Cyber-driving

This Associated Press article touts a bunch of Web sites for people who want to take a virtual road trip down Route 66 and other historic highways if they can’t do the real thing.

Many of these sites have already been linked here, but a few interesting finds turned up:

  • StateEnds.com has a group of people in 11 states that has documented and photographed where each highway in their respective state ends. No Route 66 states are listed — yet.
  • Roadside Online, which specializes in diners.
  • The AP story didn’t cite this, but today I found a site dedicated to Gus Wilson of the Model Garage, who wrote stories about his life as an auto mechanic for Popular Science Monthly. The site has 91 percent of Wilson’s writings archived from 1925 to 1970.
  • A Web site that specializes in the National Road, especially in Pennsylvania.
  • The big find is American Mile Markers, in which the extraordinarily dedicated Matt Frondorf shot one photograph for every mile along a 3,304-mile trip from New York City to San Francisco. Even though the journey didn’t follow Route 66, the visual travelogue produces the same sort of awe of our country’s diversity and vastness that the Mother Road does. Frondorf also wisely avoided the interstates during his quest.

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