I love a good road trip – I can’t tell you how many hours I spent as a child reading or writing in the backseat while my parents drove us to various vacation spots. To me, road trips are the epitome of an American childhood.
Yet I meet so many people who hate driving, who prefer to fly everywhere. I understand the appeal of course – you can fly across the country in hours, while it takes days to drive that distance – but the value of road trips is exploring what lies in between.
Too often people make life about taking shortcuts, about getting places as quickly as possible. But to me, the real point of life is embracing what happens when you don’t take shortcuts.
Whenever we get lost on family vacations (note: always), we never say that we’re lost. We call it “taking the scenic route,” and it feels so much more fun that way. Once we got so lost trying to get to a restaurant outside of New Orleans that we ended up in Mississippi. It wasn’t planned, but it was an adventure, and that was what made it enjoyable.
My challenge to everyone this week is to enjoy a drive. It doesn’t have to be a real road trip – I know most of us don’t have time for that. It can be your morning commute, or a quick trip to the mall. Rather than thinking of it as a means to an end, think of it as a journey.
You learn so much about the city and yourself when you take “the scenic route.”
My husband and I love road trips, no better way to really know a city 👍