Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet USA's Best Trips (Regional Travel Guide)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Note to self - when you can't sleep, don't start reading travel books.

Especially, don't read the ones where they talk about food.

And especially, not the ones where they talk about a tour of New Jersey diners, where to get the best barbecue around Austin, or where to find the beef in Oklahoma.

Big mistake.

If you're up for traveling, however, you'll get a huge amount from this book. It has almost a hundred tours around different parts of the USA, and ways to spend 48 hours in some big cities. Naturally, if you live in the U.S. you'll have your own favorites, and this book seems to hit the spot on all of mine.

The trips include recommendation for scenery and cities, along with the food details (in case I haven't already mentioned that) and places to stay. It's a Lonely Planet guide, and the places are in the mid-range and bargain basement level. However, that's not to pan the choices, just to notice that they pick places on just about everybody's budget. You are expected to have your own or a rental car - no need to backpack, although there is one tour by rail. The routes cover from just a few miles, up to the ones that cross the country. They give you a suggested time for long each trip will take, and for example allow 10-12 days for the New York-San Francisco trip.

There are clear instructions for getting to the starting point of each trip, plus details of websites, along with suggestion for other trips in the same area. Around a dozen experienced writers make it very easy to follow.

Great book. I'm sure it will give you itchy feet, and in my case an itchy stomach as well. :(

I'll grant this 2 stars because it might be fun for a bit of armchair traveling on a rainy day (although it lacks photos) or ok to find some ideas for further research. But because they have packed so much into each trip, and so many trips into this book, the details are often too slim to follow. Here's an example from p. 212. The section is called "60 Lighthouses in 60 Hours" and involves driving from Kittery, in southern Maine, to the Canadian border:

"A trip out to (17) Mt. Desert Rock Light, Maine's most remote lighthouse, is not for the faint of heart; it's a challenge even to see this concrete conical shaft from a boat. Located on a scrubbly little islet 20 miles from Mt. Desert Island, the lonely light gets battered and beaten throughout the year . . ."

So, how DO I see it? Should I hire a boat? Give it a miss? (And if so, why is it included?)

Also, although this drive is supposed to take 60 hours (one way?), they only have one recommendation in the "sleep" section. You certainly can't make that single inn your base and commute to the lighthouses every day.

I love the Lonely Planet TV series but this book is disappointing. Use it to pique your interest in certain areas, but plan to find extra resources to actually plan your trip.

This book is a great idea, and overall pretty well executed. The trips are themed and *very* well organized, indexed not only by region, but by season and theme (history, outdoors, cities, etc.). There's a handy "trip planner" with at-a-glance facts about each trip and several maps.

Past all that intro, the trips themselves are also nicely laid out. The first page lists all the facts, a "why to go" introduction, and a map. The text highlights points of interest along the way with interesting call-out boxes included. The last section lists things to do, places to eat and stay, and web sites to visit to learn more. Finally, a very nice closing touch is the "Link Your Trip" for ideas on how to combine this trip with others in the book.

Two drawbacks I've seen so far, though, make this a weak travel guide. First, the trips aren't very detailed, so you'll definitely want to consult other resources (but that's impossibly easy in this internet age).

Second and more important to me, the Mid-Atlantic section is, well, pitiful. They've combined New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia into this section - in itself really odd - but the choices are just plain bizarre (and pretty dull, to boot). Washington DC is given barely a nod, and Baltimore is ignored (except for a crab restaurant). This wouldn't seem so odd if NYC, Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Austin, Denver, Chicago (etc.) didn't all have trips listed ("48 hours in..."). Besides this, the trips they do include are pretty uninspired. Since this is the area I know best, it makes me wonder about the quality of advice for the other regions.

Overall, we'll use this book for inspiration and ideas, but will definitely be using something else for actual trips.

One of the most valuable parts of the book can be previewed through Amazon's "Inside This Book" feature. On the main product page, below the customer reviews is a section where you can search inside the book. Search for "Trip Builder".

Click on the second result, "page 37...Trip Builder". The first page will show their estimate of how long a given trip takes is in miles and days. The second page is a list of trips which combine two trips from the previous page (imagine the first page is on the left and the second is on the right) and also provides a short description and best time of year to go. Only about 1/3 of the trips in the book are listed in this section. To see the others, try searching individually for the phrases "Contents", "Trips By Theme" and "Trips By Season".

As others have stated, the rest of the book makes for interesting overview reading, but likely lacks enough detail for anyone serious about planning a trip. For example, while the book mentions a number of whimsical roadside attractions, you'll want to do a Google search for "Roadside America" . Likewise, while a number of unique places to eat are mentioned, you'd be better off performing a Google search for Chowhound.

If you're just interested in reading a travel book, perhaps this one would deserve 4 stars as it does cover a good variety of what one can find, travelling throughout the United States by car.

Lonely Planet's USA's Best Trips contains 99 road trips, both long and short, that you can make. The book organizes them three ways: by region, theme and season. Each trip listed has a detail section which includes, time, distance, and the best time to go as well as the start and finish points. Also included are narratives of the journey and the things you will see as well as a "Trip Information" section that includes "Do," "Eat," and "Sleep." There are maps of each trip but they are tiny and not really designed for driving use.

I found this book to be most helpful in planning a road trip but less so in implementing the trip. As with most travel books, the information is rather broad. I was able to bounce ideas off my wife of what region we might like to see and what attractions are located along the trip. Once we were able to decide on a trip, we did more research to find out exactly what we wanted to see. The maps were useless for driving but I was able to input the locations to the SatNav and we sometimes got a really nice, off the beaten path, ride out of the deal. I give USA's Best Trips four stars as I found it useful in getting ideas for trips. If you are thinking about a road trip to a part of the country you've never visited, I believe this book is a good planning tool.

The first thing you need to know is that this is not a detailed travel guide. This book covers the entire United States and is full of suggested routes for seeing this great country. I see this guidebook being used to find new places to go and new sights to see. It helps whet your appetite for your next adventure.

I have already discovered some new places to go and am using it supplement my other regional travel guides. If you are looking for a travel guidebook that gives you a good overall picture of road trips in the U.S., this is the book for you. It will not give you detailed information, so you will need to find supplemental information (but that is what the internet is for). Overall, it is great for discovering new places! Enjoy!

I agree with most of the good and the bad reviews. These were my take-aways:

WAY too much information for a busy mom to look through. I was absolutely overwhelmed with all the information. I was looking more for just family-friendly trips, but the formatting of the book requires that you read through a whole lot of material to find that information.

LOVE the "what to see" guides, cost ideas, hotel suggestions, and local dining tips. These would definitely be useful when travelling.

LOVE the kid-friendly, and pet friendly information.

LOVE the road maps, though my GPS would still be with me.

One big suggestion would be to have a cross reference for KINDS of road trips, whether adventure, site-seeing, dining or other interests. I suppose there are more focused travel books for those sorts of things, though.

I did see some fun trip ideas for my region, which made the regional breakdown especailly helpful for a shorter, local outing.

I will keep this on my shelf for later, but to plan a mini vacation for 3 kids and hubby on a budget, I will still very likely call AAA for help. This would take me forever to get through.

The Lonely Planet has brought a travel book that is sure to appeal to all of us who love to travel in the US. The travel book gives us many ideas and a sense of how to proceed. It is not a thorough guide, but it is filled with suggestions for a very good time.

The first page explains how to use the book. How to use the maps and shields and trip information. A guide to use the book more effectively. The best country road trips are shown in different colors on a map of the United States.
Start out with the Best Country Road Trips e.g. Massachusetts to Miami, Rollin' on the Great River Road. Then the book is divided into sections of the country , then trips by theme: route, food and drinks, history and culture. Trips by Season, the usual Spring Summer, Fall and Winter, Expert Recommended Trips: Once In a Lifetime, 48 hours in Miami, and Alice Waters Culinary tours. Trip Builders are listed by Theme, chapter, page, distance, duration, description and best time to go. And, then bios of the authors. It finishes with an index and a Green Dex- which provides state by state green businesses.

All in all, this is a very thorough travel guide. From my point of view, I think that families may appreciate this guide the most.

Recommended. prisrob 10-10-10

This Lonely Planet publication describes 99 "themed" itineraries across America in about 640 pages of text. This makes the average itinerary only four and one half pages in length. As these numbers indicate, the suggested trips are dealt with in a broad brush and a traveler will need to supplement the information in this book with something else, such other guide books, internet searches, maps and a GPS.

Most of the trips are designed as road excursions, but trips also include a boat ride (such as a steamboat in New Orleans and a ferry trip in Haines, Alaska) and travel by rail (including a 600 mile Amtrak trip from Oakland to San Diego, Calif., a 470 train ride from Santa Fe to the Grand Canyon and a brewery tour through the Pacific Northwest by rail.) There are also chapters describing what should be done in "48 hours" in major cities, including Boston, Manhattan, New Orleans, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Seattle. Unlike the New York Times "36 hours" travel series, this Lonely Planet book does not propose an hour by hour schedule.

This guide contains interesting ideas for travel, some of them offbeat and not well known to a casual traveler. My only problem with this volume is that, because the trips are "themed" and many of the discussions are very brief, treatment of many venues is much too superficial. For example, the suggested tour of my home area (Maryland) is titled "Maryland Crab Quest." The authors recommend a four day trip covering 320 miles eating at nine crab house restaurants. If someone is really going to literally follow this suggested itinerary, they will be missing other interesting things to do in this area besides eating crabs twice a day. This book is silent regarding other options (except for one bar) and it has no lodging suggestions, other than one hotel in Whitehaven, Maryland, the finishing point in the proposed four day trip.

The bottom line is that this book is chock-full of interesting ideas for sightseeing in the U.S.A., but it is not a comprehensive travel guide. If you are going to use this book, my suggestion is to browse through it at home while you plan your trip and do plenty of research in other sources about additional options in the geographic area you plan to visit.

This book will be fantastic to have for our trip to the USA. We are looking forward to a great adventure cruising the highways and byways of the USA.