Alabama's Morning News with JT
Erin Real talks the best and worst summer road trips and concerts could be too much of a luxury
Aaron Rial joins us now. I'll always do in our stories together from her home studios in Connecticut outside New York City. And I see the best states for summer road trips here and the worst ones. And my gosh, you must now know what it feels like to be from Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia. As Connecticut is the third worst state to be traveling in the summer, apparently with Rhode Island right in there as well and Delaware, the worst state. What's going on up at the Northeast? Why is it so bad to travel up there? Honestly, I love these wallet hub lists. I love a good wallet hub list almost because every time I'm like, what? How is that there? Right. I know. I think that you guys get beat up a lot where you don't deserve it. You really don't. You have beautiful places in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. I don't get it. But, yes, Connecticut found itself on the bad side of this list as did Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, which is shocking for a road trip, but a beautiful place. Vermont, also beautiful road trip and Arkansas. The reason these are finding their way down the list is because wallet hub used a bunch of metrics, many of which were things like price of camping, car thefts per capita. They've looked at the gas prices, things like that. So a lot of stuff went into this. But you guys, you're doing pretty well. So I'll hear it. Let me find out. Alabama. Yeah. Where do we pop up on the list? I know we did make the top 10, but I know we're not at the bottom either. No, hold on. I find 23. 23. You scored. Yeah, you scored particularly high when it comes to the cross ranking only your number 10 for cross ranking, which is good. And you also do quite well for activity ranking number 33. So lots to do when you get there. The top states, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because you've done a lot of traveling. You know much of this country, but number one state was Texas, which kind of surprised me, followed by Minnesota, New York, not surprising. Upstate New York is gorgeous for a road trip. There's a very different and Louisiana is number four. And then Florida number five, the Florida kind of shocked me because while I love Florida, I think it's a great place. And the keys, it's so cool. It's like driving to the Caribbean when you go over that long bridge, right? But outside of that, like we've done alligator alley like you need to drink a lot of coffee, so you don't fall. Or listen, I used to live in South Miami West in a place called Kendall, Florida, which is further South than Miami, if you can imagine. And West, I was literally five miles from the Everglades. So I'm familiar with what you're talking about there. And if you've ever driven down 95 in the state of Florida, it's like going to the moon on a space shuttle. It never ends. It's just non stopping. It gets worse and worse the further south you go with these people that are trying not to be in the next Fast and Furious movie zipping around you doing 120 miles an hour. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of riding through Florida. There's a lot of cool spots to stop in Florida. I get that. And I was looking at some of these metrics to the best state, you know, according to attractions and zoos and botanical gardens and amusement parks. I mean, we've got all that here. So I can see, you know, in Alabama, I talked to people that move here from other states. I was just talking to somebody yesterday that moved from Los Angeles for a long time. We worked for Fox and CNN and MSNBC and then went to Atlanta and just moved here about eight, nine months ago. And she was telling me that she was so glad to be in Alabama. She couldn't believe it when people said, I'm telling you, come to Alabama, you'll really like it here. And she's she goes, I should have been here years ago. This place is just incredible. So yeah, she loves it. It is incredible. And I think like, you know, every, every state has its things, but you guys have a beautiful state and like a portion of the US that is rising. The South portion of America is on fire right now and literally that it will be in Alabama. Yeah. I mean, we're going to probably see a heat index today of 110. I don't know what it's doing in Connecticut today, but orange ozone alert again. Most of the country is hot right now. So yeah, but yeah, I like the fact that this is kind of a best kept secret here in Alabama when people come here. They're, you know, pleasantly surprised that, you know, it is a cool place to raise families. So well, good luck on the road trips out there. And by the way, speaking of road trips, I was talking to somebody the other day, they're going to Europe and they're going to go see Taylor Swift because the ticket prices are much lower there. They were planning a trip anyway. So they thought, you know what, let's not spend the thousands of dollars in the US to see her. Let's, let's see her wherever she's going to, and apparently they're going to be, she's going to be at the same place they're traveling coincidentally. So they got two Taylor Swift tickets for 300 bucks a piece. I thought, wow, that's a good way to go. So many people, this is like the fourth person I've heard of. Like a lot of people are doing that. It's actually, believe it or not cost effective and know what? Yeah, cool trip to Europe. Let's do it. Well, I'm telling you, concerts, these, I'm kind of spoiled, like, you know, growing up in radio, you get free tickets all the time and blah, blah, blah. So I like the, you know, the, the, the concerts of, you know, the last year and the years before, because the prices weren't so crazy out of loud line here. But, you know, I remember, I mean, dating myself here where tickets were, you know, under 100 bucks all the time for going to shows at the amphitheaters and the arenas. Now, good luck. Good luck. We actually saw over the past decade, ticket prices have doubled and North America increases. It's more than 40% over the past five years. So that's really, really where they saw their uptick. This is a result of the pandemic. People were like, oh my goodness, live music, live stuff, sports, whatever. It's awesome. But the owners of venues, promoters, they are really capitalizing on this. So there's always been VIP boxes and, you know, corporate tickets and all that stuff. But live nation, another company called Notes Live, they're essentially selling real estate. So get this. In Colorado Springs, there's the new Ford amphitheater. This is an example of the type of stuff that's happening all over the country for a quarter million dollars, 250,000. You can buy eight seats around a fire pit. You're essentially securing a lifetime ticket. Yeah, you have a line of the site unobstructed. You get VIP parking and VIP restrooms and craft cocktails. Oh, come on. I know, I actually, and I, listen, I like fancy stuff as much as the next person. And who doesn't want a craft cocktail? Yes, please sign me up. But yeah, like, I also love music and concerts. And there's an alchemy that happens when you're standing like in front of the state, like you're, it's, it's euphoric. It's beautiful. I love shows like that too. I'd rather see a show though in a place like the Alabama theater where it's like 3000 people in a nice indoor place or an amphitheater. Big arenas and big stadium shows. You know, I did it when I was in my twenties and thirties. I think I've had enough of that. You know, it's just, it's like jumping into a bag of seeds, you know, and you're just swarming with people all around you. But those big corporate seats and 250 grand for that kind of thing, unless you're super mega rich or you're a corporation, I don't see the average Joe jumping in on anything like that, right? All right, gonna be a great summer concert. No doubt about that, including the iHeartRadio Music Festival coming up in September. That's gonna be in Vegas. Hey, if you're planning a road trip, this is a good one. September 20th and 21st. The lineup is just incredible. Get your tickets before they're gone. Go to a X S dot com. Aaron Rial, thank you. I appreciate you.