Landing a Scenic Route Online

Air fares might be getting cheaper than a Happy Meal, but lots of folks still won’t fly.

So how are people getting around? That old American staple, the road trip, is back, bigger than next year’s SUV.

Free Trip (https://www.freetrip.com) can get you started planning. The site lets you pick your destination, the kinds of roads you want to travel (such as scenic routes) and even the price of lodgings and types of restaurant cuisine you want along the way. It will also flag national parks and--a big part of all our vacations--military bases. The program then describes--but doesn’t map--your route and lists motels and restaurants along the way.

We tried a trip from Los Angeles to Elko, Nev. Just because. To make it extra spooky, we wanted only motels less than $50 a night. Without a route preference, it’s a quick 662-mile trip up US 395 and then northeast. Choosing scenic roads, however, took us all the way into Oregon and then into Nevada on a 1,449-mile journey. Both trips ended at the Elko Days Inn.

MapQuest (https://www.mapquest.com) didn’t offer as many options, but it did produce a map for the same trip. This time, we went through Las Vegas and the trip was 702 miles with a driving time of a little more than 16 hours, not counting the lost weekend on the Strip.

But maybe you don’t want to leave California. Total Escape (https://www.totalescape.com) has a California Adventures road trip guide with traffic information, a back roads section (https://www.totalescape.com/active/wheelz/bkrds.html) and some pre-planned trips, in case you’re new to this driving thing.

Like a pre-planned trip, knowing road conditions can take the spontaneity out of a drive. But if you must know, the California Department of Transportation can help at https://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo.

Even less spontaneous, but probably a prettier drive, is a virtual road trip.

If you’ve always wanted to drive on California’s Highway 1 but can’t stand the curves or the mudslides, there’s the Highway 2 Picture Gallery at https://www.locallinks.com/highway_one/highway_1_gal.htm. Anyone with a high-speed connection might want to be a little careful about car sickness.

For kicks, it must be Route 66. A Web ring is dedicated to this legend of a road. You can see the ring sites at https://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=oldroute66&list.; All 91 of them. A good start is the National Historic Route 66 Federation (https://www.national66.com).

Road Dog (https://www.aaroads.com/roadtrips) has road pictures from around the country. The nice thing about Interstate 10 is that it looks the same in Alabama as it does in California.

We’ll leave you with the ultimate road trip done by Monk (https://www.monk.com). If your road trip ends up being anything like theirs, please invite us.

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Robert Burns is a graphics editor at The Times. He can be reached at robert.burns@latimes.com.