The very earliest examples of journalism were actually travelers’ tales penned by ships’ captains and others who had firsthand knowledge of affairs in remote ports of call. It pleases me immensely to see that this ancient and very personal craft has found a home on the Web. It makes for a very satisfying marriage of medium and message.
Look beyond the commercial megasites that have come to dominate travel on the Web, and you will see the work of those who understand the difference between an ordinary vacation and a quest. Here are a half-dozen singular sites described by people who have chucked the guidebook and decided to follow their own internal compasses:
– The Bureau of Atomic Tourism, at www.oz.net/%7Echrisp/atomic.html, is just the ticket for those who demand a really glowing vacation experience. The straightforward site contains detailed information about visiting 14 atomic museums and seven bomb sites. While it’s unlikely that many visitors will actually journey to the remote island airstrip from which the Nagasaki and Hiroshima runs were staged, there’s certainly enough information here to do it:
“To get to Tinian first go to Guam, then get a commuter flight north to Saipan, then hop south a few miles to Tinian on another commuter flight. . . . To get to the runway and bomb pits, drive north from the Tinian airport. . . . Stay on the road, even as it degenerates inside the forest. Drive to the taxiway at the northwest corner of the northernmost runway. That’s where the bomb pits are located.”
A bit closer to home, tourists thinking of visiting the Trinity bomb site at the White Sands Missile Range are reminded “at ground zero, Trinitite–the green, glassy substance found in the area–is still radioactive and must not be picked up.”
– Max@school, at www.solomax.com, is the story of a young Canadian kayaker who decided last year to take the long way home–paddling from British Columbia to New Brunswick, via Nicaragua. So far, the intrepid paddler, who calls himself MAX, has made it as far as San Diego with very colorful side trips to Hollywood and Yosemite. MAX is gunning to be the Kato Kaelin of extreme sports and his journal often sounds like a log of meals, support and lodging gleaned from charitable strangers. According to his latest journal entry, he is headed east to chill for a while. “I’m going to fly home for a few months,” he writes. “It will be no fun to paddle the Baja in summer. It’s too darn hot!” The nicest thing about taking on a singular challenge would appear to be the ability to set one’s own rules.
– Tour de Butt, www.teleport.com/%7Epulver/tour.html, is a sterling example of a private joke gone public. On a mountain biking trek in the summer of 1992, Scott Pulver used an auto-shutter camera to snap a photo of himself, naked, taking in the view of Mt. Hood. The site features more photos, including shots of Pulver in the same arms-akimbo pose from Glacier National Park to atop Mt. St. Helens.
– Remembering Jack, at www.sunsite.unc.edu/onward/remjack2.html, is the most self-consciously poetic account of the bunch. The very spare, just-the-text-ma’am pages recount Phillip Reilly’s 1995 journey to commune with the spirit of Jack Kerouac. It is an ambitious piece of writing, a road homage to the big Beat daddy of all road writers: “I see you Jack waltzing through Colorado majesty-mountains, seedy Chicago saloons, Iowa hog farms, Mexican brothels, Mississippi mudholes; and always surrendering to the ragged desert textures, the clamor and clatter of Frisco alleyways, indigo night skies, scarlet dawns, flinging off your inhibitions and running across the land, bathing in the sparkling air of sheer sensation.”
When Reilly and his two companions finally reach Kerouac’s grave, Reilly writes: “We circled the cemetery. It was after six o’clock and as most people were inside eating supper, the streets were quiet. The cemetery was surrounded by a six-foot spiked fence, but we spotted a large post we could use. . . . Across the road was a local baseball game. `Park the car next to the ballgame,’ said Felix. `Any cop will think we’re somewhere on the outfield.’ “
– Motel Americana, at www.frognet.net/%7Eandywo/motel.html, is as slick as Remembering Jack is plain. The graphically rich site, by the writer-photographer team of Andy and Jenny Wood, is a celebration of vintage American roadside architecture and the culture it supported. What makes this site stand out is the sincerity evidenced by the Woods. Unlike many of the other “roadside” appreciation sites, the Woods do not go down the highway of life with an ironic smirk.
There’s an abundance of good writing to be found here from pilgrims who love Route 66 (a road that’s already a Web genre in its own right). Andy Wood writes of their own trip on the Mother Road: “The old highway never forgot the little towns that gave it life. The shady characters out to make a buck, the lost souls trying to get home . . . the adventurers who renewed themselves with every curve. All of them found a place in transit. For them, and for us, Route 66 became an end beyond the means.”
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– Spud’s Travels, at www.interlog.com%7Echapman/, is proof that any art project worth doing is worth doing to the extreme. People have liberated garden gnomes, lawn jockeys and the like for thousand-mile epics, and Spud is the ultimate crowning work in the canon.
This peripatetic Potatohead got the travel bug in ’85. So far he has trekked through Britain, the American Southwest and parts of Mexico. After recent trips to the Caribbean and Texas, it appears as if the travelin’ tuber has run into a spot of trouble. The most recent alert posted to the site reads: “Spud was in Dallas on May 23rd preparing to fly to Singapore for a monthlong adventure in the Far East when his plane was hijacked and rerouted to an unknown destination by a band of terrorists. At this point, there is no further information as to the potato’s whereabouts.”