Best Road Trips in North America
Marshes crawling with tangled grass and sunbathing alligators make Florida's Everglades a tourist favorite. But fascinating wildlife isn't the swampy region's only draw. Nestled among the cypress trees, the Big Cypress Gallery invites travelers to delight in the black-and-white landscape photography of southwest Florida photographer and author Clyde Butcher.
The gallery, which also functions as Butcher's studio and home, is just one of the 26 locations highlighted in Rand McNally's 2009 Best of the Road awards program.
This year's picks are found along five spectacular road trips across the U.S. and Canada — amid the tallgrass prairie of Jefferson City, Mo., hugging the sparkling shores of Hawaii's Big Island and tucked along the coast of Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound. With vacation season in full force, travelers can find all of the Best of the Road spots in the 2009 Road Atlas, now celebrating its 85th year.
Fortunately for atlas owners, almost all of the trips are around 200 miles, allowing for shorter trips closer to home — an advantage given that gas prices exceed four dollars a gallon in certain areas.
Experienced travel editors at Rand McNally — America's largest and most-trusted map maker — traversed the country to personally select the routes and tourist attractions featured in the Road Atlas' eighth annual awards program. Each trip has a theme — from romance to history — and includes other destination suggestions for that theme outside of the featured trip.
"Must-see" spots in the 2009 Best of the Road trips include:
Encore Bed & Breakfast: The innkeepers of this 19th-century Boston townhouse inspire guests' future travels with tales of their own on the "Charming Coastline" trek from Provincetown to Boston.
Bridal Cave and Thunder Mountain Park: Travelers can explore the cave unearthed in the 1800s by the Osage Indians and learn the legend of the Indian wedding that took place there on the "Exploring the Ozarks" trip in Missouri.
North Woven Broom Company: Harry Potter fans can purchase handcrafted brooms from the same Canadian Pacific Northwest company that created promotional brooms for the book series along the "Three States, Two Countries, One Adventurous Drive" route.
Parker Ranch: Tourists can be a cowboy (or girl) for a day — riding horses, wagons and ATVs at this Hawaiian ranch on the "Circling the Big Island" trip.
Columbia Restaurant: This century-old Tampa favorite serves up a Spanish bean soup on "Florida's Cultural West Coast" drive.
In addition to reliable maps of the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico, the Road Atlas features vital travel information, including a mileage and driving times map, emergency numbers, and lodging and rental car contacts. The Road Atlas is printed on pages produced from responsibly managed forests and manufactured through an elemental chlorine-free method.
If You Go...
Encore Bed and Breakfast
116 West Newton Street
Boston, MA 02118
617.247.3425
info@encorebandb.com
Bridal Cave and Thunder Mountain Park
526 Bridal Cave Road
Camdenton, MO 65020
573.346.2676
info@bridalcave.com
North Woven Broom Company
Box 126
Crawford Bay, British Columbia, Canada
VOB 1E0
1.866.471.1117
nwb@theeastshore.net
Parker Ranch
67-1435 Mamalahoa Highway
Kamuela, HI, 96743
808.885.7655
dq@parkerranch.com
Columbia Restaurant
2117 East 7th Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33605
813.248.4961
colybor@columbiarestaurant.com
For more information, visit Rand McNally.
