For the second consecutive summer, the United States is experiencing a road travel revolution. According to some estimates, up to 9 out of 10 Americans have taken to the road to travel at least once since March 2020.
Thanks to the Internet, mobile devices and other easy-to-find resources, planning a road trip is easy. You certainly know where to go for boating, last minute hotel reservations, finding local food, hiking, and camping. But there’s a lot of time wasted even on the busiest family vacations.
Whether you are traveling alone or traveling the highway in a caravan, heading out for the day or becoming totally nomadic, there is an app that can add something unexpected to your motoring adventure. You just have to know where to look.
Listen here
The world is your museum and this app is your audio guide. Listen here features thousands of short stories related to specific places across the United States, whether you’re stopping to explore or just passing by by car. Each recording only lasts a few minutes, making them perfect learning pieces to soak up as you make your way through towns and villages.
[Related: Plan a road trip using only your smartphone]
The app even lets you select specific categories you want to learn more about, including music, natural wonders, history, and more. Offline listening is available, and with Location Services turned on, HearHere can send you alerts when you are within range of something interesting to hear. The radius is quite large, so even if you dive into a city just to spend the night, you should be able to access many of the area’s unique stories.
Listen here is available free of charge for ios. You will need a premium subscription of $ 35.99 per year to unlock unlimited listening after your first five stories.
America roadside
This holy grail of road trip apps has all the features you could want from a directory of the country’s most unusual and eclectic attractions. Unlike other apps that direct you to major tourist attractions, America roadside knows that when you travel 400 miles in a day, you also want to stop and see a niche collector’s basement turned into a museum, a small town jail with a haunted story, or the larger pocket knife / hammer / Frying pan / Ping Pong racket. (Of the themes that the app uses to mark attractions, the one with the most entries is simply “Large.”) Detailed descriptions and reviews make reading suggested stops an entertaining pastime, even at home. House.
Before a trip, enter your driving route, and Roadside America produces a list (and map) of all the notable stops you’ll pass. Filters allow you to further filter results based on ratings determined by the app’s editors and the maximum number of miles you’re willing to detour for a stop.
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Just be sure to check the times on an attraction’s website before arriving. Some still have changed schedules due to COVID-19, and the changes may not be reflected in the app.
America roadside is available for $ 2.99 for ios and iPadOS, which includes your choice of one of the 7 regions of the United States. Additional regions can be purchased for $ 1.99 each or as a pack for $ 6.99.
Drive.fm
There are plenty of trivia apps that let you play with your friends, but this one is for solo roadtripers.
Drive.fmThe quiz catalog is completely hands-free and voice activated, and playing it feels like calling a radio show or playing quizzes at your local bar. When you start a game, you’re paired with a saved friend or random opponent (but not in real time) to maintain that sense of competition while still racking up points.
The app won’t penalize you if you walk through a tunnel just as your response timer runs out, repeating the question instead when it doesn’t pick up your voice. Games work perfectly in the background of other apps like any other audio service, so if you rely on your phone for browsing, Drive.fm won’t get in your way.
[Related: Prevent your phone from distracting you while driving]
Unfortunately, while the Drive.fm app is always updated with general improvements, and the main trivia game has over 480 episodes, the makers haven’t released any new installments for over a year, and it is not clear whether they plan to do so. Still, the unique design of the voice-response app is way more fun than shouting the answers to a podcast’s questions into the ether, and you’ll likely have to drive further than anyone else to get to the bottom of it. this catalog back.
Drive.fm is available as a free download for ios and Android. Unlimited subscriptions start at $ 0.99 for your first month and then start at $ 49.99 per year.
Fuck card
Look, this app has a target audience, and you are or you are not. For those who like to commemorate their travels in unusual ways, this app allows you to drop a marker on a map whenever you drop something else in a new location. Going back to your map can be a fun way to remember places you’ve been and make sure everything stayed in order after days of fast food by the side of the highway.
An optional grade box and rating scale for each entry make the app more of a travel journal substitute than anything else. Enabling public posting on your profile allows you to view ratings and reviews created by other recent poops across the country, including the occasional review of a bathroom in your area. And, of course, you can also connect with friends and create “leagues” with your fellow travelers, to see who’s left their mark in other places along the route.
AmpMe
When your speakers are running out of juice and your car stereo is broken, AmpMe is the answer. The app turns phones and computers into an interconnected audio system via Bluetooth, allowing you to play perfectly synchronized music from any number of compatible devices.
[Related: The best apps for listening to music on your phone]
Create a “party” app to stream music from SoundCloud, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, or your device’s music library. Then, connect with friends either by inviting them to join a list of pre-approved friends, or for a faster process, open the party to local Bluetooth devices. Unfortunately, you will only be able to play music. If you want to listen to the latest real crimes podcast with your friends while driving, you will find that this audio format is blocked on some platforms including Spotify.
AmpMe even has a gallery of world parties at the bottom of the app’s home screen, letting you listen to people from all over the world (perhaps on their own car trips) at all times.
AmpMe is available for a 3-day free trial for iOS, Android, the Windows, and Mac. Thereafter, you will need to pay a weekly fee of $ 9.99.
