Ed Rust of Blogcritics Magazine has posted a review of American Road magazine, which covers news and features along America’s historic highways, including Route 66.
It’s a mostly positive review, but it quibbles about a few things:
A typical story from the Winter 2006 issue is about the “Bigfoot Scenic Byway,” a stretch of Route 96 in northern California near the Oregon border that stretches from Happy Camp to Willow Creek. One of my peeves about the magazine is that while it often shows some sort of map of the area in question, I still have no idea where that area is, and am forced to get out my tattered Rand-McNally road atlas to place a burg like “Happy Camp” relative to entities I can readily identify, like Los Angeles or the Pacific Ocean. A small state outline with a shaded area showing the spot under discussion would be appreciated. […]
The concept of American Road is a good one, but it’s a bit fuzzy in its execution. The focus in one article might be the history of a highway, and in the next it might be on some of the exotic shops or eateries along a highway in another part of the country. Another story might be about a local legend in a town, pretty much ignoring everything else. Quite a few of the articles are written by local historians or freelancers who seem to be so close to their subject that they strain to find interesting new angles – leaving the reader, presumably not from those parts, hungering for some basic information. For the actual rubber-on-the-road tourist driving into an unfamiliar area, recommendations for food, shelter and the like would be welcome sidebars.
Sometimes it takes a non-roadie to find shortcomings in our efforts. I confess to being out of the loop with American Road since moving from Illinois to Oklahoma. I’ll have to rectify that situation.
Which brings me to this subject: If you have a beef or suggestion for Route 66 News, let me know and I’ll try to resolve or do it (if humanly possible, of course).