Talk to a local, they know what you need.

Hampton Inn: Bow (outside Concord), New Hampshire

Toni and I have a rule on road trips - no chains. We cannot eat in a franchised establishment without first making a legitimate attempt to find something home-grown. It's has always been very tempting, first leaving the Interstate, to pull into the nearest B*b E***s - D***'s - A****bee's or what have you, especially when your butt is tired and your feet are cramped. Even more so when you have an anxious toddler (who turned 18 months today, if you can believe that.)

Normally, we press on into whatever city is nearby, sometimes five miles up the road, some little burg, forgotten as a result of the big, nasty National Highway System. Thank you, Eisenhower. And we meet friendly people, the food is better, and cheaper. And it makes you feel like you've actually gone somwehere, and didn't just take a turn at Westlake.

Case in point - we load up from Syracuse around 9:30, with a resolution to go an hour before breakfast (it was a late night, we fell asleep watching Kerry's speech, and if that doesn't suggest we are all doomed, don't say I didn't warn you) and got off the turnpike at Hermiker, NY and decided to ask the Toll Booth Guy for advice. He was corpulent and had poor teeth.

"Can you recommend somewhere for breakfast?" I ask, handing him our ticket and cash.

"Okay," he says with a sigh, as though he knew I was going to ask that before we pulled up, "I can give you D***y's or a diner."

"Diner," Toni and I said, simultaneously.

He rattles off easy directions, and says the place is called "Chet's." And he was right, that place was great. Pretty homely, with lots of photographs of kids on the noteboard next to the bathrooms. The portions were not obscene and the price was right.

There was a McD*****'s up the street, the aforementioned D***y's we had passed, and a K** ... I wonder how much early morning business Chet's used to get, when it was "The Diner."