Let the Web help you find fun vacations/cruise just a day’s drive away
Under Cruise Planning, tipsBy BETH J. HARPAZ
The Associated Press
Remember the old song “500 Miles Away From Home� Think of it as a challenge instead of a lament and you could come up with some good ideas for a road trip.
You can do it the old-fashioned way, calculating distances on a paper map using scale of miles and a ruler. But now there are online map-radius tools that show you at a glance which destinations are within a given distance.
One that’s relatively simple to use is at www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm.
Go to the Web site and scroll down to the “Options†form. Type in the city you’re starting from. Skip latitude and longitude and go to the “Radius Distance†section. Here the form automatically sets the radius distance to 1,000 kilometers, but you can reset by typing in the number of miles you’re willing to drive in the “miles†box right next to the kilometer box.
Now go back up to the location name and click on “Draw Radius.â€
Scroll up to see the green circle on the map. Zoom in for a more detailed look at cities within your drive-to zone.
Depending on traffic and highway speed, most people can cover 500 miles in a day’s drive, so starting with that distance could inspire some interesting choices. Dallas, Minneapolis, Memphis and Chicago are well within the 500-mile radius of Kansas City.
Destinations at the edge of the circle may be farther than your maximum distance once you calculate actual driving routes. The radius tool measures distance as the crow flies without considering highways or terrain, so it’s good to check distances against a mileage calculator on MapQuest or GoogleMaps.
Checking out a few other starting points yields some great vacation ideas within a 500-mile circle: Dallas to New Orleans or Mexico; Minneapolis to the Atikaki Provincial Park in eastern Manitoba; Memphis to Panama City, Fla.; or Chicago to Toronto.
If you’re taking a week’s vacation, driving the first and last days to and from your destination is often an acceptable tradeoff to save on plane fare, and the cost savings of a 500-mile road trip versus flying can be considerable. A family of four is likely to spend more than $1,000 flying anywhere round-trip. Air travel also involves more than the cost of plane tickets; there’s transportation to and from the airport, food and other incidentals, and car rental when you land.
In contrast, with gas around $2 a gallon, driving 1,000 miles in a car that gets 25 miles per gallon will cost well under $100. Even counting tolls, food and a night in a motel en route if you can’t make the trip in a day, it’s bound to run less than plane tickets. If you’re ambitious, leave before dawn, and you can easily get to a destination 400 miles away by lunchtime. Leave at night and you’ll be in Amarillo by morning.
While using a map radius can expand your list of vacation spots, the appeal is partly psychological. Many people are not good at estimating distances, and knowing exactly how far away something is can make it seem more attainable.
Source : http://bestcarribeancruises.com/touristscruisers-do-the-stupidest-things/
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