Tag: Road Trips

David Lynch: ‘Interview Project’

David Lynch’s excellent travel web series, Interview Project, follows a team of filmmakers (led by Austin Lynch, David’s son, and Jason S.) as they take a 20,000-mile road trip across the States and back, talking with local folks. The resulting webisodes each feature one subject and function like intimate four-minute character studies.

We think a lot about how liberating a journey can be for the traveler, but often that liberation is contagious, and people we meet on the road open up to us in ways they normally wouldn’t. This project is a lovely example of the unique exchange between the traveler and the local. As Lynch puts it in his intro “it’s something that’s human, and you can’t stay away from it.”


Michelin’s Guides Explained

The Daily Beast demystifies the powerhouse foodie-travel guides from the tire manufacturing giant. Did you know that the books actually started out as road trip pamphlets marking the locations of gas stations and mechanics?


Travel Song of the Day: ‘Road to Nowhere’ by David Byrne


Travel Movie Watch: ‘Road, Movie’

The Indian flick, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, follows a young man as he attempts to escape the family business, traveling Rajasthan in an old truck loaded with film projectors and movie reels. To judge by the trailer, it’s going to be a good one:

There’s no word on North American distribution plans beyond TIFF, but if “Road, Movie” makes a splash at the festival—and assuming last year’s “Slumdog Millionaire” explosion has left plenty of viewers wanting another taste of India—I’d bet it will turn up in select theaters before Christmas.


The Triumphant Return of the Trabant

The Triumphant Return of the Trabant Photo by storem via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by storem via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Yep, it’s true. The much-mocked East German vehicle of choice, which has gained a nostalgic following (or should I say ostalgic?) since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is coming back on the market—as an electric car. Wired’s Autopia bloggers, apparently immune to nostalgia, are horrified.


Celebrating 50 Years of Leaf-Peeping

Celebrating 50 Years of Leaf-Peeping Photo by BingoBangoGringo via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by BingoBangoGringo via Flickr (Creative Commons)

New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway, one of the more famous fall foliage routes in the country, is a half-century old this year. USA Today has all the details—including the correct pronunciation of Kancamagus.


Two Days in the Life of a Rest Stop on the New York State Thruway

This American Life did it again this weekend with a superb program chronicling the happenings at a highway rest stop in Wallkill, New York. Some accompanying photos can be found on Flickr.


Travel Song of the Day: ‘No Particular Place To Go’ by Chuck Berry


Road Tripping Through the Recession

Road Tripping Through the Recession Photo by Nicholas_T via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by Nicholas_T via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Some reassuring news from the AP: The great American road trip is still going strong despite the grim economic climate. There are some interesting historical tidbits in the story, too—for instance, did you know that AAA was organizing national road trips as early as 1904?


Video: An Idiot’s Driving Tour of Moscow

Here’s the idiot, who recklessly tried to re-create a car chase scene from The Bourne Supremacy:

If you want an accelerated travel experience, you’re better off doing this. (Via Gulliver)


Photo We Love: Speeding Auto Rickshaw in Agra, India

Auto rickshaw, Agra, India Photo by diametrik via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Photo by diametrik via Flickr, (Creative Commons)

Pulitzer Finalist Takes Road Trips to Wawa, Sheetz

Hank Stuever spent part of his summer traveling to the competing convenience stores throughout the mid-Atlantic, “a local sort of road trip, a mini-mart epic.” His story about it is odd and kinda brilliant. He writes about Wawa vs. Sheetz: 

It’s even a toss-up to which one gets stranger as the night wears on. They come into the Sheetz on Prince William Parkway in Dale City in the darkest of night, and poke-poke-poke at the made-to-order menus on the touch-screens. Touch the picture of the sandwich you want. Touch the picture of the kind of cheese. Now touch the pictures of lettuce, the pickles. Now touch the mustard, the ketchup. The touch-screen system is not merely there to impress you. “We used to do it where you fill out a paper form and leave it in the basket, but people got smart and realized the paper at the bottom of the basket comes first, so they’d stick theirs in at the bottom and then you get problems,” Stan Sheetz says.

Also: “You would be shocked how many people can’t read and write.”

I also love this comment on the piece from JOKR715: “Finally, a fluff piece I care about!”


10 Great American Road Trip Books

When you’re through with Paul Theroux’s excellent Smithsonian essay about his first cross-country drive, be sure to check out the accompanying roundup of great American road trip reads. Several of our top 30 travel books make an appearance.


The End-of-Summer Roadtrip Rehab

The End-of-Summer Roadtrip Rehab Photo by Sean Loyless via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by Sean Loyless via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Yep, it’s getting to be that time of year again. Wired’s Brad Moon cleans out the family car after a summer of road tripping, and makes a list of banned substances for future treks. Among the contraband? “Those grabby pincer things they sell at all souvenir shops.”


Paul Theroux: ‘The Cross-Country Trip is the Supreme Example of the Journey as the Destination’

Yet one of the most intrepid travel writers alive had never driven across the U.S. So when the Smithsonian asked him and five other travel writers to take on their dream assignments, he picked the cross-country trip. He delivered a beautiful story. He writes:

In my life, I had sought out other parts of the world—Patagonia, Assam, the Yangtze; I had not realized that the dramatic desert I had imagined Patagonia to be was visible on my way from Sedona to Santa Fe, that the rolling hills of West Virginia were reminiscent of Assam and that my sight of the Mississippi recalled other great rivers. I’m glad I saw the rest of the world before I drove across America. I have traveled so often in other countries and am so accustomed to other landscapes, I sometimes felt on my trip that I was seeing America, coast to coast, with the eyes of a foreigner, feeling overwhelmed, humbled and grateful.

The other five writers involved are Susan Orlean (Destination: Morocco), Francine Prose (Japan), Geoffrey C. Ward (India), Caroline Alexander (Jamaica) and Frances Mayes (Poland). Here’s Jan Morris’s introduction to the project.


The Great Israeli Road Sign Debate

The Great Israeli Road Sign Debate Photo by dlisbona, via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by dlisbona, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Israel’s transportation minister has proposed switching the country from a trilingual system—road signs are currently in Hebrew, Arabic and English—to one where the signs are presented exclusively “with transliterations of the Hebrew names.”

The World reports that street signs in Israel have long long been ideological battlegrounds. Reporter Daniel Estrin follows around one couple who travels the country trying to restore defaced street signs. Here are a few photos.


Dining on Americana

American City Diner, Washington D.C. Photo by dchousegrooves via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Diners are beacons for road trippers and havens for locals in small towns and big cities alike. Here's a tour of 11 beautiful ones.

See the full photo slideshow »


‘The Era of the Small Town has Passed’

In The Smart Set, Jessa Crispin reflects on the dual pop culture mythologies of small town America—the nostalgic’s warm, sleepy hamlet and the horror movie’s lurking nightmare—and the ways in which both miss the point. Her conclusion is stark: “[T]he era of the small town has passed, and if all we ever remember are these false versions, we’ll never understand what we’re losing.”

For my part, I think there are more nuanced portrayals of small-town American life out there than those she mentions—see, for instance, John Updike’s earlier short stories. But I take her point about the dominant portrayals being cartoon-ish more often than not. My proposed remedy: some real-life exposure. Trans-American road trips for all?


Van Halen, Highway 40 and Happiness

In his latest post on the Happy Days blog, Tim Kreider draws from his travel experiences to make an interesting point about happiness: “Maybe we mistakenly think we want ‘happiness,’ which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience.”


‘The Great American Road Trip is Resurgent’

‘The Great American Road Trip is Resurgent’ Photo by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr (Creative Commons)

In the latest issue of Outside, Ian Frazier declares that the road trip is back. We’re glad to hear that he’s come around—last summer he was one of those who predicted that the road trip was dead—but we’re also pretty sure it never really went away in the first place. Frazier goes on to offer some thoughtful reflections on the irresistible urge to jump in the car and head west. His short piece is accompanied by more fine, compact road tripping essays from Walter Kirn, Matthew Power and Eric Hansen. (Via @AdventureLive)