Accompanying my parents to the local AAA office prior to our family vacations was always an adventure.  It seems odd now, but at the time there was no better place to get travel information.  All the maps, travel books, and travel brochures you could ever want for any destination in the world.  

My favorite item from the AAA travel treasure trove? The customized Trip-Tik.  (You can still order them at www.aaa.com, if you’re a member.)

For the uninitiated, the Trip-Tik was a door-to-door map showing you the exact route you were to take for your trip.  Each page was about 1/3 of the size of a regular sheet of paper, assembled in the order you were to follow, and bound together by a plastic comb binder.  For those stretches of road with construction, one of AAA’s finest had hand stamped “Road Construction” along the appropriate areas.  At the time, it the closest thing to “real-time” information.

As I was driving back from Atlanta last week, I began to wonder where I could eat dinner that night.  Fortunately, I have an improved version of the Trip-Tik - my iPhone. Remembering something about good barbecue in Lexington, Kentucky, I whipped out my iPhone and googled “Kentucky barbecue” to see what popped up. After reading up on Owensboro out in the western stretches of the Bluegrass State, I narrowed the search to Lexington and found a link to Billy’s Bar-B-Q near the University of Kentucky campus.

After reviewing their menu, I came to realize Billy’s would be the experience I was seeking.  Genuine mutton barbecue, Kentucky Burgoo, and a short drive to my hotel that evening. I pointed the car in the right direction and followed the hickory smoke to dinner.  I’m glad I did.  If not for Billy’s website and my iPhone, I would have eaten at the Cracker Barrel next to my hotel.   

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.