Getting lost in the country, on the road is the best way to find yourself. You can hop in a car at any time — you can move fast enough to be continually entertained, and yet it moves slow enough for you to breathe the air between where you were and where you are going. Road trips are the best way to feel the world. Here’s how to do it right:
Find The Dream Location
Where are you going? You don’t have to know, but solidifying the feeling you want your trip to offer you will give you a place to start. Do you want to intermittently hit the beach and drive along rolling green farmlands bursting with amber-dusted sunlight and warmth? Or does the escape from winter woes in Miami take you a little closer to home? You could tickle the entire eastern seaboard, headed up the Florida-95, along to Savannah, the oldest city in Georgia, and up to Charleston, Richmond, and Washington D.C. It’s a dream trip along white sand Miami beaches, historical highways, and swamps chock-full of American secrets.
Getting the feeling for what sort of wind you want to latch your kite to will help you decide if you want to fly across the ocean and visit every Scottish moor or if you’re better off climbing the red rock deserts of the American Southwest, finding the caverns, and exploring the super blooms when they strike.
Try Local
The best part about road trips is that you get to try the local specialities, whether you live near the Mammoth Cave Systems of Kentucky or the Peddler Village Strawberry Festival, there’s usually something just a car ride away. Exploring that local flavor, touching the things nearby helps you understand a place better, it offers a tangible insight into a world you might’ve only known the surface of.
The best part of a road trip is getting out of the car. Touch the places you go and take yourself on an adventure, not to a destination.
Leave for Awhile
Road Trips can be dirt cheap, which leaves a little money for a longer vacation, heck, you could even work from the road. Leaving for awhile, quickly, quietly, onto the road, into the wild wonderful adventure that the world has to offer is magical. Take your time. Enjoy where you’re going, your time getting there, and the entirety of your adventure, instead of just rushing through or flying over. You are going on vacation; don’t take stress with you, don’t push yourself forward, just meander in a general direction, enjoy the people, the places, and the air.
Prepare for the Unexpected
There is a good amount of preparedness that you need before meandering out into the nothingness. Calling ahead to see if there is a stopping place before you head out and making sure there are roads you can go down are the basic needs of your trip. Then a quick trip check with your car and a small neighborly bribe to get someone to water your plants will help you evaporate without killing your plants. You can also plan out little side trips, like a bike ride along the beach on a bike-only trail, which is infinitely safer than biking on the road. You could try a trip to the vineyards or the mountains. Try food that you’ve never had or go same day surf and ski. Planning outside trips will help you put a drive behind your road trip. A wild adventure is great, but there has to be something you want to see or do on your trip — make sure it gets done.
Road trips help you go out on the road, get a little more local and more bang for your buck. Prepare for it, let yourself go out for awhile, and just explore.