Best Roller Coasters Featured On New Travel Channel Show


Roller coasters
are the highlight of any amusement or theme park for many visitors. High-speed thrills, twists and turns make for good times and have coaster enthusiasts claiming their favorites around the United States. Now, a new show starting Sunday on the Travel Channel decides which coasters are the best, as voted by viewers.

Insane Coaster Wars” debuts Sunday, July 8, 2012, and settles the battle once and for all asking, “Which coaster is the best?” In May and June, Travel Channel viewers voted on which coaster is the best in various categories, from G-Force Giants to Hang ’em High coasters.

Each program in the “Insane Coaster Wars” series brings viewers along on the most exhilarating and intense coasters in America, with the winner revealed in each category at the end of the show.Roller Coasters not your idea of a good time?

Extreme Water Parks,” another Travel Channel show, might be more your liking. Also debuting Sunday, this one features the wildest, over-the-top and most-exhilarating water rides in the world, from Florida to Brazil.

Extreme Water Parks” is part of the Travel Channel’s Extreme Series that travels around the United States to document and showcase various places, events, things and people that are extreme in some way. Other topics in the extreme series include Extreme Mind-Blowing Hotels, Extreme Animal Encounters, Extreme Truck Stops, Extreme Bar Hopping and others.



[Flickr photo by royal19]

Wonderful Weirdos Day: 10 travel weirdos who deserve thanks

Today’s date is weird. 9-9-09. I noticed it first when writing today’s Photo of the Day post. Then someone sent me an e-mail from Westerville, Ohio proclaiming this Wonderful Weirdos Day. The missive stated that the purpose of such a day is to thank people who have taught you think outside the box–the people who have nurtured your creativity.

With that in mind, here are 10 travelers who have been a subject of Gadling posts over the years. In some way each represent a creative, adventurous drive, and each have pushed travel into the realm of outside the box.

What most of these stories also illustrate is that the kindness and interest of strangers has a lot to do with the success of an unusual idea. It’s hard to make it to outside the box on your own.

  • David de Rothchild who is building a boat out of thousands of plastic bottles to sail between California and Australia.
  • Roy Locock who is currently driving himself around the world in his car. After 14 months of travel he’s still going strong.
  • Robert McDonald, who with the help of his son and 5,000 kids, built a ship made of 15 million popsicle sticks in order to sail across the Atlantic by way of Greenland and Iceland just like the Vikings did..
  • The late Steve Fossett who made the longest nonstop flight in history in his Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.
  • Kent Couch who attached helium balloons to a lawn chair so he could fly from Oregon to Boise, Idaho.
  • Matt Harding whose weird dance brought the world together with a video that makes everyone who sees it feel good.
  • Ryan Jeanes and Philip Hullquist who set off on a hitchhiking trip from New York City to Berkeley, California with no money and the aim to make it in one week.
  • Grandma Gatewood who, as a lark, set out to be the first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail. At the time, she was 57 years old and the mother of 11 children and 23 grandchildren
  • Marcia and Ken Powers who gained distinction as being the first couple to hike the 4,900 miles across the United States.
  • Scotty and Fiddy who hitchiked across 50 states, including a visit to each state’s capital, in 50 days.
  • Joshua Keeler and his two buddies who set out in a van to cover the 48 states in the continental U.S. in five days.
These 10 are the ones I came up with, but there are certainly more. Do you have any travel weirdos you’d like to thank? Parents who drag their pack of offspring on summer vacations can be included.