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The sun is hot and yellow, gas is cheap again, the fun's gone out of flying, and America, proud and resilient, beckons anew. Citizens, it's time for a road trip. Pick your road, any road: the ''holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road,'' to quote from Jack Kerouac's guidebook, though good luck plugging those into MapQuest. It might be better to try, say, I-95, that nice fat highway that loosely hugs the Atlantic coastline. The highlights of any road trip, of course, are the pit stops for food, and -- on paper at least -- I-95 should offer a cornucopia: Maryland crabs, North Carolina barbecue, Virginia ham, Georgia boiled peanuts. Yet as we're all sourly aware, Interstate exits rarely, if ever, yield memorable culinary pit stops. Without strenuous preplanning, road food is almost always bad food, sad food, chain food, clown food. So what's a spontaneous road tripper, equipped with a functioning palate, to do? Here's one line of advice -- pertaining to Virginia travelers seeking native fare like Brunswick stew or chess pie -- worth considering: ''If the tourist does not find the Virginian foods along the highway, he should knock at some farmhouse door, register his complaint against American standardization, and be served after a manner that conforms to the ancient rules of hospitality.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]