Planning a road trip

The genesis of this trip was Joy and David's move to Madison for at least a couple of years for Joy to do her veterinary residence/internship at the university. Andrea and I love our road trips with Ziggy and Darras and Gina are always game to go somewhere in the RV. As cyclists, they also thought the rail trails in Wisconsin would be fun to ride.

The backbone of our road trips has been the scenic tours described in The Most Scenic Drives in America. In this case, we will drive straight to Madison and spend several days in that area before heading north. A Wisconsin friend here in Washington recommended Door County, and that corresponds to scenic tour #59 in the book. I'd read a mystery set in Paradise, Mich., A Cold Day in Paradise, so the Upper Peninsula had some appeal and that corresponds to #61. We will cross the Mackinac Bridge, probably spend some time on Mackinac Island, and then, if we have the time, embark on #62 in the west along the coast of Lake Michigan or #63 in the east along the coast of Lake Huron. Then back home.

The two other essential guides for our road trips are AAA's Traveling with Your Pet, which is updated every year and lists the AAA-rated places that take pets, and Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood, which is also updated periodically. The AAA book has proven to be very reliable, and tells you not only the people amenities but useful things like whether there are interior or exterior corridors (as anyone who has traveled with a dog can tell you, exterior corridors are generally preferable). I found our Madison B&B, The Speckled Hen, by googling, however, since the AAA book is largely confined to chains. The B&B has only one room for guests with pets so I booked it very early.

Andrea swears by Roadfood because it was such a good companion for her back in the days when she was making cross-country trips to California and back. I certainly like all the barbecue, fried chicken and hamburger places they list, but I find their focus excessively narrow in defining American cuisine and what makes for a good stop on a road trip. Especially now, with so many places trying to serve fresh and local ingredients, the Sterns approach seems dated and a bit out of step. Nonetheless, it has some good tips and we don't leave home without it.

Of course, with apps like Around Me and Yelp and Zagat we'll have a lot of other ways to find places to eat while we're under way. For instance, I found L'Etoile in Madison simply by googling "best French restaurant Madison".