Last week, I hit the road and drove around the west coast and the southwest, armed with a book on scenic drives and another book on interesting places in the USA. Forget what you hear about a slowdown in summer travel — nearly every motel was full.

The real challenge on a drive like this is planning your Starbucks visits at the appropriate caffeine refilling times. At one point, we were 300 miles from the nearest one in Texas, which is badly underserved by espresso joints.

But you have to get off the main highways if you want to see the interesting sites and that takes me far from the brown nectar sources. Besides the obvious ones, like the national parks and natural landscapes, I’ve run across a number of towns that made an effort to be interesting.

A few towns stand out because of the architecture they once had, such as Ferndale, California’s Victorian theme. The whole town is now a historical landmark, and it’s often used as a set for movies and television shows. The current residents of the town inherited the architecture, and have done a good job of preserving it.

You’re probably familiar with Leavenworth’s Bavarian theme, which was inspired by the same theme in Solvang, Calif. Their theme was artificially created to boost the economy in their town, but it’s even more effective than Ferndale’s, and draws many more visitors.

Neither town is on the way to anything important, and you have to make an effort to get to both of them. What’s remarkable is that the business leaders in those towns decided that they would band together to make their towns relevant, and not just a collection of gas stations and strip malls.

That’s something that is missing from our towns. Think about how you might describe Maple Valley to someone who’s never been here. “Well, we have pretty good schools, a decent lake, uhhh….well….we have two McDonald’s, and Covington only has one.”

Uh huh. It’s your turn, Covington. “Well, we have a great retail base, with a Costco and a Home Depot.” That saves me some gas money, but there are over 500 other towns that can say that too.

How about you, Black Diamond? “Well, we have a charming old town with a regionally famous bakery, some mountain bike trails, and an old miner’s cabin.” That’s pretty good, but the new housing developments will likely make it irrelevant without a concerted effort.

Black Diamond is the best of the three so far, but I can’t believe anyone outside of the local area would make an effort to come here. That’s a shame if you are a local business owner who could benefit with some tourism or visitor dollars. The towns that don’t stay relevant lose customers to the ones that do.

Just driving around the country, I’ve seen dozens of towns that died after a newer, shinier town popped up nearby and attracted all of the money. The ones that didn’t die had an extraordinary location, or purposefully made themselves interesting.

So what can our towns do to stay relevant? A Bigfoot sighting would certainly help, along with the resulting tacky merchandise and gift shops. One store in California redwoods country is trying to pass themselves off as a Bigfoot headquarters, but I think the market is still wide open on this. I’ll start working on a costume.

A theme might help, but it requires a significant investment in refacing the existing buildings, and that also requires a significant amount of building owner cooperation. That’s where business and community leaders come in, but it requires real leaders who can draft a vision and get others to follow.

Maybe you don’t want to live in an interesting town. A lot of people are content to live in quiet, peaceful, and unremarkable places. But business owners want more customers; a lot more customers.

Lately, we’ve only heard complaining from our business leaders about fees or taxes and very few ideas for increasing revenues. Maybe it’s time for a new vision for our towns, before they become another irrelevant restroom stop on the way to something better.