Hi all,

I have a 4-day weekend coming up for Thanksgiving, and want to go on a road-trip somewhere. The problem is where is "somewhere"? I don't know. I hardly know what I want to do, let alone where to do it. However, I do know that I don't want to spend all my time driving. Are there any trip planning tools out there on the web that will, say, show you a map of anything inside, say, a 400 mile radius of a particular point? That way, I can say how long I want to drive, and then pick a location within that radius. All the websites I've been able to find so far require you to put in your destination, which is a bit problematic when you haven't figured out the destination, yet.

the best road trip I've ever been on was to nowhere. I thought of all the places I could get to and see inside of a days drive, but nothing really pulled me in its direction. so I flipped a coin, and more than once. I just got on the road, and every now and then I flipped a coin and went left or right depending on the coin.
I know it sounds silly, but I ended up at a water park, a casino, a few small biker towns, a national park and many other odd places.
what I learned is that had I planned to see all that I did, I would have been rushing myself around, spending more attention on the 'getting there' than I would have liked. I never felt rushed, if I didn't like the traffic or the look of the road I was on, I just pulled out my trusty coin and gave it a flip.

on the other hand I tried the same thing last month and found myself in Carson, NV. that place sucks in a large way. but I just kept going until I found something I liked (north lake tahoe). so it all worked out in the end.

now matter where you end up, I hope you enjoy your trip.

-dan

to get back to the question-
M$ streets & trips does have the 'find in xx radius' function.

they had a free demo up for a while, ya might take a look at that.

Thanks for the suggestion, but a) it's Windows, and I'm on linux, and b) the current online demo seems to be nothing but a flash advert. I can't find the feature on MSN maps, either. Ah, well. Guess I'll just have to break out the old road atlas and compass...