Heads in Beds of the 1950s Variety
How nostalgia is fueling a desire for American travelers to sleep back in time
👋 Welcome to the July 16th issues of The Jaunt—the newsletter that strives to give you the best-curated content and our personal insight about people and places shaping travel in America.
✅ This week we travel to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, unknown towns of Nebraska, and show the hottest trend in road travel—staying in 1950s hotels.
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Here are the stories we are reading about local American travel this week.
The Latest Trend in Road Trips: 1950 Hotels | Via: Washington Post
Two trends are happening at once. We’re emerging from the pandemic with a wanderlust like never before—an itch to hit the road and discover America. Yet, chain hotels have rebranded and built new brands over the course of the last five years in an effort to woo the savvy traveler. Yet, the nostalgia we feel for the open road has brought us closer to the way we used to travel, when traveling was an experience. Now, updated roadside motels beckon weary road-trippers and families in ways not seen in decades.
An Architectural Road Trip Around the Midwest | Via: Rust Belt Magazine
Josh Lipnik is driving us down a highway in the palm of Michigan’s mitt. We’re traveling west from Battle Creek to check out an old post office-turned-library in Climax, Michigan, where Josh is going to take some photos. He’s not in a hurry; he drives slower than me. “It’s nice to have someone else in the car,” he says. “I’m always trying to look out the windows at buildings as I’m driving.”
If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen Lipnik’s photography. With more than fifty thousand followers, his account, Midwest Modern, is a transportive road trip through architecture, design, and, often, time. On any given day, the Midwest Modern account might feature a quiet Michigan downtown, an old movie theater marquee, or archival interior design photos of Minnesotan homes. Through Lipnik’s lens, the history of the region is wrapped up in brick, glass, and steel. “It’s a non-academic approach that I think is interesting,” he says. “The goal is to get people who aren’t necessarily into architecture or even really into history to think about the places [where] they live.”
Great American Road Trip Hiding in Michigan | Via: Thrillist
Spread across 30,000 square miles, 14 counties, and two time zones, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is as wonderfully backwoods as one can still get in America.
You may spot wolves, bears, and moose while making your way to the nearest one-block Main Street for a meat-and-veggie-filled pasty. There are funky ghost towns, old shipwrecks, and utterly surreal roadside stops galore. You can hunt for glow-in-the-dark Yooperlite stones, or hike through bat caves and old-growth maple forests. The world’s largest mushroom—known locally as Humongous fungus—even has its own festival in Crystal Falls. The possibilities are endless, and also weird as hell.
Bring a tent and a cooler, make sure you fill up the gas tank every chance you get, and get ready to return for some Great Lakes-goodness summer after summer. Starting in Mackinac and ending in St. Ignace, here’s how to road trip Michigan’s beloved Upper Peninsula.
Pizza Vending Machine Brings Pies to Denver in Three Minutes | Via: Denver Post
Basil Street Pizza’s automated kitchen in Denver is one of 50 cook-to-order pizza vending machines to roll out in the United States this year. (The company tested the machines in California and Texas in 2020.) The APK’s serve 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas, completely microwave-free.
“We’re not trying to stop you from going to your favorite pizza place,” Kenealy said, “but if you want, really, a delicious pizza in a short amount of time, we feel like we’ve really hit the nail on the head with that.”
With its many rotating flavors to choose from — including the classics such as cheese, pepperoni and supreme — these futuristic vending machines are redefining take-out, the company asserts. Basil Street Pizza’s patented oven technology turns frozen pies to hot and fresh out the oven, and the first and only person to touch it is you.
Nine Cities That Display History of Nebraska | Via: Travel Awaits
In 2019, Nebraska rolled out some really brilliant marketing spots to bring new visitors to the state. They juxtaposed the typical sayings you hear about the state like it’s flat and dusty and why the heck would you want to go there over beautiful images of the state’s lesser-known geographic and geologic wonders. Not many people know this, but the state’s motto is “The Good Life” and these nine towns exemplify the close-knit communities that help make up a great road trip to places you’ve never visited.
Columbus Icon Continues to Shine Over City | Via: Columbus Dispatch
On a recent clear June morning, as Downtown workers began rolling into the city on their morning commute, a small but monumental change was taking place five stories above them.
Jim Sherry of S&S Sign Services shuffled along the scaffolding atop the former Dispatch building, now home to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. In his hands were two large black plastic numbers: a "5" and a "0".
With a little bit of drilling, Sherry replaced the "149" on the historic Columbus Dispatch sign to show 150 years of service, and consequently helped usher the newspaper into a new era.
Thursday marks The Dispatch's 150th anniversary. It also marks 50 years that the prodigious neon Dispatch sign sitting atop 34 S. 3rd St. has illuminated Capitol Square and welcomed Downtown dwellers into the city.
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