29 Coasters
6 Parks
11 Days!

After months of preparation and many hours surfing the web researching Amusement Parks, roller coasters, maps, and lodging, the 1997 Headbangin' Coaster Tour began on May 31st. and was completed with great success on June 10, 1997.

With the help of Delorme Map'n'Go software, the entire route was plotted out with time and distances between stops calculated. Also part of Delorme's software are listings for AAA lodgings along the route, which were used to locate motel stops along the way. Several motels allowed reservations to be made through the Internet, while others required a long distance phone call.
Breaking the trip down into smaller legs of no more than 4-6 hours travel time allowed travel from one location to the next to be accomplished in the morning hours before the parks open. In some cases, I got a head start after leaving one park, traveling an hour or so toward the next destination before stopping for the night.

Most of the photographs on these pages were shot with a Kodak DC120 digital camera. I chose the Kodak DC120 camera camera document this coaster tour because of it's higher resolution (1280x960 pixels), 3x zoom lens, and removable compactflash storage cards. Images were transferred daily to a Texas Instruments Extensa 555 laptop for image editing and uploading to this website.

Join me now in my adventure as I visit six amusement parks and ride 29 roller coasters for eleven days.