Wayside turns your road trip into a story.
Discover the history, hidden places, strange stories, natural wonders, and local legends along the road ahead — with Wayside as your guide.
Your route. Your interests. Stories worth stopping for.
Every road is full of places you never knew were there — and a good many of them already have a sign explaining why, which you pass at seventy.
A forgotten railroad town.
A strange roadside attraction.
A historic battlefield.
A waterfall hidden nearby.
A legendary diner.
A story that happened here.
Most of the time, you just drive past.
Wayside changes that.
Dallas → Boulder · 880 mi
Ahead on your route
Wayside understands where you’re going and what’s around you. It finds the places worth knowing about along your route and brings their stories to life at just the right moment.
Just drive. We’ll tell you what’s worth noticing.
History. Nature. Food. Weird stuff. You decide what makes a great road trip.
Tell Wayside where you’re headed — or just start driving.
Wayside finds the places along your route worth your attention.
When there’s a story worth hearing, Wayside tells you about it.
The road becomes the tour.
Premium
No destination. Wayside reads which way you are pointing, works out the next ten miles of whatever road you are on, and asks again each time you turn.
For the drive you did not plan. The long way home, a detour, an afternoon with nowhere particular to be.
Free plan
Type where you are going. Wayside finds everything worth saying along the way and has it written and recorded before you pull off the drive.
For the drive you know about. You can see the whole running order first, and it costs nothing to open again next time.
Premium: see every road to the same place and take the one with more to say. Los Angeles to San Francisco has two, and the longer one has seven more places on it.
Either way you enter the destination into your own navigation app. Wayside is the commentary, not the directions.
Learn why that tiny town exists, what happened at that historic marker, or why that mountain has its name.
Wayside looks beyond the obvious attractions to find interesting places you might otherwise miss.
Your road trip shouldn’t sound like everyone else’s. Follow the subjects and stories you’re curious about.
Keep your eyes on the road. Wayside makes discovery part of the drive, not another screen to manage.
We connect discoveries to real places and information so you can explore with confidence.
Normally, you keep going. With Wayside, you can find out why it’s there.
Because sometimes the best part of the trip is the thing you didn’t plan.
Battles, pioneers, railroads, historic towns, forgotten places.
Mountains, rivers, geology, wildlife, waterfalls, scenic overlooks.
Local traditions, architecture, music, food, communities.
Odd attractions, legends, unusual landmarks, roadside mysteries.
Classic diners, local favourites, famous stops, places with a story.
Because sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.
Every piece Wayside reads out carries a span copied word for word from its source, checked before you hear it. If that check fails, the piece is held back rather than played.
Some of those sources are the signs themselves. Wayside has read 17,795 roadside markers, the ones bolted to a post outside a courthouse, which often say more about a small town than anything written about it anywhere else.
You can plan a route anywhere in the country. The markers are Texas and North Carolina today, and sixteen more states publish their inscriptions in a form Wayside can read.
Real places. Real stories. Better road trips.
| Free | Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan a route and play it | Yes | Yes |
| The opening of every place | Yes | Yes |
| Choose your interests | Yes | Yes |
| Rate what you hear | Yes | Yes |
| The whole of each piece | — | Yes |
| Drive with no destination | — | Yes |
| Compare the roads before you pick one | — | Yes |
| Go deeper on a place | — | Yes |
| Your drives kept and replayable | — | Yes |
| Save a trip for out of signal | — | Yes |
Most places are written in two to four parts. Everyone hears the first, which is a whole story on its own and runs about a minute. Premium keeps going: Fort Hays has four parts and runs four minutes.
Start discovering what’s along the road.
Two weeks free: everything for two days once you confirm your email, then the free plan for the rest. No card is asked for.
Nothing to install. Wayside runs in your phone’s browser — add it to your home screen and it opens like an app, keeps playing with the screen off, and updates itself.
Your next story might be just around the corner.
© 2026 Wayside · Built by OpenCircle · Places · Privacy · Terms · Cookies
We sent a six digit code to your email address. Type it in and Wayside opens, with two days of everything to start you off.
Enter the codeNothing arrived? The code can be sent again, and the address corrected if it was typed wrong, on the same screen.
Applies to both ways of driving below. Change it any time — while driving, it is in the panel at the top of the road ahead.
They stay on the list, marked as heard, and tapping one plays it again. Only what plays itself is skipped — asking for something is always answered.
History still gets told, including the grim parts. What gets left out is the detail: how somebody was killed, what the injuries were. A place whose only story cannot be told that way is skipped rather than softened into nothing.
No destination needed. Wayside watches which way you are going and finds the next ten miles of whatever road you are on, again each time you turn.
Driving without a destination is part of the paid plan.
Your journeys, and routes other drivers have planned. Anyone can open any of them, and reopening one costs nothing.
Longer pieces on places you asked about. They are written in the background, so they turn up a few minutes after you ask.
Wrong facts, a mangled name, a place that is not where we said. It goes to us with the piece attached — the whole route.
Nothing matches those filters.
Every place we know, where it is, and how much has been said about it.
No outline has been drawn for this region yet, so the dots are framed to themselves. Everything on it is real; only the backdrop is missing.
Thinnest first. “Available” is from the committed marker survey, not a live crawl.
| State | Written | Known | Articles | Markers | Available to import |
|---|
A plan is the level on the account; beside it is what Stripe currently says about the card. The two disagree in both directions and both are normal — a cancelled member keeps the plan until the period ends, and one whose card failed keeps it while Stripe retries. Open a row for everything else on the account, and to correct the name, the address, the confirmation or the trial. What Stripe holds is shown there and is not editable: every webhook re-reads it from Stripe, so a hand-typed status is either overwritten or quietly wrong. Nobody can set somebody else's password here; that is what the reset link is for.
| Who | Plan | Member since | Last signed in | Routes | Drives | Change plan |
|---|
Which services find the roads, in the order they are asked. The next one is asked only when the one before is slow or down. Drive time is applied to every route a service returns; 100% leaves it as the service said.
Nothing waiting.