6 great American road trips(CNN)
U.S. 191: Utah to Arizona
- Trip length: 197 miles from Moab, UT, to Chinle, AZ
The scenery along Route 191 is spectacular any time of year. This red-rock country is a geological fairyland of arches, slot canyons, natural bridges and balancing rocks.
The road bisects the Colorado Plateau, which boasts one of the highest concentrations of national parks, monuments and recreational areas in the country. Just off 191 are Arches and Canyonlands National Parks; a short drive away are natural bridges, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon.
Outside Chinle, Ariz., lies Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "shay") National Monument. This Navajo land features old cliff dwellings and Spider Rock, a thin sandstone spire that soars 750 feet from the canyon bed.
The scenic trails in Utah's national parks lure many hikers. Be sure to wear some red to attract hummingbirds. There's also whitewater rafting, kayaking, rock climbing and mountain biking.
Rte. 191 roadside attractions
In Moab, some companies offer four-wheel drive tours through red-rock back country -- places ordinary tourists never get to.
The road also sports some old-fashioned attractions like Hole 'N the Rock, a 5,000-square-foot home carved out of a sandstone cliff. It includes a petting zoo, sculpture garden, general store and trading post, and is located 12 miles south of Moab. A house tour costs $6 for adults.
The Dinosaur Museum ($3.50) in Blanding, Utah, tries to convince visitors that dinosaurs are just big birds that lost the ability to fly.
Where to stay. Moab, at the start of the road trip, has dozens of motels and B&Bs -- as well as housekeeping cabins for travelers planning longer stays.
About an hour down the road, Monticello has lower-priced alternatives; it's also the closest town to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Rooms at the Monticello Inn, the top-rated place to stay on TripAdvisor, start about $60 a night.
Chinle has a couple of hotels, while a Navajo-run lodge inside the National Monument grounds offers rooms starting at about $122 for a double.
Blue Ridge Parkway
- Trip length: 469 miles
The Blue Ridge Parkway runs from Waynesboro, Va., to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Its 470 miles twine through the Appalachian forests along the highest elevations east of the Rockies, including Mount Mitchell, at more than 6,000 feet.
Alongside are historic towns, working farms, old mills and the Cherokee Nation lands. The views are serene, with the road often tunneling through deep woods before emerging into the open. Mountain overlooks abound. Deep greens of summer change to bright fall colors in October.
There's lots to see along the road, like the Natural Bridge in Virginia, a cliff called Blowing Rock where stiff winds blow light objects tossed by tourists back at them, and tours at caves including Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia and Linville Caverns in North Carolina.
Blue Ridge Parkway roadside attractions
The Blue Ridge cleaves the heart of Appalachia. Old timey and bluegrass music came out of these hills. The Blue Ridge Music Center, right beside the parkway near Galax, Va., celebrates that history. The center holds free concerts every afternoon during travel season.
Biltmore, a Gilded-Age Vanderbilt estate that features the U.S.'s largest private home, is just outside of Asheville. Tours cost $59 day of admission or $44 for tickets bought seven days or more in advance.
At Mystery Hill, near Blowing Rock, N.C., the laws of gravity and physics don't apply. Water flows uphill and balls roll up inclines; bodies shrink or grow when they change places. It's cheesy fun for all. Admission is $9 for adults.
Nearly every road trip has its own oddball site, like the Indian Death Tiki of Awesomeness in Maggie Valley, N.C. This is a 16-foot-tall, wooden advertising statue for a local motorcycle repair shop. Head-dressed, saber-toothed and skull-faced, it's little more than a photo-op -- but an awesome one.
Where to stay. There are several towns at good intervals for overnight stays. Mount Airy, which is about mid-route, offers about a dozen hotels and inns with rooms ranging from about $55 to $160 a night. Its main claim to fame is as the hometown of Andy Griffith and it holds an annual Mayberry celebration.
Pacific Coast Highway
- Trip length: 453 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles
The Pacific Coast Highway is about 470 miles between SF and LA, but it drives slower. Switchback turns, steep curvy inclines and speed traps keep motorists from making fast time.
But that's okay, because the views are why drivers come this way. For much of the trip south, the land on the right slopes off sharply to the sea, while land on the left rises up cliff sides. Coves and bays force the route through countless meanders with views of rock-lined beaches.
It passes through Big Sur, Monterey Bay, Santa Barbara and many other places to tarry for a few hours -- or days.
Wildlife viewing is incredible at places like Año Nuevo State Park near Santa Cruz, Elkhorn Slough north of Monterey, and Piedras Blanco near San Simeon. You might spot sea otters, elephant seals, sea lions, even whales.
Ventura is the gateway to Channel Islands National Park, where some of California's original coastal habitat can be experienced. only reachable by boat, these isolated chunks of rock sticking out of the sea are known as the North American Galapagos because of the rare, endemic species that evolved in isolation there.
Pacific Coast Highway roadside attractions
The Monterey Aquarium (adult admission $40) is a must-see. So is 17-Mile Drive in Carmel, which runs past gorgeous ocean overlooks and the Pebble Beach links. Toll is $10.
For Citizen Kane buffs, a tour of Hearst Castle can't be beat. The real version of Kane's Xanadu is a testament to overindulgence. Tours start at $25 for adults.
The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille is the remains of a movie a set built for the Hollywood silent The Ten Commandments. After filming wrapped, DeMille ordered the massive set buried in the sands of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center. The Nature Conservancy now exhibits artifacts uncovered by film buffs. Group tours of the dunes start at $50 for 15 people or fewer.
The Woolworth Museum in Oxnard is a restored Woolworth store from 1950, complete with vintage stock on its shelves. There's even a lunch counter, working pay phone and photo booth. It's free but closes after lunch.
Where to stay. one of the best places to stop along the way is Monterey, which is worthy of a multi-night stay. Further south are Santa Barbara and Cambria, which is right next door to San Simeon. Hotel room rates can be high along the coast. Figure on spending at least $150 a night in Cambria, home of Moonstone Beach, for example.
Natchez Trace Parkway
- Trip length: 444 miles
The Natchez Trace Parkway follows the Natchez Trace, an old game trail that runs from southern Mississippi all the way to Nashville, through some of the Old South's most historic communities.
Early 19th century boatmen who took the Ohio River to the MIssissippi and south used to sell their cargo and boats in Natchez or New Orleans and walk north back to their homes, according to Randy Fought, who runs the Natchez Trace Travel website. In several places, travelers can get out and walk the old Trace, he said.
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From the Trace, visitors can see antebellum plantations, both intact and in ruins; live oaks dripping with Spanish moss; Indian mounds; tobacco barns; and old cabins. At milepost 15 is Mount Locust, circa 1780, a preserved inn where boatmen would spend the night.
Driving the parkway is very pleasant since commercial traffic is banned and traffic usually is light. "I've never seen a pothole," said Fought.
The road passes close by several good-size towns, like Jackson and Tupelo, Miss., where there are plenty of places to overnight. Natchez itself is worthy of a stay -- the city has just about 16,000 residents, but boasts 13 National Historic Landmarks and more than 1,000 places on the National Historic Register. That befits the oldest city on the Mississippi.
On the other end of the drive is Nashville, where country music lovers have dozens of clubs, honky-tonks and other live music venues to choose from.
Natchez Trace Parkway roadside attractions
Nearly a dozen mansions, all built between 1798 and 1861 and ranging in style from Caribbean to Greek revival, offer tours of buildings and grounds through Natchez Pilgrimage Tours. A ticket to visit three homes costs $30 for adults. Individual home tours go for $12 each.
There are also the more eccentric roadside attractions such as the Elvis statue in Tupelo, Miss., the King's hometown. Elvis is reaching out with his right hand and touching it has rapidly become a popular tradition for his fans.
Off Milepost 330 in Alabama, there's a mile-long, poignant monument -- the Stone Wall To Native American Women. Built by one of her descendants, it honors a member of the Euchee tribe who was forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1830s and then made her way home.
Where to stay. In Natchez, visitors can stay at one of those antebellum mansions -- Monmouth Plantation. It's a four-star hotel where rooms start at about $250.
Tupelo has a couple dozen motels to choose from starting from as little as $60 a night. The top-rated Best Western charges about $100.
U.S. 6 through Massachusetts
- Trip length: 90 miles from New Bedford to Provincetown
The city of New Bedford is a great place to pick up U.S. Route 6. once the world's largest whaling port, the city of 100,000 still boasts a large fleet of fishing trawlers and scallop dredgers. Its seafood catch is the largest in the nation by dollar volume. The whaling industry left it with a rich legacy of 19th-century mansions and commercial buildings.
From New Bedford the road wends east through charming towns of old clapboarded colonials, churches, and clam shacks. Progress is slow as Route 6 becomes Main Street for many towns and villages.
After it jumps across the Cape Cod Canal, Route 6 becomes Mid-Cape Highway, a four-lane road running down the spine of the lower Cape. It speeds the trip to summer homes on the ocean beaches.
Near the elbow of the Cape, 6 turns north and drops back down to two lanes. It passes through classic summer vacation spots like Truro and Wellfleet before arriving in Provincetown at the end of the drive. At times both ocean dunes and Cape Cod Bay are visible from the road.
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P'town is the Cape's largest and liveliest town, a center for the arts and a draw for tourists, especially from the gay and lesbian community.
Route 6 is an especially fine drive after Labor Day, when heavy summer traffic drops down.
Route 6 roadside attractions
The Whaling Museum in New Bedford (adult admission $14) boasts huge whale skeletons, and what it bills as the world's largest ship model, a half-scale whaling vessel.
The road passes through classic Cape towns like Barnstable, Wellfleet and Truro, where there are excellent swimming beaches and great walks on the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Quirkier attractions include Salty the Seahorse in Mattapoisett, a 38-foot-tall sculpture that once advertised a gift shop, now long gone. The townspeople restored it. and surrounded it with a small park. It's a good place to down a lobster roll (a bargain at $11.50), hamburger or cup of chowder from Oxford Creamery, just a quarter mile east of Salty.
The Moby Dick Pulpit in New Bedford's Whalemen's Chapel seems to be an authentic artifact of the town's whaling past. But surprise, the chapel's pulpit, built to resemble a ship's prow, is a 1961 construction put in because tourists familiar with the movie treatment of Herman Melville's novel expected to see it.
Where to stay. Rooms at the first new hotel to open in downtown New Bedford, the Fairfield Inn & Suites, start at about $150 a night.
Beyond that, there are a wide range of accommodations along Route 6, everything from old inns to luxury hotels. But plan ahead: No vacancy signs are everywhere in summer.
U.S. 2: North Dakota to Montana
- Trip length: 900 miles Grand Forks to Kalispell
U.S. Route 2 is not a road for all seasons. Winters can be brutal in North Dakota and Montana and springs arrive late. But in warm weather the prairie countryside comes alive, with fields of mustard and clover providing wide swatches of color.
This is a long-distance drive, stretching 900 miles through the nation's northern tier. Farmland surrounds much of the route. There are thousands of pothole or kettle lakes; these round depressions were left by retreating glaciers and are now colonized by duck families. The sky is immense and solitude marks most of the trip.
The fracking boom, which has turned North Dakota into the second-biggest petroleum-producing state, has transformed some parts of the journey and introduced a lot more traffic. But Route 2 still goes mostly through very rural areas, according to Kim Schmidt, a spokeswoman for the North Dakota Tourism Division.
The road starts out flat in the east and goes through rolling farmland before hitting the Badlands out west, she said.
Once travelers cross the Montana border, there's still nearly 500 miles before Route 2 becomes Going to the Sun Road, which splits Glacier National Park in two. The road skirts waterfalls, avalanche chutes and alpine formations carved by millenniums of ice. With its switchbacks, narrow lanes and steep drops, the drive is not for the faint of heart.
Route 2 roadside attractions
Rugby, N.D., bills itself as the geographical center of North America and there's a stone cairn to mark the spot. You'll also find The Prairie Village Museum (adults $7), which displays buildings and artifacts of early settlement. Then there's a statue of Cliff Thompson, the Scandinavian Giant, the World's Tallest Salesman, a local lad who grew to a lofty eight foot seven inches.
In central Montana is a unique attraction called Havre Beneath the Streets, a relic from the early 1900s when this railroad town was destroyed in a fire. The residents lived underground as they rebuilt above, with tunnels linking homes and businesses including a meat market, saloon and bordello. Tours are $14.
Minot celebrates its Scandinavian heritage with a park that includes replicas of a Norwegian stave church, Danish windmill, and Finnish sauna. Admission is free. It also hosts the state fair in mid-July.
Where to stay. All three of these towns offer a good selection of chain motels with rates of about $70 and up. There are several lodges in and around Glacier National Park. They tend to sell out quickly during the summer so book early. At the Many Glacier Hotel, rates start at about $150.
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