Tech Tour 2009 Officially Begins

A girl, her dad, her dog, and a really tricked out truck – it’s either a country song cliché or the beginning of a great adventure.  Let’s hope for the latter.

Tech Tour 2009 is officially underway.  The ostensible purpose of this trip is to drive the Alaskan Pipeline in preparation for a talk I am giving at the Society for the History of Technology's annual meeting in October.  Along the way we will be stopping at sites of interest to the technical tourist.

The general route begins in Richmond, Virginia, with the first planned stop in Green Bank, West Virginia.  We will then head north, crossing into Canada at Niagara Falls.  We will meander westwards across Canada before turning north up the Al-Can highway.  Hopefully we will make it to Barrow, Alaska, before heading south and returning to the lower 48.  We will head east across the mid section of the US.  Approximately 8,000 miles or so round trip.  Of course, we are lousy planners, so who knows what the trip will entail.

This blog is an experiment in expanding my research beyond the history of factory tours to include other types of industrial tourism.  I welcome your comments as I shape my manuscript, The Ultimate Vacation: Watching Other People Work, a history of factory tours in America.