Does someone still sell good detailed accurate printed roadmaps?
[After a recent trip to the Northwest US someone mentioned a scenic bypass we had missed. We were using Google or Yahoo maps and these scenic roads were not conspicuous unless we knew about them and looked for them.]
Our local AAA office has a map vending machine in their lobby. Simply swipe your membership card and paper maps pop out like candy. I am not sure if you can buy them or the cost if not a member.
Rand McNallystill sells road maps.
But I much prefer the road maps put out by state highway departments. Most states let you request them online or by email. For example, here’s the page for Oregon.
If youre a member of the Auto Club, you can go to an office and have them generate a Trip Tik for you.
I’d suggest a DeLorme Road Atlas. They come in book form by state/province and show every highway, dirt road, footpath, deer trail, and vole burrow, along with campgrounds, tourist destinations, and all that. We carry a Minnesota copy in our car just in case we want to explore lesser known roads on a weekend afternoon.
Of course. Some of us still draw good detailed road maps.
You can get them from state tourism departments/transportation departments (the relevant website usually has a way to ask for one to be mailed. You can get them through AAA. You can buy a Rand McNally Road Atlas at any office supply store or Walmart. You can order a wide variety of printed maps through TrekTools.com or Amazon. For the Pacific Northwest, you might be particularly interested in Great Pacific Maps or Benchmark Atlases.
As I understood the AAA agent we talked to, those Trip Tiks are generated from Google Maps, and only reflect the route you specify, which wouldn’t help with the OP’s problem. Their state maps, however, show if a road is considered to be a ‘scenic route’. We just used several of these maps for our trip to the SW.
Local visitor centers are a great source of maps and regional tourist information. I make a point of stopping in and chatting with them, if only to ask where the best burgers in town are. The folks who work there almost always point me towards something interesting that I might never see on even an AAA map.
IN, GA, KY, and TN all give away free road maps at their interstate rest stops. I imagine other states do too.
Good question! I have a terrible time finding good road maps! I travel through GA a lot and must have at least 4 GA maps, all of which are different. I had one GA map that failed to show* an entire section of interstate* that branched off of the Atlanta bypass. I stopped at a motel for directions, the desk clerk told me which road I needed to be on, and we were both astounded that the road was not on the map at all (but was on all others I had with me) (which were all roughly the same age). I have multiple maps of all the states I frequent; it seems necessary. I’d be amazed to find one really good one!
I’ve got the one for South Dakota and it is nice. It would be nice to have the whole set, but $650 is a bit pricey.