The Lincoln Highway: Following The Main Street Across America

by Sean McLachlan on

Route 66 is often called “The Mother Road,” and a drive along it brings up all sorts of nostalgia for those simpler days when there was no app for that and nobody could call you while you were driving.

It wasn’t the first cross-country road, however. The Lincoln Highway, which we should perhaps call “the Grandmother Road,” was finished in 1913 as part of an ambitious project when automobiles were still in their infancy. As you can see from the map, it stretched 3,389 miles from New York to California and included 13 states in all.

Much of Lincoln Highway is now U.S. Route 30, and you can still drive along it. While it doesn’t have the aura and popularity of Route 66, a dedicated band of fans are trying to change that. The Lincoln Highway Association is gearing up for the road’s centennial next year with celebrations all along the old road. The association already has a great state-by-state guide to the Lincoln Highway online listing points of interest. The highway passes by dozens of national and state parks, sights of historic importance, as well as some important cities.

The Europeans are getting into it to, with a Centennial Tour by a hundred vintage vehicles that will be flown to the United States and driven along the entire route. The best way to see the United States is by car, after all!

Since it’s been largely bypassed by the Interstate, you’ll find lots of unspoiled nature as well as little old towns that seem lost in time. Old settler’s cabins sit lonely in the Nevada desert, and in Utah you pass ghost towns, while occasionally you can spot bypassed sections of Lincoln Highway meandering off into the wilderness, its surface cracked yet clearly visible after a century. Like on Route 66, some old businesses along the way have been lovingly restored to their early condition. Check out the old gas station in the photo gallery!

Map courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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Rio Carnival 2012: The hottest drag queen costumes

by Jessica Marati on

At Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, it was common to come across fully made-up men who had traded their Havaianas for high heels. Though some were experienced cross dressers and drag queens, others saw the holiday as an opportunity to get in touch with their more feminine sides. Costumes ranged from the elaborate (Sambadrome-style feathers, stilettos, fake lashes) to the scrappy (tiny skirt, hastily smeared lipstick).

Regardless of the intensity of their get-ups, you had to give it up to the cross dressers of Rio Carnival. I certainly couldn’t do a bloco in heels that high. The photo gallery below showcases ten of the hottest drag queen costumes that I encountered.

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Check out Gadling’s full range of Rio Carnival 2012 coverage here.

America’s baddest badlands

by Sean McLachlan on


One of the greatest things about the United States is its environmental diversity. From towering forests of pine to sun-hammered deserts, from snowy peaks to steaming swamps, this nation has it all.

Some of the most compelling places are also the harshest. Take this view of the sand dunes of Death Valley, taken by talented photographer John Bruckman. This is the worst part of the Mojave Desert–lower, hotter, and drier than any other spot in the country, yet it has a subtle beauty this image captures so well. With the majority of us living in cities or suburbs, these open, empty spaces call out to us.

They certainly do to me. When I moved from the leafy upstate New York to southern Arizona for university, I discovered what people really mean when they talk about America’s wide open spaces. They set you free, and they can kill you if you’re not prepared, yet somehow their deadliness only adds to the feeling of freedom.

America’s badlands remind us that life can cling to even the bleakest of landscapes, that the empty places can sometimes be those most worth visiting.

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Photo Gallery: Abandoned Americana

by Sean McLachlan on


The old America is all around us. Americans used to be farmers. They used to go to drive-in movies. They used to think Route 66 was the greatest highway in the world. Some still do.

If you drive out of the city and leave the strip malls and cookie-cutter suburban homes behind, you’ll find it soon enough. Head down a county road and you’ll pass dilapidated farmhouses and overgrown gardens, the handiwork of people from our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation. Like this old farm in Clay County, Missouri, near the Jesse James farm. I was with a couple of friends on a Jesse James road trip and we drove many of the back roads of western Missouri, places where Jesse committed his crimes and hid out from the law.

Everywhere we went we found this old Americana. On the outskirts of Kansas City we found a drive-in movie theater unchanged since the 1960s, and still open for half the year. To the west of Lexington we followed a potholed country road that led to a tributary of the Missouri River. Half a century ago there was a ferry at the end, popular enough that this road was lined with gas stations, hotels, and nice homes. The ferry disappeared when I-70 was built, and one by one the homes and businesses were abandoned.

Then there’s route 66, half ghost highway and half tourist trap. And old boom-and-bust mining towns like Bodie, California, now a State Historic Park. Not to mention all the failed businesses, the empty big box stores and bankrupt shopping malls that are creating the new ghost towns of the U.S. Much of industrial Detroit looks like an archaeological site.

Next time you go on a road trip in the U.S., get off the Interstate and take a county road. drive slow and look around. You’ll find the old America that hasn’t quite left us.

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Photo gallery: children of the world

by Sean McLachlan on


When I’m on the road, children make some of my best new acquaintances. A foreigner with a backpack is a surefire cure to a dull day, and a crowd of giggling kids will make even the most tired traveler smile.

Take this great shot by Robin Lerner, for example. Two Indian kids being silly, like silly kids everywhere. Sad to say, Robin tells us these children were begging at a bus station. When they realized they weren’t going to get any money, they stayed and goofed off with Robin and his travel companions. Poverty hadn’t dampened their spirit and they had a good time with the foreigners practicing their two words of English: “Hello” and “banana”.

I wonder if they taught Robin any of their language? Kids make great language teachers because swapping vocabulary is a game they never seem to get tired of. Most of my Amharic was taught to me by Ethiopian schoolkids, and I learned a lot of Arabic from kids when I used to work in the Middle East. The fact that my ability in both languages is pretty poor is my fault, not theirs!

Rob’s photo summarizes why children are one of the highlights of travel, especially budget and adventure travel that takes you to places where visitors are an uncommon sight. Check out the gallery below for more images of kids around the world, all taken by the talented photographers in Gadling’s flickr pool, plus a couple of cute shots by my wife, who fell in love with the wonderful children of Ethiopia.

Have some nice photos of children in far-off lands? Share them on flickr and you might see your artwork up on Gadling!

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