Ah, summer road trips. The sun on your face, a visit to the wind in your hair, the world’s sketchiest gas station bathroom — pure America. Of course, no one loves that last one, so earlier this week Jalopnik asked you for the worst places to stop on a road trip. Today, we’re digging through your answers to come with a list of all the sights you don’t want to see.
South of the Border in SC.
30+ years ago it might have been fun and interesting. Now it’s just desolate and sad.
Shocking: Tourist trap built on racial caricatures in the southern United States — yet far from the actual border it’s parodying — is not a great place to hang out! More at 11.
Any gas station within half a mile of an interstate highway in the south. The incessant smell of pee, pot and gasoline, the humid stickiness of everything you touch, the questionable characters hanging out in the energy-drink bottle littered parking lot, and the cashier barricaded behind milky plexiglass selling lotto tickets to people that truly can’t afford them. It’s a combination of scary and sad.
“The smell of pee, pot, and gasoline” would make a killer country album title. Or at least a lyric.
The worst place to stop is the side of the interstate. Don’t do it. I almost died when a sleepy driver slammed into my car while traveling at 70+. Keep limping along to an exit, but do not stop on the side of the road. DON’T DO IT. You’re a magnet to inattentive and sleepy drivers. It’s not worth a lifetime of pain.
I’ve done this once in my life, when a blowout in Hartford, Connecticut made me fear for the condition of my wheel if I moved any further. Eventually, as it got dark, the fear of my own mortality won out and I got moving to somewhere with enough room to put the spare on.
Buc-ee’s.
The worst kitschy Chinese Live Laugh Love junk, the longest I’ve ever waited in line for a bathroom at a gas station, or maybe anywhere.
Oh wow you have several different kinds of jerky, wow so cool.
I don’t care how nice your bathrooms are, if I have to wait 15 minutes to pee it’s going to be a low point of my road trip. It’s the dumpy Wal-Mart of gas stations.
I don’t live in Buc-ee’s Territory, but I’m familiar with just how much fans of the franchise love it. They’re devoted. Intensely so. I’m glad you posted this under a pseudonym, MikaelVroom.
I hate having to pull into a small town gas station restroom. There are some doozies here in Texas. It seems every time I go offroading out in East Texas, my buddies always stop at the same place for cheap gas in Gilmer, TX. Inevitably I need to take a leak before hitting the OHV park, so I go find the John, it always looks like the restroom in the Movie “Desperado”.
I think you need to convince your friends to get gas somewhere else, my friend. That can’t be the only shop on your route.
My rule of thumb, which has never lead me wrong.
See this sign?
That isn’t an advertisement, it’s a cry for help.
Or for the grammar nerds, Clean is a Verb not an Adjective.
Oh, and if it is flashing red? That’s an emergency Beacon. But even Batman himself would be a fool to answer that distress signal.
Hoser68 included a photo of a “CLEAN RESTROOMS” sign at a Chevron, and referred to it as if it was a common thing. I have never in my life seen this sign. Look at how far back into the archives I had to go to even get a fair-use photo of one. Do you all have these where you’re from?
Normally I’d jokingly say Nebraska. However, the real truth is... Wyoming. It is a whole lot of nuthin in the Cowboy State. You stop there, you better mean to or you are not gonna be able to walk your way out of it.
You heard it here first, folks. On your next road trip, do not stop in Wyoming. Anywhere in the state. Not even for gas. Do not enter Wyoming if you don’t have enough fuel to get out.
I’m sorta contrarian here, but I find the worst spots to stop are off the Interstate. Specifically the ones that you’ve been led to by the signs that say fuel/food at next EXIT but feel like they’re miles away.
When I’m on the Interstate I’m usually trying to get someplace and I do not want the unscheduled detour that this type of thing leads you to. More often than not there will be a fast food place, 2 gas stations to chose from and some egregious local place that may or may not be a front for sketchy behavior.
So, yeah I’ll take my besmirched NJ Turnpike rest stops because they allow fast on/off /on motoring. And truth be told, even the Guy Lombardo rest stop that used to be the poster child for gross has recently been redone and was quite nice with clean non smelly bathrooms and good choices of food.
Future good endorsement for those spots along the NY Thruway that are currently getting redone too.
I understand the appeal of rest stops — get your food and gas without having to actually leave the highway. We’re Americans, we’d be born on the highway and die on the highway without ever experiencing a single town en route if we could.
Burger King. Have some self respect.
There was a time when I would’ve agreed with you. Burger King is not, my most qualitative or quantitative measurements, good in any way shape or form. However, they brought back chicken fries, and Burger Kings are for some reason super prevalent in rest stops. Just get the chicken fries, they’re better than nothing.
I-20 between Birmingham AL and Shreveport LA, so that’s a large part of Alabama, and all of Mississippi and Louisiana.
Drove with a friend of mine from ATL to Dallas back in 2007 because she refused to fly after 9/11.
Each stop had it’s very own assortment of creeps, junkies and panhandlers hanging out in and around the shop. One guy tried to follow my friend into the ladies room and nearly got a faceful of pepper spray for his trouble. I caught another reprobate at a later stop lurking around my car with what appeared to be a rock in his hand; he ran once he saw me reach into my jacket pocket for the imaginary Glock I had in there (it was actually a pack of Mentos.)
Deferred maintenance seemed to be ubiquitous - broken and overflowing toilets, out of order gas pumps, you name it. Add to that sub-standard road food, some really sketchy looking ATMs and mix well with the usual rest stop aromas of urine, vomit, BO and cigarette smoke.
We tried to be in-and-out of any given rest stop in less than 10 minutes.
Do you think anyone’s ever made a Glock-shaped canister of Mentos? It’d be a horrible idea, but companies have made terrible choices before.
The worst bathrooms I’ve ever seen are in stand alone gas stations - you know the kind, four pumps, dusty packs of cigarettes behind the counter and chocolate that wasn’t ever supposed to be white.
Hover pee. Heaven forfend you have anything else going on.
Listen, when I was a child I ate chocolate that had turned white all the time. I turned out fine. I mean, y’know, as fine as a Jalopnik writer can turn out.
I am going to say a family member’s house. You’re doing it to be nice because you haven’t seen them in a while or it’s just convenient to visit, maybe for a free place to stay. But they are going to either irritate you or want to talk for way too long and throw off your schedule.
If you’re on a tight schedule, a hotel is probably better. If you’re on a tight budget, though, go for family.
My kid is at the tail end of a cross country trip to like 15 national parks from Delaware to Cali and back.
Don’t break down at a national park. They are usually many miles deep into the forest and the towns near them are small.
Week before last she blew a tire out in the parking lot of the Grand Canyon village in AZ, AAA had to tow her into flagstaff like 1.5 hours and luckily I found a good shop there to hook her up with new tires. Shout out to David at Anderson General Tire.
This past Friday her car started to run very rough, went into limp mode, and would not start at all while parked at Arches in UT. AAA had to tow her an hour into Moab and theres nothing open on a Saturday, biggest town being Grand Junction like another 1.5 hours away. I found a mobile mechanic who diagnosed it as an alternator and I shipped one from FCPEuro there, it will be there today and she will be back on the road. Shoutout to FCPEuro for quick shipping and I also found out they recently built a distro center in AZ for west coast coverage.
If you’re going somewhere remote, you should bring a spare tire. I understand that the overland guys have, like, six of them on the roof, but I think you’d probably be safe with one.
On I-10 in Texas between Balmorhea and where 290 branches off to Fredericksburg. Did this trip four times in the last week. There is pretty much nothing between those two points. 2-3 “towns” with minimal food choices (even fast food chains). Still didn’t find a clean restroom but did find a gas station that sells weed right next to a sad looking RV park and a car museum that looked like it had a couple of indy cars and a gt40. I even tried the west texas/new mexico delicacy, Allsup’s fried gas station burrito, and it was inedible. It had a lot of online hype. Not sure why. Maybe they think its good from lack of other options?
Is a fried burrito not already a thing? Do chimichangas not exist? We already have a word for this type of food.
For me it’s between Northern Indiana. For a beautiful area that’s so close to lake Michigan, an area that gets a TON of tourist traffic, it’s where I’ve discovered the most disgusting bathrooms, the least welcoming restaurants and the least quality places to stop, period. To be fair, this pretty much applies to all of Indiana north of Indianapolis. I 90,94,65, US 30, doesn’t matter, it’s all just charmless dying small town america where your best bet is hoping you can find a Flying J truck stop and you can at least trust that the bathroom floors will not be underwater.
Did you know northern Indiana has a coast? Just the tiniest little bit between Michigan and Illinois. I didn’t know that until I started looking for photos for this slide. It seems like there’s something nice in northern Indiana after all.
