Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon - William Least Heat-Moon's journey into America began with little more than the need to put home behind him. At a turning point in his life, he packed up a van he called Ghost Dancing and escaped out of himself and into the country. The people and the places he discovered on his roundabout 13,000-mile trip down the back roads ("blue highways") and through small, forgotten towns are unexpected, sometimes mysterious, and full of the spark and wonder of ordinary life...

On the Road by Jack Kerouac - On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago...

Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck - To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years with Charley, his French poodle...

America the Beautiful: A Photographic Journey Coast to Coast-and Beyond by Life Magazine - For decades, LIFE magazine has attracted many of the world's most talented and best-known photographers. In this majestic coffee-table gift book, that vibrant tradition snaps into focus in more than 100 stunning pictures of America's scenic beauty. The photographers featured include Ansel Adams, Joel Meyerowitz, Galen Rowell, and Michael Melford. The subjects range from the sublime to the awesome: Grand Canyon, Big Sur, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Nantucket Island, the San Francisco skyline, the bucolic Amish countryside of Pennsylvania and Ohio...

National Lampoon's Vacation - OK, so this movie won't help you plan the perfect road trip—but it will tell you everything you need to know about what not to do. Join Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) and family in their ill-fated cross-country road trip in the Family Truckster station wagon to the fabled Wally World. If you've never laughed heartily at dead aunts tied to the roof rack, national park thievery, blatantly racist caricatures of East St. Louis hoods, adolescent drug use, near-death in the desert, and hostage situations in theme parks, you simply have to see the movie. A classic.