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ROAD TOUR NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS "All of our motorist are rushing past the things worth seeing, instead of stopping to enjoy them. There is no township, however remote, but has within its boundaries some exhibit which will instruct or entertain the caller. In order to insure more leisurely habits of travel and arouse a proper interest in the varied charms of all outlying regions, we need in this country an entirely new sort of guide book for motorists. The kind of book now in use devotes too much attention to the roadway, instead of giving spicy information about what may be seen from the roadway." George Ade, Journalist 1921 Yes, even back in 1921 we had problems with people being in a big hurry to get somewhere quick and never stopping to "smell the roses" so to speak. People zip down the road on their daily trek to and from work without a clue as to their surroundings. These same people take trips to the New England States, Washington D.C and Europe looking for interesting, historic sites when all they have to do is look in their own back yard. When I was in school I really didn't have much interest in history when it came to John The farmer who purchased 160 acres and plotted out a small town in Southern Indiana. I still can't get excited about that information, but I can and do get excited about finding old buildings, iron bridges, one room school houses, brick kilns and ghost roads sometimes hidden in the woods and sometimes out in plain sight. To me, if you can see and understand a piece of history that happened in the last 10 to 200 years in your own neighborhood, thats exciting. To compliment our Scenic Road Rallies we are now designing a series of Scenic Road Tours that are available to all motorist, bikers and bicyclist, on their own time schedules. We'll be adding a new road tour the first of each month with the first four tours in Dearborn County, Indiana, located in the southeastern corner of the State. Please look over our FAQ's below before registering to download your tours. If you have any comments, corrections (Yes, we probably made a mistake or two.) opinions, ideas or suggestions, please feel free to give us a call at 812-623-5727 or send us an email at info@scenicroadrallies.com day or night. Travel slowly. Stop often. Satolli Glassmeyer FAQs What is the difference between a Scenic Road Tour & a Scenic Road Rally? A Scenic Road Tour is basically like a Sunday afternoon drive in the country taken at your own pace where you will use a pre-determined route that will direct you to places of interest that very few people have ever seen. A Scenic Road Rally is an event using a similar road course where you compete against other teams by searching for scavenger hunt items and answering questions about your course. The Scenic Road Rally is held on a specific day with time constraints while a Scenic Road Tour can be taken any day of the week and always at your leisure. In a nutshell, a Scenic Road Rally is like driving through the Smoky Mountains stopping to see the vistas from time to time but knowing that you need to be off the mountain by 5:00 pm. A Scenic Road Tour is like backpacking through the Smoky Mountains finding the old homesteads and forgotten roads that filled the area many years ago. The Scenic Road Tour is much more in depth. What type of places might be listed in the Scenic Road Tour? How does the program work? Scenic Road Tours will be designing at least one road course for each Indiana county participating in the program and possibly up to four courses depending on the size of the county. Scenic Road Tours for counties in Ohio, Kentucky and other states will be available in 2011. Each tour guide will have a specific start/finish location and maneuver in a loop type fashion exploring the back roads while visiting the small hamlets that dot the countryside. The routes will include information on the history of the towns along with stops at places of interest as listed above. How will the Scenic Road Tour Guides be distributed? The Scenic Road Tour Guides can be downloaded from the Scenic Road Rallies, LLC website by clicking on the "Download a Tour" button under the "Road Tours" menu. What is the purchase price for a route? The downloaded routes are only $10.00 each. Simply register to download a Scenic Road Tour guide and make your payment thru PayPal. The process is easy and you will receive your Scenic Road Tour guide immediately. Can I purchase a tour guide over the phone instead of using PayPal? Absolutely! Just give us a call at 812-623-5727, Monday thru Saturday between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm. We'll be happy to take your order and then send the tour guide via email within 5 minutes. Again, these routes are only $10.00 each. Before calling, please visit the "Download Road Tours" menu on our website and fill out the information including the "I accept the disclaimer" on the right side of the page. We are required to have people register before sending out any tour guide packets. You will only need to do this one time. Can I obtain a hard copy instead of an email. Yes! Just give us a call at 812-623-5727 and we'll send you a hard copy in the mail. Or Click Here to download an order form if you would prefer to mail in your request. These tour guides will be stapled in a booklet type fashion and mailed within 24 hours. Due to printing and mailing expenses, the purchase price is $20.00 each. Before calling, please visit the "Download Road Tours" menu on our website and fill out the information including the "I accept the disclaimer" on the right side of the page. We are required to have people register before sending out any tour guide packets. You will only need to do this one time. Are there any rules or regulations when using the Tour Guide? Yes! 1. First and foremost, no alcoholic beverages are to be consumed before or during the use of these tour guides. Over 40,000 people (Which is almost the total population of Dearborn County, Indiana) die in automobile accidents each year and 14,000 of those are alcohol related. Simple rule: Don't drink & drive. 2. Don't speed or drive in a reckless manner. 3. Don't take pictures of Amish people as they are very private and consider this disrespectful. 4. Take your pictures from the road as many of the listed sites are on private property. Don't trespass. If you need to go onto private property to take a picture, always ask for permission first. 99% of the time the landowner is more than happy to give you the OK. 5. If you are driving 25 mph in a 45 mph zone and have traffic coming up behind you, pull over in a safe location and let traffic pass. What type of people would be interested in this Scenic Road Tour Guide? These tour guides would be of most interest to people who like to take pictures; enjoy nature; history buffs; people who enjoy driving on back country roads; people interested in finding out more about their county; automobile enthusiasts; car clubs; motorcyclist and motorcycle clubs; bicyclist and bicycle clubs. What do I need to bring? 1. Drivers license and proof of automobile insurance. Both documents must be within date and cannot be expired. 2. look at the companies sponsoring your specific Scenic Road Tour guide. Not all tour guides are sponsored by gas stations and restaurants. If this is the case, start your trip with a full tank of gas, a cooler with soft drinks and water, snacks and a picnic lunch. Otherwise, we highly recommend that you patronize the sponsors of the tour guide who have been hand picked by us and come with our strong recommendations. 3. Bring a camera! We have plenty of photo opportunities for you along each route. 4. Bring a set of binoculars. Some sites are a distance from the road and may be difficult to see. Also, there is plenty of wildlife to see along the course. 5. Bring a map! We've been laying out road courses for over 30 years and a good county road map beats a GPS navigation unit every time. With a map you can look out over many square miles of roadway. 6. Although a laptop isn't a necessity, using one with Google Maps or Bing Maps gives you the ability to view the ghost roads if you look closely. How long will it take? Plan on a 15-20 mph pace for the overall length of the route. Chances are that you'll be jumping in and out of the car or off and on the bike quite often. With the express routes you should be able to maintain a 35-45 mph pace. Can I deviate from the Scenic Road Tour guide? Absolutely! Although we have pretty much covered the highlights of the area and made sure that they were included on the route, by all means feel free to take a side trip and explore! The whole idea behind these Scenic Road Tour guides is for people to get out and explore! Don't forget dead end roads! Some of the most interesting sites and best pictures we have ever taken were located on dead end roads. Are the roads all paved? No. If there are gravel or dirt roads on a particular route, this information will be listed below the title of each Scenic Road Tour guide in the preview section Will we be making any water crossings? No. Although we know of dozens of stream fords, our Scenic Road Tours will not include any crossings. However, some roads may travel near or over streams that occasionally flood during heavy rains. Can I bring my children on this drive? Absolutely! Bring your kids, parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends and co-workers. Anyone who enjoys taking drives in the country, will love these tour guides. Can I make copies of the tour guides for friends or post them on the internet? No. There are copyright laws and we will prosecute anyone who makes copies, in whole or part, or posts these Scenic Road Tour guides on another site. It takes us about 200 hours to research and design a tour guide. If we can't get paid for our work, there is no reason to continue to produce these guides. Why are you doing this? The main focus of our Scenic Road Tour Guides is to introduce you to the hidden treasurers in your own backyard that are disappearing at a rapid pace. Since 1950, on average each year Ohio lost over 138,000 acres of farmland to development (378 acres per day), Indiana 80,000 (219 acres per day) and Kentucky over 47,000 (128 acres per day). In addition to the farmland being lost, wetlands are being drained for subdivisions, covered bridges and old steel truss bridges are falling down due to lack of money for restoration and historic buildings are being demolished while urban sprawl continues at an alarming rate. We would like for you to experience what still remains in the countryside and take home memories that may inspire you to speak up the next time you see a woodland "standing in the way of progress" or a historic structure crumbling from lack of interest. What is a Ghost Road? A ghost road is a roadway that was once owned or currently owned by the county. This road originally carried traffic on a daily basis but over the years the county may have chosen to no longer maintain the road or close it completely. The road may now be private property or could still be owned by the county. Most Ghost Roads are located at the end of older roads that are now listed as Dead End or No Outlet. Very few older roads were built as Dead Ends but originally led to other roads on the other side of the hill or creek. Over the years as the more popular roads became paved, these secondary roads fell out of favor and nature took over. What is a Phantom Bridge? A phantom bridge is a span that was once used on a daily basis to cross a body of water. A phantom bridge is ALWAYS located on on a Ghost Road and can be one of the ultimate finds during a road tour. Phantom bridges were usually bypassed after the current roadway was realigned. A phantom bridge can usually be located near a bridge currently in use. A good way to spot Phantom Bridges is to look left and right when crossing a bridge. Sometimes these bridges may be up to 300 yards up or down stream from the current bridge location. What is a Ghost Town? A Ghost Town in the midwest is usually a small cluster of houses that was once a major center of business activity usually in the 1800's up until the mid 1900's. Usually located near railroad lines and small rivers. What is a Ghost Railroad line? A Ghost Railroad line is a line no longer in use or a line that has been removed completely. Many older rail lines have been converted over to bicycle trails but its not unusual to find abandoned rail line beds in the country. What is the best time of year to take a Scenic Road Tour? Any time of year is great to take a drive in the country! But, if you want to do some exploring on your own, the best time of year is between November and March when the vegetation has died back and you have a better chance of discovering those Ghost Roads and Phantom Bridges. What is the "Look where weve been!" section of the Photo Gallery? Usually located on the second or third page of each Tour Guide you will see a full size logo for Scenic Road Tours. While you are driving the tour route, stop at one of the Points of Interest and take a picture of someone in your group holding up our logo. Email us the picture with your name, date and location and we will post the picture in that section of the Photo Gallery. What happens if I get lost? You are never really lost but you may be on the wrong road. If you are not sure about your location, ask one of the locals. Most people are very helpful and chances are you will probably only be a few miles off course. A great tip when using these Scenic Road Tour guides: Always reset your trip odometer as you turn onto another road. What if I find a mistake in the Scenic Road Tour guide packet? Please give us a call at 812-623-5727. We can make the correction within minutes. I own a business in the area where one of the Scenic Road Tours is listed. Can I sponsor the route? Yes, some companies do sponsor the routes and in return we will design the road course to direct road tour participants directly into your parking lot. We will also place a picture of your establishment and an advertisement in our tour guide. For further details, call 812-623-5727. Anything else I should know? Yes. In the design phase of this area of the website, we ran into a problem with people downloading a Tour Guide using a Mac with a Firefox browser. For some unknown reason, this combination was unable to download the file. If you have a Mac please use the Safari or Internet Explorer browsers when downloading a tour guide. If you have any problems with the download, please give us a call at 812-623-5727. What road tours will you be adding to the list in the future? Below are a list of routes we will be adding and the expected completion dates: 7/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour Batesville, Indiana. 8/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour # 1 of Switzerland County, Indiana. 9/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour # 2 of Switzerland County, Indiana. 10/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour Free Bird Express Route of Switzerland County, Indiana. 11/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour # 1 of Jefferson County, Indiana. 12/1/2010 Scenic Road Tour # 2 of Jefferson County, Indiana. 1/1/2011 Scenic Road Tour # 3 of Jefferson County, Indiana. 2/1/2011 Scenic Road Tour Free Bird Express Route of Jefferson County, Indiana. Travel slowly. Stop often. Sincerely, Satolli Glassmeyer |
EVENTS & DOWNLOADS
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