When I first found out my husband couldn't make our early summer road trip to visit my brother who'd moved to the Southwest, I got scared. I've never driven more than a couple hours from home. How could I possibly go 2,000 miles alone--oh, and with our five kids?!

Determined to see the trip through, I took all the normal precautions: bought traveler's checks, had my car checked out, bought new tires, and got a money belt. But I needed more.

Knowing a "virtual" trip might make me more comfortable with the real thing, I got out my paper roadmap and logged on. After dividing the total miles into manageable increments that would bring us to sensible overnight stops, I began my search. Amazing what a city's name brings up. "Phoenix" retrieved a whopping 2,208 sites! Turns out I didn't need to look past the second, "Destination Phoenix."

With eight hotel links complete with pictures and full descriptions, Destination Phoenix also included a simply drawn map that took no time to download and had hotels marked--a print-out-and-take-along perk for easy from-the-freeway hotel finding for a road-weary mother and her five hungry kids.

Enthused with my virtual city find, I got a little more creative with our next destinations. On the main search page for "Excite," there are a number of subheadings.

A quick click on the Travel" whisked me away to a new page, City.Net, where I could insert a destination and come up with descriptions ranging from food and lodging to airports and things to do. That's where I found a link for a valuable resource, Travel Web.

Travel Web is meant as a reservation scheduler for hotels and airlines. Links take you right inside hotels, where captioned photos give you a sense of already being there. Any services, on site restaurants, and AAA approvals are listed. After using Travel Web to decide on hotels, I logged off and made my reservations by phone. I may be Net savvy, but giving a credit card number over the Internet makes me leery.

With the help of Excite's Travel by City.Net, and my own searches for city names, I virtually visited our second overnight stop and came up with a site maintained by the City of Gallup Convention and Visitors Bureau. This website held a plethora of information and visual aids that transported me to the Navajo Nation, and piqued my curiosity toward side trips along the way.

The email contact proved helpful too. When an old paper map showed Kit Carson's Cave and I couldn't find more information, I sent e-mail asking, and received a courteous, well-researched response. The Navajo Nation had respectfully requested that the cave be removed from maps and no longer publicized, since too many visitors had disturbed the locals' peace.

We may have missed that secret cave, but site links pointed me to Window Rock, Arizona,which we didn't make specific plans to visit. But the website's pictures and descriptions had intrigued me enough that I printed out a map from one of the Gallup Bureau pages and took it along.

When we neared the area in real life, it all felt vaguely familiar, making me comfortable enough to venture off the routed path, using the map to find reservation road 12 off I-40, for a spur of the moment excursion. The two-lane highway twisted through geological wonders and allowed us the rare glimpse of wild horses, heads bent to graze in the lush, wind-rustled grass alongside the road. We slowed to minimal speed, marveling that the horses, grays and chestnuts, and pintos arrayed with windblown manes, could jump right out in front of us if they wanted.

They didn't--and thanks to our web map (reservations roads aren't well marked) we arrived at Window Rock just before sunset with a sense of appreciation for nature in our hearts.

A torch burned in the center of Navajo Veterans Memorial Park at the base of the formation, beckoning us toward the huge red rock cliff that stretched toward the sky. A sense of eerie peace fell over us as we looked through this vast rock window to the twilight heavens, feeling as if we were watched in return.

My photographs are beautiful, as were those on Gallup's website, but they could never do justice to this natural wonder to which the Native Americans must feel strongly connected. And as dusk turned to dark, we felt humbled and fearful, mere humans in the shadow of mother nature's power.

We made our way back to the car and drove away, past the red-painted administration buildings which are the headquarters of the Navajo Nation. Then we hit highway 264 heading southeast toward Gallup and after only moments, crossed the state line into New Mexico, the time skipping ahead an hour. My son read the web map we'd earlier marked with our hotel, and we arrived at the Best Western we'd first visited on the web, for a peaceful night's sleep full of nature-inspired dreams.

The rest of our trip is a blur of visiting and convening with nature, made better--and safer for a woman and kids traveling alone--by the virtual trip we took before we left.

Although most of the places we visited in real life far exceeded our expectations from our first forays on the web, a note of caution is in order. Remember, the Internet is a powerful advertising tool, and those who design web pages are experts.

The one example from our trip that taught me this lesson was the Petroglyph National Monument outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. The web write-up made it glorious and grand, touting sheer rock cliffs emblazoned with murals from ancient times. But when we arrived in person it was mediocre and time- consuming, as my photographs depict.

We laughed, wondering if this open-to-the-public area was where those ancient peoples' let their kids do graffiti, the rock drawings so primitive and disappointing we questioned their authenticity. Next summer we're planning a trip into Wyoming. Whether my husband comes along or not, I'll take a virtual trip first, and be prepared for anything!

Other helpful traveler's sites:

• Excite Travel by City.Net Maps (Get a map for any location)
• Arizona Central

• Walnut Canyon National Monument
• Meteor Crater, Arizona
• Montezuma's Castle (an Arizona Central Page)
• Deming, New Mexico, Luna Mimbres Museum
• Deming, New Mexico, City of Rocks State Park