America’s Top Road Trips

edited by Nan Frient

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 - also Butcher’s studio and home - is just one of 26 places 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 spots in the 2009 Road Atlas.

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 traversed the country to 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.

The Road Atlas can save travelers time and money. Used in conjunction with other navigation tools, it helps prevent driving snags that GPS systems or online directions can overlook. For instance, the Road Atlas alerts drivers to major road construction projects that could disrupt their trips, such as recent closures of I-64 in St. Louis and I-40 in Knoxville, Tenn.

The atlas also grants travelers the ability to veer off course and map alternate routes at a moment’s notice - and because Rand McNally makes thousands of map updates with each new edition, drivers can rest assured that the new atlas contains the most accurate information available.

In addition to reliable maps of the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico, the Road Atlas features helpful 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.