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American Road Magazine
Celebrating our two-lane highways of yesteryear…And the joys of driving them today!

Chris Rowland

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Posts posted by Chris Rowland

  1. Chris, if we do R-S-C, you might just plan on meeting at the museum. Getting to Lebanon might be more trouble than it's worth unless you're coming over Saturday night.

    If you can get a Sunday tour of the Sign Museum, I might be able to get my dad and family to come along, too, for the tour.

     

    Chris

  2. A guy in Showtown USA claimed that US-41 is the only odd numbered US route with east-west signage. I don't have an example that proves him wrong but, with things like "south 62", I have my doubts.

    I've always been annoyed with US-35 being signed East-West from the Indiana border to Dayton, Ohio. I guess that's one to show the Showtown guy. Surprised that one didn't come to mind, since it's close to your neck of the woods. ;)

     

    Chris

  3. Jim -- State Road 134!!! Wow, that thing's practically in my own backyard and I forgot all about it! Of course when the road's not longer than 1/2 mile, it's bound to be forgotten.

    I guess I'm a little late. I was actually planning to out-obscure you both by doing State Road 134, but here you go and raise it out of obscurity before I could.

     

    Oh well,

    Chris

  4. So, any thoughts to get me started planning?

    If you are in the north part of the state along US-12, I definitely recommend the Petrified Park in Lemmon, SD.

     

    If you are in the southwest area of the state along US-385, you should visit Wind Cave National Park. Wind Cave is renowned for its boxwork. At 120-some-odd miles, it is considered to be the fourth-longest cave in the world.

     

    And of course if you are near Mitchell, a visit to the Corn Palace is always in order.

     

    Chris

  5. Today we're going to mosy our way back up to Indiana via some twisty two-lanes.....the US 25-E tunnel through the Cumberland Gap looks enticing.

    We've been through the US-25E tunnel many times. We got rear-ended just before the south end of the tunnel once, fortunately no damage.

     

    I always enjoy passing through Pineville on US-25 where the new alignment is built along the floodwall to protect the town, and there are huge gates when entering and exiting the city that they can use to keep the flood waters out (not my photo).

     

    By twisty two-lanes, I wonder if you are thinking US-421 from Frankfort, KY to Madison, IN? We took that once and 'twisty' definitely describes it, especially the portion leaving Frankfort.

     

    Chris

  6. Folks, if you know of any place that fits the description, speaking up quickly is recommended.

    What about The Diner on US-40 between Plainfield and Indianapolis, Indiana? That thread talked about how it is in danger of new development... it actually closed but is now being operated on an interim basis by the former cook. I haven't heard any new news in the last few months, but I assume the facts are still the same.

     

    Chris

  7. For most of them, I drew the old routes on my computer-based Delorme maps, decided on a scale (a frustrating task because it is always too large or too small in any one area), copied the maps to the clipboard, opened them in Corel PhotoPaint (same as Adobe PhotoShop), resampled them to yield 4 miles to the inch, and saved the result to a jpg file. Each one was then imported into CorelDraw (a vector drawing program) on a "layer". I then traced the major roads, towns, streets, lakes, rivers, etc on higher layers. Then I drew the YT route and added road/street names on the next layer.

    This sounds very similar to the way that I make maps. I mainly use Adobe Illustrator as the vector drawing tool. I am glad to hear that the time it takes you to make one is very similar to the amount of time that it takes me to make one. I had thought that maybe I was just a little slow... It is very time-consuming. I'm still proud of a map I did of Crawfordsville, Indiana now 15 years ago.

     

    I do think we need to determine a purpose and intended outcome before we determine the best technology to produce it.

     

    Chris

  8. Love this idea and the discussion. I'm in the same boat as Chris -- would rather do this in a way accessible to anyone, such as via Google Maps. jim

    It looks like Google Earth has some KMZ files that can store routes and points of interest, etc., to be viewed with Google Earth, which is free. I downloaded some sample KMZ files and tried them with Google Earth and they look pretty good. You can play back a route, and the view skims along the countryside, pretty interesting.

     

    Maybe we should start with the Michigan Road?

     

    Chris

  9. In the most simple approach we would create the route using Delorme Street Atlas or TOPO USA, then burn the route file on a CD. In fact Delorme once had a sharing site based on that “model.”

    I do not have any DeLorme software, and after doing a brief search of reviews for their 2009 edition, it doesn't sound like a great investment. I would much rather "draw" the route over the roads in Google Maps and have it accessible to everyone over the Internet, or find some other way to generate and share a route.

     

    When I am in the car, I use iNav iGuidance on my Windows Mobile PDA, which has a superb interface, but I'm not sure you can create a pre-defined route with that.

     

    Chris

  10. So, maybe some of us could combine our efforts. Who might be interested? Anyone want to discuss it further? This may be a good “winter” project for some of us.

    I would love to help. I really enjoyed making the modern turn-by-turn directions of the Madison State Road.

     

    I guess we first need to pick a road or two and then figure out what we want to produce.

     

    Chris

     

  11. OK, now that I've seen the documentary, I'm ready to explore!

    I enjoyed the show tonight, also. I got my wife and two boys to watch with me and my wife kept repeating "can we save up and take a vacation on the Lincoln Highway next summer?" That's a good sign! The show was very well done--especially for keeping it under an hour.

     

    My wife had been wanting to take a Route 66 trip, but I think the show tipped her interest toward the Lincoln Highway...

     

    I may just have to buy that DVD.

     

    Chris

  12. I'm certainly curious. My idea of cobble does not match my idea of the early National Road surface. Maybe my ideas are wrong on both subjects.

    The article mentioned a "cobble roadbed", which I didn't necessarily take to mean the finished road surface. I just assumed that this was one of the deeper layers. Then when replacing the road later, they removed the top finish layer but there was no need to re-do the foundation.

     

    Chris

  13. Just a note to those who might not realize this - but, this past year we started adding articles including Canada in American Road magazine.

    I had noticed some Canadian content in the last few issues. Technically, Canada is in "America", just not in the United States of America... When the magazine was founded, was 'American' mean to imply USA? I assume so... it is difficult to think of roads in Brazil or other locations as 'American', although I guess they would be, too.

     

    Chris

  14. I don't have too much experience with man-made lakes swallowing roads, but in the case of the one near me (US 36 in Parke Co., IN), it looks like the road may have been removed.

    Jim,

     

    I spotted this old bridge on the abandoned Traders Lane alignment at Eagle Creek Park at 39.882431,-86.3063. Maybe we should figure out how to visit it someday. Would we need to get a canoe?

     

    Birds eye view

     

    I know I have walked on some of the old road a little further north from there but south of Wilson Road. There's some access from a public park along Wilson.

     

    Chris

  15. While we are on vacation here in beautiful Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I wanted to share a few pictures I just uploaded to Flickr of Monday's journey over Berthoud Pass in Colorado on U.S. 40 (click through to see a larger size):

     

    2943804782_63a5f70166.jpg

     

    2943802990_39673306c6.jpg

     

    2942940139_5c995baab1.jpg

     

    I also have this shot of Whiteley Peak, a little further west on our way to Steamboat Springs:

     

    2943798090_dbe28fd4d8.jpg

     

    Enjoy!

    Chris

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