Question of the Week: What’s Your Favorite Road Trip Stop of All Time?—WINNER’S UPDATE You Should Know
WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:
We’re back after a long Labor Day weekend, and it’s time to announce the winner for our Question of the Week! Our victor will receive the prize of all prizes: a $25 credit for a hat or t-shirt in the BaT Gear Store (there’s lots of great stuff to choose from right now).
Our question this week was: what’s your favorite road trip stop of all time?
“The one where he let me go with just a warning…”
Ditto, @3Pedalonly.
We made sure not to speed through this week’s thread, which was filled with a variety of quirky stops and go-to eateries. As we visited each of the nominations, one particular comment grabbed our attention. BaT member @TimM happened upon a submarine along his travels—a strange sighting considering he was approximately 1,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean! It was the HMCS Ojibwa, and he wrote all about it:
Many years ago, on a road trip from the in-laws’ place at Lake of the Woods, Kenora, Ontario, back to CT, we decided we would make a stop at each of the Great Lakes and collect a small sample of whatever sand/rocks were present to add to my wife’s seashell/rock collection. We had a brief stop at a beach on the north shore of Lake Erie that one could easily have confused for being in the Caribbean to consume a picnic lunch of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Full of greasy chicken and fries, we continued on towards Niagara Falls, following the local roads along the lake, only to stumble across a submarine perched high and dry along the side of the road!
One does not expect to find a submarine in a tiny town in Ontario, especially when your home state contains a Nuclear Sub Base that claims to be the Submarine Capital of the World. Like others mentioned below, I saw no choice but to turn around to figure out why a submarine was there in the middle of nowhere. We learned she was the HMCS Ojibwa, originally intended to serve in the British Royal Navy as HMS Onyx. During construction, she was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and was commissioned in 1965, and sailed until 1998. I don’t remember the exact year of our trip, but the museum she was a part of was still under construction, with only a temporary chain link fence controlling access for our tour. I don’t know if my now mostly grown children remember the day, but it sure left a mark on me.
Categorized as an Oberon-class Cold War vessel, the HMCS Ojibwa was rescued from the scrap heap by the Elgin Military Museum in 2009. The submarine’s trip to its final resting spot inland in Ontario was just as much a challenge in itself; the effort was named Project Ojibwa, and the vessel left Halifax in May 2012, arriving at its new home at Port Burwell by early September. It’s been open to the public since 2013 and now serves as the main focal point of the Museum of Naval History.
Congratulations, TimM! Be sure to check your email to claim your prize.
Let’s take a look at some other notable nominations from this week’s discussion thread:
“Of course, South of the Border! Back in the 1970s, their billboards along I-95 were legendary. Tackiest place on Earth…and I love it!
Past few decades, my go-to gift from SOTB for friends was the sombrero-shaped ashtray painted in bright colors. Many still have them proudly displayed even though none of us still smoke.”
South of the Border received a lot of love this week, and it was used as our featured image!
“Wall Drug of Wall, SD is always good for a stop to gawk at their collection of stuff. Free ice water, and 5 cent coffee. 15 minutes there will take you back 50 years to when there were many more tourist “traps” off the highway.
It is also fun to spot their signs all over the USA that tell you how many miles it is to Wall Drug.”
Image: Wall Drug
And nestled inside the walls of the Wall Drug Store is the Wall Drug Pharmacy—the town’s only running pharmacy established in 1931 by Ted and Dorothy Hustead, serving tourists and locals alike.
“Tucumcari New Mexico is a real step back in time. The motels and Mexican resturaunts are amazing. Pixar filmed the movie cars there.”
“I was driving my two girls from Austin to Cincinnati for my grandmother’s 90th birthday. On I75, I point out the NCM, and my oldest says, “There’s a Corvette museum, why aren’t we stopping? ” Good point. So I took the next exit and turned around. The factory wasn’t running tours that day, but the girls loved the museum. We’ll definitely go back to see the factory some day.”
“Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo TX.”
@overlandish wrote in with another of our favorite serendipitous stops from this week:
“Breezewood, PA. It exists simply because there is no direct connection from I-70 from Washington DC / Baltimore to the Pennsylvania Turnpike I-76. You have no choice but to go through this town. It is always our regular stop on trips between DC and Pittsburgh or other points west. My preference is the Gateway to stop at, although they have enough fast food restaurants to satisfy anyone’s tastes. And, if you get tired, Breezewood touts itself as the “Town of Motels”.”
The spawning of the Interstate Highway System turned Breezewood into a booming intersection for travelers by the ’50s, and it kept exploding in growth well into the 1980s.
“Don Garlits Drag Racing Museum. It is right off of the interesate in Ocala, Fl. You will NEVER find a better collection of drag cars, engines, memorabilia and if you are lucky, like I was last time, even Don Garlits himself. Don’t miss it.”
“On a road trip from Palm Springs to LA a few years back we swung into a little town called Cabezon. Cabezon has large dinosaurs that you can go look at and one caught my eye immediately. A large Brontosaurus next to the parking lot. This is the same Brontosaurus Brock Yates and Hal Needham parked their TransCon Medivac ambulance under after it finally blew its transmission. They were participating in the final Cannonball Run of ’79. There’s a photo in Yate’s book Cannonball of the fake…”
Claude K. Bell started out with Dinney the brontosaurus in the 1960s and followed up with Rex the tyrannosaurus two decades later, both for around $300k!
“Accidentally finding the Pacific Motorsports Oregon Raceway Park while driving back from picking up the ’84 VW GTI I had won on BaT.
My buddy & I had flown up from San Diego to Spokane, WA to drive back home.
We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw a sign that there was a race track coming up on our left.
We indeed turned down the road & ended up viewing a wonderful track. The members were having a track day & we sat & watched several different cars running against the…”
“It’s a boring choice because it’s such a cliché, but the sludgos first roadtrips back when I was a kid usually ended up somewhere around Yellowstone Park. I remember sitting in the backseat of the Delta ’88’ with Big Sis as we scouted the woods and meadows and clearings always hoping we’d see a bear. Standing in awe as Old Faithful did its act. And every time I go back there, I think there is no more beautiful place on earth. The Bad Part? Everyone else thinks that too and in the past few…”
Apparently bear jams were common back in the day.
“I helped a friend bring his 1973 BMW 2002 (Stella) from Dallas, TX to Denver, CO. A two day, backroad trip, and as we drove through one town I saw a building with the sign ‘Laumdronat’ so I looked it up and turns out – it was a coin-up laundry mat AND a washing machine museum. We turned around and went back. It was indeed a washing machine museum and it was done well. Finding it, turning around to go back, is what made that one of the best road trip stops I have ever experienced.…”
And we’re wrapping it up with this one:
“For me, nothing compares to that final stop…home.”
That’s it for this week’s Question of the Week! Congratulations again to TimM. We’ll be back with a new question.
ORIGINAL POST:
Welcome to the BaT Question of the Week! For those unfamiliar, here are the rules: we ask an automotive-themed question, and the author of our favorite answer from the comments is awarded a $25 credit to the BaT Gear Store.
This week’s question is: what’s your favorite road trip stop of all time?
It’s the last week of August—one of the most popular vacation weeks of the year, and that has us thinking about road trips. We know the journey is the destination and all that, but sometimes the stops along the way are more memorable than the miles between. Sometimes, an oasis appears on the horizon in the middle of nowhere—a late-night ice cream shop in the middle of the cornfields, or a gas station with an inexplicably luxurious bathroom.
Image: The New York Times
Other times, it’s a world-expanding experience you stumbled upon while passing. Some of our favorites are the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Track Site (across the highway from Arches National Park in Utah), or Heidleberg St. in Detroit.
Whether planned or improvised, these little lay-bys and detours are the kinds of things we remember decades later. Now we want to hear your favorites.
What’s your favorite road trip stop of all time?
Tell us your story in the comments, and give a thumbs-up to any other nominations you deem worthy. We’ll announce the winner on Monday.
I wish I could submit a photo for this one!
Last summer, a buddy and I decided to do a 12-state camping trip (yes, tents on the ground). While we were cutting through the northwest corner of Utah on Highway 30, we decided to pull off on a trail and find a good place to cook breakfast. We ended up at some elevation, overlooking the salt flats. While getting some coffee, eggs, and bacon going, we kept hearing what sounded like fighter jets. We just could not figure out where these things were, and the sky was clear. They sounded close, though, so we kept looking.
It didn’t take long until we figured out that the jets were not above us, but even with us over the salt flats. Three (that we saw) unknown aircraft were ripping around over the desert floor, and once they caught our eye, it was one heck of a show.
I have been to 46 states, and many while road tripping, and that was my favorite stop. No one for miles, a good friend, breakfast, and a private air show. Doesn’t get much better than that!
Thanks for sending us your photo, overlandish!