PHOENIX -- When Claire Baker drove from Los Angeles to Taos, N.M., with her fiance and 8-year-old son in 2001, she popped in a compact disc about Montezuma Well and Montezuma Castle -- a stop along their route in Camp Verde, Ariz.

Once there, the threesome was well-versed in the site's history regarding the prehistoric Sinaguan people who inhabited the area and built the five-story limestone dwelling in 1125 A.D.

"It's like having your own private tour guide at your own pace," Baker said, talking about the self-guided tours produced by Walkabout Audio Tours, based in Sedona, Ariz.

In the midst of terrorist threats and a bad economy, with travelers likely seeking a local excursion by car rather than a long flight out of the country, such self-guided tours are one way to make road trips fun.

"It's definitely a good idea. It gives people a great history lesson if they're unfamiliar with the area," said Lance Burton, spokesman for the Arizona Office of Tourism.

"Since Sept. 11, there's been a noticeable decrease in people traveling nationwide and in Arizona," Burton said. "We've noticed that people are taking shorter trips to destinations closer to home."

That's where these tours could come in.

Since 2000, Walkabout has created nine Arizona tours that let drivers and hikers listen to a CD or tape while they explore attractions from the Grand Canyon to the lesser-known sites of Sedona and northern Arizona.

"(Travelers) are ignorant of the cultural and natural history that surrounds them," said Patrick Houlihan, an anthropologist and the managing partner of Walkabout Audio Tours.

The CDs and tapes also allow travelers more flexibility, without needing to plan trips around the set schedules of most traditional tours.

The self-guided tour has been around for about 20 years, said Bob Magee, president of Ride with Me Tours, based in Bethesda, Md. His Web site carries about 100 different tours across the country, such as one that drivers can listen to on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson.

The approach to Ride with Me Tours is a little different, with tours specifically geared for travelers tackling long stretches of highway.

"It makes the time go by," Magee said. "The interstate can be enormously boring -- just mindless miles of concrete stretched out forever."

Both kinds of tours, however, aim to entertain travelers, even younger ones.

"They were interesting to me as they were to my 8-year-old," Baker said. "Montezuma's Well and Montezuma's Castle aren't terribly well-publicized, but it was fascinating. We had the background information, which made it much more interesting."

It's this kind of curiosity that the Arizona Office of Tourism is hoping to encourage in Arizonans who may not know that a vacation could be had in their backyard.

"After Sept. 11, we've reshifted our whole marketing campaign to target the media, magazines and TV in the southwestern area," Burton said. "There are plenty of destinations."

For Houlihan, these trips could be much better if travelers knew what they were looking at.

"If people are only getting the visual experience, and not the natural, historical and cultural background knowledge, I think they missed a good reason for visiting the area," Houlihan said.