The Modern Explorer's Guide to Interstate Travel

Sleeping in Cars at Wal-Mart

 

 

Turning your automobile into a motel room is useful when motel rooms are expensive or far away.  Ideal parking places include motel parking lots (no charge for the parking lot!), grocery stores, and, especially, Wal-Marts.

Pro Tip 1: Carry a sheet or blanket that is the same color as your car’s upolstery, so that you can be camoflagued as you slumber.

Pro Tip 2: When Wal-Mart is open, purchase a fold-up sun shade (or several) to use as privacy curtains inside your car, to build a reflective wall and keep out prying eyes.

Wal-Marts are also ideal for meeting, parking, and leaving a car for a few days. This free parking can be handy when you are meeting friends from distant towns and carpooling the rest of your trip together.

Next time you pass a Wal-Mart parking lot, you might be surprised to know that out of hundreds of cars, only 3 people are actually shopping at Wal-Mart.

The rest are just savvy travelers who park their cars there.

 

Rest Areas & Visitor's Centers: Vending Machines, Picnic Areas and Old People in Vests

Many motorists view rest areas as the new bathhouses of the modern roadway, though in recent years, cameras and visitors centers full of elderly greeters have cut down on the number of romances initiated in these public restrooms.

Upon entering a new state, you will often see a Visitor’s Center, along with a rest area featuring vending machines, picnic areas, and green spaces for dogs to take a shit.

Many modern rest areas also feature wireless internet, or WiFi, for truckers to use to check their Myspace pages or find the nearest adult video store.

 

To get the most out your time in a new state, go into the Visitor’s Center. 

Before you buy anything from vending machines, approach the old person in a vest behind the desk, and sternly ask:

“I am from [your home state], what can [name of state] do for me?” 

He or she will probably end up giving you a pamphlet to an amusement park or a pottery museum, but don’t be distracted from your purpose.  

(Consider this an employment interview, where a state’s ambassador has to earn your patronage as a consumer and job creator.)

If you are going to spend your hard-earned resources in a state, the official representative of the state at the visitor’s center should be able to make the case for your business, whether elderly volunteer or no.

 

If you find yourself unsatisfied with their pitch and do not wish to patronize a state that hires lazy volunteers, turn around and backtrack into the neighboring state to find an alternate route.

Or, if your travel route leaves you no choice, drive directly across the state, stopping only to throw away household trash or urinate.

 

Click here for a complete state-by-state guide to rest areas. 

 

America's Frontroads: Spotlight on "The Barrel"

Much has been said of the romance and beauty of backroads America, but too often, these backroads are filled with hillbilles, stoplights, and banjos.

The frontroads of America are well lit, well maintained (except in Arkansas), and reliable. In the coming weeks, we will be featuring profiles of businesses that you will find parked beside the interstates.

This month, we introduce THE BARREL

Yes, that one...

Did You Know?

• The chain is the single larger purchaser of white flour in America.
• Orders of biscuits and gravy come with your choice of either diabetes or atherosclerosis.
• Noone understands the wooden peg game that you find by the ketchup at your table, but everyone pretends it is charming.
  
• Pork is very popular here, in all its incarnations. The Tossed Pork Salad features bacon, pan sausage, canadian bacon, link sausage, and creamy chipoltey mayonnaise dressing.
• Many old people buy something at the Cracker Barrel store after their meal because they think it is expected of them and patriotic.
• Their billboards say it all with the awkward metaphors and faux folksiness that are the hallmarks of their advertising:

"Where Comfort Meets Food."

Please don't try to create a mental picture of this metaphorical meeting of an abstract feeling ("Hi my name is Comfort") and an entire category of physical objects of sustenance ("Hi my name is Food") because it can't be done.

• Other billboards feature: Gigantic spoons filled with.... Corn.

OLD MAN: "This Comfort sure is good, yum."

SON: "Dad, I think you've had too much Corn."

Wrong answer kid, there's no such thing as too much Comfort, or too much Corn.  You can get both at... The Barrel.

Next time join us for a profile of Days Inn!