During an election year, the only way to escape a non-stop barrage of campaign controversies is to orbit into outer space. However, it may make it all sound a bit more interesting and understandable if you know something about US sites much in the news.

Some of the most talked about happen to involve very travel-worthy locations, places you may be lucky enough to have already visited or might in future. Unfortunately, many politicians have not. Here's our non-partisan description of those very familiar to us.

As some readers already know, we are neither Democrat nor Republican, not even Independent. That's all a bit too regimented mainstream for us. And as our Navajo and Apache friends like to say: "We want our own stream, an unpolluted one."

Taking a page from our ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson's book, in desperation we created our own exclusive tongue-in-cheek "Emersonian Non-Conformist Party". We agree with his appraisal: "A man is not a man lest he be a non-conformist."

Probably the one site most discussed as oil prices escalate and new sources are sought is ANWR. Exactly where is it? What is it? Have many of the people who insist on drilling or not drilling there have ever actually seen the place?

ANWR ¿ Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ¿ is a destination worth adding to any Alaska itinerary, but in-depth exploration of this roadless slice of scenery is definitely for the adventurous, those intrigued by the truly off-trail.

My visit to this remarkable wilderness scenery was in winter, but its permafrost climate offers an abundance of snow-capped peaks at any time.

Getting there isn't easy. You have to make an effort. But one needn't trek in for a glimpse at this pristine site, but booking passage on a regular flight out of Fairbanks to Fort Yukon will give you some idea of the landscape.

There are increasingly few places in the world that remain totally unspoiled. ANWR is one of them. Lured to such sites like a moth to light, I'd called Fort Yukon from home before a winter trip to Alaska and asked the temperature.

"Seventy" was the answer. No need to question further. I know they meant seventy below zero! Yet it turned out to be only a snowbound 30 below zero on arrival. En route the small plane stopped at a native village to unload supplies and passengers were not allowed to get off.

"We're trying to limit any possibility of alcohol entering the village," confided the pilot. Just watching locals loading up their dogsleds while dog teams rested was like a scene from a Jack London film.

Only days before I'd hiked out in deep snow across a frozen river beyond Fairbanks to watch a tribal elder making just such a handcrafted sled and enjoyed visiting with him. He'd told me that on a visit to the Navajo Nation, he'd been able to converse with Indians there using his native Athabascan language.

Bush charter flights lead into ANWR for the truly adventurous with tour companies offering river rafting, hiking on bird and wildlife watching tours. But there are no accommodations, so it's strictly camping.

Easier and somewhat tamer was my bush flight to Anaktuvuk Pass in nearby Gates of the Arctic. This last Nunamuit village of inland eskimos is accessible by direct flights from June through August, but has no road access.

Years before venturing into that Arctic region, I'd followed the long-haul, unpaved road that stretches between them north from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. Winding along part of the 800-mile-long pipeline that reaches from Prudhoe Bay down to Valdez had definitely been an exciting assignment.

Originally very restricted and closed to unauthorised travel, it has since become accessible via package tours your travel agent will know about.

That first trip we stayed overnight at Coldfoot, a one-time gold miner's boom town. Autumn's chill winds made the triple-paned windows appreciated. Built on stilts because of permafrost, it was wonderfully frontier.

So was our Prudhoe Bay accommodation . . . comfortable but typically Arctic with a row of plug-in battery chargers for vehicles so they would start when winter arrived. There was already a thin coat of ice on entrance ramps and Brooks Range en route was shrouded in snow. Come winter, the sun would never rise above North Slope's horizon for 56 days.

Yes, life along the pipeline remains dramatic, constantly graded, well-maintained, the oil lifeline stretches more than 400 miles from Livengood north of Fairbanks across the Arctic Circle to Prudhoe Bay's oil fields.

Before geologists penetrated this wild, untamed landscape, the world's largest migrating caribou herds had it completely to themselves.

Today, contrary to early conservationists' fears, caribou continue to be viewed in abundance. It's a surprise to see herds of them proceeding under pipeline segments elevated for their passage. Environmentalists lobbied for 554 animal crossings along the pipeline.

The route carries several names . . . the Dalton Highway, North Slope Haul Road, Trans Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) Road and Yukon-Prudhoe Highway. Whichever you choose, it is an engineering marvel built around the clock in five months at a cost of $125 million. On yet another assignment, we drove a different segment of the 800-mile pipeline route, all of it uniquely scenic, from Tok down to Valdez 250 miles away. That port has one of Alaska's most spectacular mountain settings.

Next most talked about subject is oil from shale. What is it? The western traveller driving through mountainous areas in parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah or Montana will find themselves admiring scenery containing it.

It's sometimes easily visible in places such as Rifle, Colorado that we've driven through since childhood. Near the railroad route stretching from Denver westward, up near summits of some rocky slopes on the north side of the tracks you can actually see the dark line stretching along as though painted.

That's the more obvious form of oil shale. Less obvious examples, some below the surface, exist in places such as East Texas and even Louisiana.

An oil company actually had a plant near Parachute, Colorado extracting it and its company town has since been turned into a popular retirement area.

If you drive through states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado and Montana, you'll soon realise you're in coal-mining country. Some very popular area resorts are built along man-made lakes created when mines were closed and land redeveloped for tourism.

The US has the world's largest coal reserves and that land is the centre of another much discussed oil source. Oil from coal? You better believe it. How do you think Hitler fuelled his tanks and planes during the last days of the war?

It's called the gasification of coal and is a subject we've personally heard a great deal about for longer than I can remember. A friend of our family, Dodge Freeman, was vice-president of Peabody Coal Company and after World War Two was appointed to a Truman Commission.

The commission was formed to study the feasibility of creating gas from coal and an experimental plant built in in Louisiana, Missouri. But as Dodge so often proclaimed, it was only to prove the proven. I.G. Farben and Standard Oil had patented the process years earlier, and Hitler used it. Coal is a hard carbon which can be liquified.

Dodge used to speculate it would be worthwhile expense-wise when gas reached $3 a gallon (it's currently $4.39 locally). But he also lamented that during his time on the commission, oil companies began buying coal companies. It was a subject I heard him discuss ¿ and lament about ¿ so often that I can repeat his expertise by heart.

Because my father was once involved in the research laboratory of a major oil company when I was very young, I've probably spent more time around refineries than most.

And when my Uncle Jim retired to his "Gentleman's Farm" in Southern Illinois because of a bad heart, a major oil discovery was made on the land he leased out to one of the big oil companies. It was always part of our visits there to go out and watch his three oil wells pumping.

In those days, when prices were low, Aunt Nettie used to joke it kept her in cigarette money. That's definitely no longer true.

Listening also taught us a lot about wildcatting tactics and how local land owners would be told it looked like a dry hole, then the oil company would cap the well. Until prices went up, and voila, it turned out not to be dry after all and began pumping.

What about much discussed wind power? Travellers will notice acres of hillside wind-generators outside Palm Springs, California, places such as central Illinois, T. Boone Pickens' vast Texas project and even County Cavan, Ireland overlooking the northern border. You can't miss them.

So keep your eyes open travelling across the US this election year. Depending where you are, some of the most talked about controversies may be along your route, making the campaign more interesting.

Politics, of course, is a particularly riveting, never dull subject in my home state of Illinois where four governors have gone to prison in my lifetime and a fifth is currently under federal scrutiny.

Not unlike a soap opera, it's a place where ballot boxes from Chicago's "River Wards" mysteriously "go missing" when election results are close. Always predictable, it is never dull.