Let Your Computer Be Your Tour Guide

Daylight saving time has arrived, so summer can’t be far behind. For my family, that means packing up the tents, sleeping bags and credit cards for our annual summer vacation. This year we’re headed to Bozeman, Mont., and Yellowstone National Park, with stopovers in Salt Lake City and anywhere else that looks interesting.

My wife’s already been to the auto club to pick up maps, a “trip tick” and several guidebooks. I too have planned out the trip--but, as you’d expect, I did it all on the computer.

The first thing I did was boot up a copy of Rand McNally TripMaker 1996 Edition (Windows, $39.95), which not only drew me a map of the route but also provided detailed information on attractions along the way. More than a two-dimensional tour guide, the program uses multimedia, including video clips, to bring attractions to life even before we hit the road.

The Explorer section lets you select the areas you plan to visit and prepares a customized “slide show” of attractions along your proposed route. The software also provides you with a series of maps for each segment of your trip, along with detailed driving instructions, including distances and driving times.

The CD has information on a wide variety of attractions, including historical sites, fun places for kids, camping, fishing, boating and hiking. There is also a database of hotels and restaurants, though it isn’t nearly as complete as one you’d get from any good travel guidebook.

I enjoyed spending a couple of hours planning my trip with TripMaker and plan to bring along the printouts of the maps, attractions and driving instructions. But my wife’s visit to the auto club wasn’t in vain: We’ll also need those printed maps (which have much better resolution than anything you’ll get from a computer printer) and detailed tour books.

If you’re planning to tour the Golden State this summer, be sure to bring Lee Foster with you. You don’t have to feed him or put him up at a hotel, but you do need a copy of his CD-ROM, California Travel (Windows and Mac, $29.95; [800] 832-0032).

There are a few videos, but the best parts of the CD are Foster’s narrated slide shows--broken down by place--which combine superb color photos with a detailed and helpful audio track. You can print out articles on various towns and attractions, and you can also view and edit them in any word processing program. That makes it a lot easier to select just the information you need to create your own travel guide.

I’ve lived in California most of my life, yet the CD taught me a great deal about my home state. I even enjoyed revisiting places I’ve been to, thanks to Foster’s excellent photographs and insightful commentary. Foster’s articles and some of his photographs are also available at his World Wide Web site (https://www.fostertravel.com/lee/), and he maintains a West Coast travel area on CompuServe (Go WCT) as well as a section on worldwide travel (Go AIT).

If your travel plans include Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri or Illinois, then you’re all set to get your kicks on Route 66, the venerable “Main Street of America.” Although developments such as the interstate highway system and cheap air travel have led to the demise of the real Route 66, more recent progress has brought it back, if only in a virtual form: The road is now the setting for a CD-ROM and several Web sites.

“Drivin’ Route 66” (Windows and Mac, $19.95 from Creative Multimedia, [800] 262-7668) takes you on a tour of the 2,448-mile highway and provides color photos and narrated descriptions of 38 of the classic cars that once prowled its pavement. Click on “Cruise Control” and you get a 20-minute narrated slide show featuring the sites, motels, restaurants and tourist traps along the road. Some are just historical memories, but others are still there for tourists to visit.

Route 66--the road--is no longer a national highway and isn’t even a contiguous road, but fragments of it live on, as do some of the old businesses that once dotted it.

Even if you don’t plan any car travel this summer, be sure to rev up your modem to check out the Route 66 home page on the World Wide Web (https://route66.netvision.be/), which, ironically, is located in Brussels. You’ll find stories, photos, maps and even movies featuring the old highway. If you want to learn even more about this historic route, check out the Web site (https://www.kaiwan.com/wem/66--study/toc--0.html) that contains text and illustrations from a Department of Interior “resource study” about Route 66. For even more Route 66 nostalgia, visit Eric Bernabe’s page at https://www.basenet.net/ebernabe/road.html.

There are hundreds of other travel-related resources on the World Wide Web. My favorites include GNN’s Travel Site (https://gnn - e2a.gnn.com/gnn/meta/travel/index.html), which includes a link to Fodor’s WorldView, where you can read about coming events in major cities worldwide. The Hotel Discounts site (https://www.hoteldiscount.com/) advertises that it has the best rates on the Net, which may be true. I used it to book a room at New York’s Grand Hyatt for $50 less than the best corporate rate.

* Lawrence J. Magid can be reached via e-mail at magid@latimes.com. His World Wide Web page, which includes an electronic version of this column and links to the Web sites mentioned, is at https://www.larrysworld.com