will soon come to a close. But it's not too late for you to get in on one of the many prizes I've been giving out along the way. To go out with a bang, I'm giving away a free trip for two to Texas, in partnership with Texas Tourism.

Continue reading Win a Two-Night Trip to Texas with this Traveling the American Road Giveaway

Win a Two-Night Trip to Texas with this Traveling the American Road Giveaway originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I am not, as far as I can tell, in Walt Disney World's target demographic. I'm not four. I'm not a family man. I'm not Brazilian. I'm not even a fan of animated movies. But to drive through Central Florida after seeing a shuttle launch and pass up the parks? To miss out on a quintessentially American summertime diversion? To skip a chance to meet the one and only Mickey Mouse? I'm not nuts.

Continue reading A Whirlwind Tour of Walt Disney World

A Whirlwind Tour of Walt Disney World originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In Montgomery, during the Freedom Rides, I heard Martin Luther King say that while Brown v. Board of Education had been the legal turning point in the movement, the Montgomery bus boycott and the sit-ins were the psychological turning point.

So writes Calvin Trillin in a recent New Yorker, reflecting on the civil rights struggle in the deep south, which he covered for Time magazine "from the fall of 1960 to the fall of 1961." He's writing, then, on a sort of fiftieth anniversary for the movement, which of course spanned nearly two decades, making any hard and fast anniversary difficult to declare.

Another anniversary looms large in Montgomery this year, that of the outbreak of the Civil War, 150 years ago this past April. The stage was set for a Confederate victory at Fort Sumter, South Carolina when the Montgomery Convention met, in February, in what was the Alabama capitol building's senate chamber, to organize the new secessionist government.

For both anniversaries, this summer was a fascinating time to drive through Montgomery.

Continue reading Exploring the Double-Edged History of Montgomery, Alabama

Exploring the Double-Edged History of Montgomery, Alabama originally appeared on Gadling on Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fifteen years have passed since Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic torch, Kerri Strug landed her heroic single-footed vault and Eric Robert Rudolph detonated a pipe bomb in downtown Atlanta, during the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games. Well-considered development for the event has since transformed the city, which continues to draw new residents, start-up businesses and flights to Hartsfield-Jackson, the world's busiest airport since 1998. In the last fifteen years, Atlanta has become the south's booming, sprawling capital and an example of what urban development can achieve--and not achieve--over the long term.

Continue reading Atlanta, an Olympic City 15 Years Later

Atlanta, an Olympic City 15 Years Later originally appeared on Gadling on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I'm very interested in loud cars that go really fast, even if I still don't understand NASCAR. Earlier this summer, I drove my road trip ride around the speedway in Watkins Glen. As much fun as it was--lots!--I was itching to get a vehicle up to triple-digit speeds. Near the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, I had that chance at the Richard Petty Driving Experience.

Continue reading On the Fast Track with Richard Petty at Walt Disney World

On the Fast Track with Richard Petty at Walt Disney World originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"How long have you guys been sitting down here," the drunken heckler asked me and my buddy Stephen, around the seventh inning of a Mobile BayBears game at Hank Aaron Stadium. "All game," I replied.

"So have I said any curse words?" he asked, knowing that he hadn't, his point being that if some fans didn't like his good-natured heckling, they could sit somewhere else--and lighten up. This was minor league baseball, he insisted, and it's all about having a good time. On that point, I agreed.

Continue reading Out to the Ballgame: A Cultural Tour of Baseball for the Non-Fan

Out to the Ballgame: A Cultural Tour of Baseball for the Non-Fan originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

About 12 hours before STS-135 was set to blast off for low Earth orbit, my friend Rob and I were driving toward Titusville, Florida with a car full of camping supplies and our fingers crossed. The weather was foul, and the chances of a launch were just 30 percent. But we were in Central Florida to see a blast off, and so to the Space Coast we were headed.

Continue reading The Final Shuttle Launch and the Future of the Space Coast

The Final Shuttle Launch and the Future of the Space Coast originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.