Family Vacation Guides

by Molly Hewitt

Looking for some great vacation ideas? Before you hit the road, browse through these travel guides and plan the best trip ever!

Great Guides

Tours:
Watch it Made in the U.S.A.: A Visitor's Guide to the Companies That Make Your Favorite Products, by Karen Axelrod, Bruce Brumberg (Contributor)
This book guides travelers to more than 290 factories throughout the United States. It offers all the practical information needed to select and locate tours close to vacation destinations or near home.

Inside America: The Great American Industrial Tour Guide, by Jack Berger, Eunice Berger
Find more than 1,000 free industrial tours open to the public. Covers more than 300 different industries.

Little Museums: Over 1,000 Small and Not-So-Small American Showplaces, by Lynne Arany, Archie Hobson (Contributor)
Along the superhighways and backwoods roads of America -- in megametropolises and one-horse towns -- hundreds of little museums are ripe for discovery. Complete with websites, exact directions, and invaluable tips on when to go and what to know, this book is by far the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide available.

Trails:
Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways, by Jamie Jensen
Celebrating the notion that freedom and discovery await us on the open road, this book lures travelers off the soulless interstates and into the world of the two-lane road with its photogenic Americana. Readers will find all the information they need to create their own driving adventures.

Civil War Battlefield Guide, by The Conservation Fund, Frances H. Kennedy (Editor)
Definitively depicting the 55 major battlefields of the Civil War, this complete guide describes each battle vividly in an essay by a distinguished historian. Color photographs show the battlefields as they are today, while detailed maps plot the movements of the armies as well as the topography of the land.

Along the Trail with Lewis & Clark, by Barbara Fifer, Vicky Soderberg, Joseph Mussulman (Illustrator)
This then-and-now guide takes modern tourists along or near where the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled. Brief, accurate text recounts the expedition's adventures.

Family Fun:
Fodor's Great American Learning Vacations, by Caroline Haberfeld (Editor), Glen Berger (Editor), Matthew Lore (Editor)
This book is a great guide to vacations with a purpose in the United States, from restoring a 19th-century hand-hewn log house in Florida to painting desert scapes in Taos, New Mexico, and searching for humpback whales off the Alaska coast.

Volunteer Vacations: Short-Term Adventures That Will Benefit You & Others, by Bill McMillon
A volunteer experience is the best way to travel, combine personal growth and philanthropy, and get to know other cultures and people by helping them. The seventh edition of this classic adventure travel guide lists more than 2,000 projects worldwide that need volunteers. Detailed organization profiles provide contact information, project locations and objectives, costs, dates, and application instructions. Cross-referenced indexes help travelers plan according to cost, destination, length of vacation, season, and type of project.

Outside Magazine's Guide to Family Vacations, by the Editors of Outside Magazine
Whether your children are toddlers or teens, this compendium of family-vacation ideas from America's premier adventure magazine is packed with scores of trips that will get the whole clan into the big outdoors throughout North America and beyond.

Great Adventure Vacations with Your Kids, by Dorothy Jordon
This is a great book for families interested in exploring nature on their vacations. The author defines an adventure vacation as one "that offers physically challenging activity in an outdoor environment..."

Great Nature Vacations with Your Kids, by Dorothy Jordon
This book will take you through scores of nature vacation experiences that are perfect for families. These include exploring rain forests, digging for dinosaur bones, trekking in the Arctic, taking a safari, swimming with dolphins, camping in the desert, plus many other great vacations. This unique guidebook is more than a listing of vacation possibilities. Dorothy's conversational style provides readers with a feel for each of these vacations.

Farm, Ranch & Country Vacations in America, by Pat Dickerman
A steady seller for 41 years, this is still the most complete reference book available for safe and easy rural vacations. Includes descriptions and comments for 230 different places. This is a marvelous handbook for anyone contemplating a refreshing, unusual vacation.

Horse Lovers Vacation Guide, by Lynne Johnson
This guide brings over 25 categories of riding vacations to the traveller. You can easily find vacation sites all over North America. Each listing offers contact information, plus a descriptive write-up of the site.