Traveling This Summer? You Need This App. {Roadside America}

When I was planning our recent road trip to Baltimore, I wanted to break up the road trip a bit. Both to make it more fun and interesting along the way, and to give me a chance to get out of the car to stretch my legs a bit.

I heart road trips because it gives you a chance to really see the areas you’re going through, and unless you have a tight schedule, you have the freedom and control to stop whenever you want to. Many of my fondest memories from back in the day are from road trips with friends, even The Ex (our honeymoon was a road trip to Florida), and now that the kids and I road trip together, it’s even better.

So I googled around to find some good web sites that would show me some quirky and fun stops we could do along the way to Baltimore this weekend, and I hit pay dirt when I happened upon Roadside America’s web site. You can search by state (and drill down by city), and find a plethora of places that are off-the-beaten path type kitschy things to do along the way (including specific directions, tips, and whether or not others deemed it worth a stop). It also has a route planner so you can map out your journey. I put our home address in for the start and finish of the trip, and plugged in all the stops I wanted to do along the way, to give me an itemized turn-by-turn itinerary, which I printed out and brought with me. By using Roadside America’s itinerary, I was able to have the most efficient way to visit all the stops, but then I also plugged each address into the GPS, so I wouldn’t have to refer to the paper while we were en route.

Me <<<< safe driver!

On the web site, you can save the sights to your profile, add tips, and read reader’s reviews. The site also is updated pretty well to include updated information on sites that are no longer there, moved, what have you. When you’re searching, be sure to look beyond the ones the site lists. If you look on the bottom and left of your search results, you’ll see more links for nearby places to stop and check out.

And then it gets better. They have an app! The app is $2.99 and with that, you can select one region (i.e., Northeast US) as your “home region.” For $5.99 extra, you can have the whole country. Totally worth it. I can keep track of places that we want to visit, or places that we did visit while we’re on the go. And also, wherever you are, you can find nearby places … like in your home town! Or neighboring towns. Which makes it even more fun. It’s not just for vacations. It’s perfect for a staycation. Or if you just want to find some undiscovered treasures right in your neighborhood or neighboring towns.

Coming this week … A Bissell vacuum review, a Success Rice post, a review on the Baltimore Zoo, and tomorrow … a recipe for Roasted Portobello Pizzas.

Print it!