Last October I began a companion site to The Local Tourist that highlights what I like to call “Two Lane Gems.” Drive By Towns is a travelogue whose goal is to fuel your wanderlust and provide travel inspiration and tips. In ten days, my husband and I are leaving on an epic “Two Lane Gems Tour,” a month-long journey from the Chicago area to San Diego and back.

We’re going to see 6,000 miles of this country, and yet barely touch its beauty. We’ll explore its history, its diversity, its vast plains and craggy peaks. We’ll drive the Mother Road and the Trail of Tears and the Loneliest Highway. We’ll sleep in luxurious hotels and rustic cabins and dark sky campgrounds. We’ll hike down through canyons and up to ancient dwellings carved in the side of a mountain.

We’re going to share all of it as it happens, but I’m going to do so much more. These experiences are not just going to be the “Two Lane Gems Tour” in the virtual sense. They’re going to be “Two Lane Gems, Vol. 1.” I am going to take photos that do this country justice. I am going to tell its stories in a way that will make you feel like you were there with us, seeing everything we’ve seen.

I am writing a love letter to America.

Does that sound like a book you’d want to read?

When we return I’m going to turn this journey into a real, bound, physically-turn-the-pages book filled with gorgeous images and delightful prose. There will also be an e-book as well as print and canvas photos.

You can help make this happen! I’m not asking for a donation – I am offering an opportunity to pre-order your copy of “Two Lane Gems, Vol. 1.” You can pre-order an e-book, or photographs from the journey, or the hardbound book, or all of the above.

Please read more about this project and journey, and if you’re inclined to pre-order and share I’d be grateful.

Thank you in advance for your support, and here’s to the next Two Lane Gem!

Learn more about the Two Lane Gems Tour
and pre-order your copy today!