Dave Reese

It does sound like large geographic counties should consider the split into separate counties when the population growth makes that more efficient and practical. Counties are often fairly compact here in Eastern PA, so travel is not often a major consideration here. Keep us informed of changes in this situation. It seems like it could be an interesting story that we won't hear much of in the Lehigh Valley.

Dave, If you are going to get to the Logan Utah area, you may wish to consult our own Brian Atkinson's website relating to Scenic Route 89. I got some advice from him when Peg and I were in Salt Lake City for our son's volleyball tournament and wanted to get to Jackson Hole and Grand Teton. Brian gave me a step by step route with restaurants and sites, and we had a marvelous time taking advantage of all the great information he provided. Enjoy your trip and take care my good friend.

Jennifer, I understand that and use that feature, but on another forum I am active on, when I open the forum page it shows me how many new posts are there since I last read, and when I open the topic, each post since I last read had a small box with new plus the page automatically takes me to the first new post since I last read. A real timesaver when you are looking at a topic with several pages of posts there. I realize that is a small detail, but it also makes being active a lot easier...or maybe I am just lazy.

I may be in the minority, but I find that I seldom move out of the general discussion area. I do get emails informing me of topics there, but I do find that when I am not planning to go to a specific area, I do not follow many discussions of that particular sub-forum. If the sub-forum moderators see a topic in general discussion that pertains to the sub-forum, maybe a quick link to the topic posted in the sub-forum would help those who really follow that forum. I am not sure how to get more people to jump from forum to forum. I am sure that I have missed lots of interesting topics, but I probably am more active when I am in travel mode, rather then when I am in stay at home mode like right now. It is a quandary without a simple solution in my mind. But then many days there is nothing in my mind. Hopefully someone else has a clue to get more involved during certain discussions. Also, when going back to a topic, it would be nice if there was a quick way to see just the posts since I last visited. It speeds up my perusal on other web forums so that I am not scrolling up or down to see if there is one new post or ten since I last read the topic. And yet I can always then scroll back up when I need a refresher on what was said before that has run away from my current thought processes. But just having this discussion means that we can probably make the forum more user friendly to visitors, and make more people stay and enroll and be active. Thanks for starting this topic Keep.

Thanks Denny...I had not thought of submitting the "T-Party" to the calendar. It is now submitted. I will let the museum know of this resource as well...

Our travel is more affected by family schedule than the price of fuel. And with the Dow now below 10,000, my retirement funds dropping is a bigger impact than the cost of gas on a road trip. All of our cars get 25+mpg on highway trips, so that is much less of a factor than it might be to those with RV's. But many of our trips have been to fly to an area, rent a car, and then explore there, and the airlines have put a bigger dent in our plans than the car costs...

Thanks all for the kind words. Although I had given up hobby photography for a number of years, I truly enjoy being able to take photos on vacations and at special events.

Around here, any run into the Poconos, or to a great little old town like Mauch Chunk (now named Jim Thorpe) is the way to go when the leaves are near or at their peaks. When I was still working on the road, even a trip up 61 to Shamokin could have its own special beauty, but not a favorite road to drive (maybe I did it too often).

At America On Wheels we have two very early American Cars. The oldest is the Electrobat IV of 1895. This was built by Henry G. Morris and Pedro Salon in 1895. This was a built a year after their first Electrobat which was over two tons, while the IV weighed only 800 pounds. But to me, the 1891 Nadig is more exciting. The Nadig Brothers of Allentown made this vehicle by removing the one-cylinder engine from their 1889 car and replacing it with the two-cylinder engine that is still on the car. The car was allowed to deteriorate in storage over the years, and has not been restored, but you can see that it is the car that is in the photographs of it from the 1930's. I had made runs from Allentown to Coopersburg and back a few years before the Duryea Brothers first brought their internal combustion car onto the streets in 1893. But the Nadigs never went into production, so the Duryea was the first American car with an internal combustion engine to go into commercial production for sale. The Nadig is pictured here. Maybe there are other cars that were on American Roads before these two. Who has information on any earlier cars?

Has anyone been able to do any of these yet in their areas? Do you have favorite routes you take for looking at the fall colors? The Lehigh Valley in PA is not ready for these trips yet, but I really loved Alaska's fall colors in early September in Denali and through Talkeetna. Further south in Alaska we saw the colors starting, but not nearly at their peaks. I know I did not drive in Alaska, but most of the roads we toured on, in vans and buses, were two lanes.

Just to get some new topics started, I would like to post something from the era of two-lane highways happening at Allentown's America on Wheels. And I must say I am really bummed that I will miss this one too. On Saturday, October 18, there will be a celebration of the 100th birthday of the Model T Ford with an appearance and autograph session with Dennis Gage, host of the TV show "My Classic Car". There will be a number of Model T Fords on display in the parking lot too. Then on Sunday, October 19, there will be two antique car clubs making a tour stop at the museum. I know how much fun these are as I was a docent to give tours to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg club this past summer. I had as much fun visiting their magnificent cars in the parking lot as they had touring the museum. And the West Gallery show of American Muscle Cars will end this month and these beauties will be heading out to make room for a show of circle track race cars. The museum Gala will be held after museum closing with Mario Andretti being the honorary host and special guide to these cars as they make their museum debut. This event I will be at, and it will be worth every cent of the special admission charge for dancing and dining in the museum. I will try to post these items from time to time for those interested in the museum and its displays.

Dave, I agree that we need to touch on more topics, but not by starting new forums. If a number of threads on post cards show up in a general discussion area, then there should be more search engine hits as well. But I think you will find that the number of members in a specific post card forum pertaining to American 2-lane highways may be scarce. But get them started without having to leave the general discussion area, they may find an interest in other categories. I am turned off when I need to navigate through too many forums to find a topic I am interested in, and I have joined a number of forums and disappeared after two or three posts as It was too hard to find what I was looking for, or the sub-forum that interested me most had one post every month or so. If there are lots of active topics, and you do not need to hunt for them, you will probably participate more. As to how do most people find forums to join, I normally have been invited to join a group by someone who belonged and thought I might be interested. I don't think that happened for the American Road, but it sure has for probably 80% of the forums I have joined. So maybe we need to find people who have an interest in travel, and invite them to try the place out...and personal invitations are the most effective. I know that I have mentioned this group to a number of people in the past, and I will continue to do so in the future. I seldom have joined a forum I found through a search engine or a link on a web site... Most of the forums I belong to are mostly male members. It may be the topics that I gravitate to, but it might be that the forum appeals more to males too. I have no deep insight into this. I don't think the topics are male oriented here, but then, what do I know. I don't object to having more sub forums, but I know it will probably keep me from getting into more discussions than I do now. I probably posted more when we still were email oriented because it took less effort on my part. And any discussion that will take more effort on my part will probably keep me from joining in. That may just be me, but I think when it is easy to see lots of involvement in posts, there will be more members joining too. What you want is to get them involved, not go into one room (forum) and not venture out into the "lobby".

Dave, All interesting topics to be sure. But I know I do get to a lot of the topics as it is now on the forums I belong to, so maybe these should all be threads in the general discussion area rather than separate branches. The forum I spend most of my time on it the British Car Forum. I seldom go to most of the separate forums, but read most of the posts in "the Pub" which might not even touch on a British Car. It is an open area with not to many limitations, but if there is anything beyond teasing in the group, or something too suggestive, or something that could be political, it is immediately pulled. Some of the topics are inane to be sure and I skip later posts, but the activity level is high, and the friendships are great. You can check it out at The BCF Pub if you are interested. I know I miss a lot by not reading each route forum, and I get a lot less information than I did from this group since it went to the forum format, but maybe allowing, or even encouraging, a lot more OT stuff in the general discussion area will generate more traffic and membership as well. I only am active in two forums, and it is because of the friendly, and cordial demeanor of the members. We need to retain that, but maybe we can do that and expand too. Just my two cents, which aren't worth nearly what they were a month ago...

Sorry, but we don't have a free weekend in October.

I know it took longer than I had hoped, but the Alaska section of the trip is now online. Once my eyes refocus, I will post my pictures from Vancouver as well, but give me a few days... I hope you enjoy the rest of the trip.

Alex and Denny, Thanks for the kind words. I hope to have most of the photos up by Friday evening. I will announce when it is basically finished. My slide show for family is at 400 photos and I still have half a trip to do. The poor relatives will be quite bored. Revenge IS sweet.

Dave, The bugs weren't as bad as we expected, but were a bit annoying that evening. As to the Checker, it seemed to still be in service, but in the town of Talkeetna, it was hard to tell. The street that West Ribs was on ended a block up as the take-off end of a grass landing strip for the "airport". I was so fascinated watching a plane take off from that location that I forgot to take any photos...there was a similarity to Northern Exposure.

Dave, Thanks for the nice comments. It was a magnificent trip, and it is hard to believe that it was only last week when we came home. Actually I have been adding a few from time to time this morning. I hope to add some every day for probably a week as I have been building a slide show to put on DVD for family, and I have only covered less than a third of the trip so far. As of noon EDT, I have 29 photos in the album. This is a labor of love of travel and photography...

I have started posting a few photos from Peg's and my recent trip to Alaska. We spent some time on roads (although we were not driving) but in Alaska, most roads are two lanes and this is America, so I think this post is on topic. I have only posted about a dozen so far, but more will appear as I work my way through 20 gigs of photo files I brought home. I hope you enjoy them at my flickr account.

I am in no way affiliated with the seller of this vehicle on eBay, but I know we have some Corvair enthusiasts. I found this on the Bring a Trailer site and thought it was pretty special. Looks like a good vintage car for a Road Trip.

I often wondered if Sam Posey lost his audience on the Indy 500 broadcasts on ABC when he started his intro by discussing "the vagaries of the weather" at Indianapolis in May. But then he was probably the only graduation of the Rhode Island School of Design who drove in the 500 too.

Is it on an island?

Uno (Also, the perfect gift for that teenager in your life)

Is the body in question the Pacific Ocean?

Roadmaven - I particularly liked that color on the Gremlin. I always found AMC cars intriguing as they kept developing some special designs with no $$$ to spend on development. Eyerobic - That Statesman was there last year too, I believe. The smooth lines of these cars had such a beautiful simplicity. Keep the Show on the Road - I made sure that the MGA was in there for you too. Hester-Nec - I have a few cars from the flea market you may be interested in in my photos, but I did not post them in flick'r. I will see if I can find you on AIM today and shoot them over...