Love road trips! Love them. Back in my youth (not quite crossing the Bering Strait days, but a while ago) all we had was AM radio. Downside, being in parts of the country where all you heard were revivalists preaching about eternal damnation and how you could avoid it by sending ten dollars right now; upside, discovering a station you couldn't get back home that played great blues or rockabilly. Then we got cassettes, then multi-disc changers, eight, ten, twelve speaker sound systems and you could set your own playlist; then came books on tape, and now the endless selection of podcasts you mentioned, plus the playlist from your phone. Yeah, there can be boredom, but you've got so many more antidotes than ever before. And if you really want to have an amazing trip that isn't quite a road trip, but isn't a plane either, travel by train, especially an overnighter with a sleeping car, is an absolute blast, and a taste of a bygone era.
Oh, one last bummer you didn't mention - gas station toilets. I'd rather find some bushes and sing very loudly to scare off bears than try to survive a visit to one of those hazmat sites.
I don’t know that I’d equate prehistoric peoples crossing the Bering Strait to the Griswold’s Walley World adventures but, hey, what do I know about other people’s vacations? I love road trips! Getting up before dawn, hot coffee in travel mugs, fast food when you are just soooo hungry! not to mention changing landscapes and a great book on tape! I get all nostalgic about road trips. Just love them!
Just returned from our first road trip in like forever (thanks to COVID). It was both emancipating and scary. What do we pack? Where should we stop to pee? Sightsee along the way? Buzz in and out of slow moving traffic or stay in our lane? We actually had to relearn the whole routine. An adventure in itself!
When I was in college I lived in Minneapolis but went to Kansas U to college. Back then, the trip between the two involved freeways, towns, gravel roads,dirt roads, detours, nothing was easy. 12 hours or so. Fast food was rare, basically McDonald's. No air conditioning and lots of windows in my Pacer too increase the heat. You young uns have it easy.
In the most pared-down version: Bad: 1) Hours of mind-numbingly repetitious roadside views (I wouldn't dignify them as scenery). 2) Being tailgated by impatient a-holes who want to get to their destination yesterday. 3) The most tasteless, uniform and overpriced food in the Western world. 4) Tin-walled cheap motels with minute soap bars and shampoo bottles and pre-digested breakfast bars. Good: 1) Exchanging the dull routine of home for the stultifying routine of driving 8-10 hours a day. (OOPS that should be Item 5) above). 1A) Seeing some incredible parts of the Country that are so different from home. 2A) Meeting some interesting people in the pool or breakfast bar. 3A) Gaining an appreciation for the diversity of our world and country and people, and a new perspective on "home".
Love road trips! Love them. Back in my youth (not quite crossing the Bering Strait days, but a while ago) all we had was AM radio. Downside, being in parts of the country where all you heard were revivalists preaching about eternal damnation and how you could avoid it by sending ten dollars right now; upside, discovering a station you couldn't get back home that played great blues or rockabilly. Then we got cassettes, then multi-disc changers, eight, ten, twelve speaker sound systems and you could set your own playlist; then came books on tape, and now the endless selection of podcasts you mentioned, plus the playlist from your phone. Yeah, there can be boredom, but you've got so many more antidotes than ever before. And if you really want to have an amazing trip that isn't quite a road trip, but isn't a plane either, travel by train, especially an overnighter with a sleeping car, is an absolute blast, and a taste of a bygone era.
Oh, one last bummer you didn't mention - gas station toilets. I'd rather find some bushes and sing very loudly to scare off bears than try to survive a visit to one of those hazmat sites.
I don’t know that I’d equate prehistoric peoples crossing the Bering Strait to the Griswold’s Walley World adventures but, hey, what do I know about other people’s vacations? I love road trips! Getting up before dawn, hot coffee in travel mugs, fast food when you are just soooo hungry! not to mention changing landscapes and a great book on tape! I get all nostalgic about road trips. Just love them!
Just returned from our first road trip in like forever (thanks to COVID). It was both emancipating and scary. What do we pack? Where should we stop to pee? Sightsee along the way? Buzz in and out of slow moving traffic or stay in our lane? We actually had to relearn the whole routine. An adventure in itself!
When I was in college I lived in Minneapolis but went to Kansas U to college. Back then, the trip between the two involved freeways, towns, gravel roads,dirt roads, detours, nothing was easy. 12 hours or so. Fast food was rare, basically McDonald's. No air conditioning and lots of windows in my Pacer too increase the heat. You young uns have it easy.
In the most pared-down version: Bad: 1) Hours of mind-numbingly repetitious roadside views (I wouldn't dignify them as scenery). 2) Being tailgated by impatient a-holes who want to get to their destination yesterday. 3) The most tasteless, uniform and overpriced food in the Western world. 4) Tin-walled cheap motels with minute soap bars and shampoo bottles and pre-digested breakfast bars. Good: 1) Exchanging the dull routine of home for the stultifying routine of driving 8-10 hours a day. (OOPS that should be Item 5) above). 1A) Seeing some incredible parts of the Country that are so different from home. 2A) Meeting some interesting people in the pool or breakfast bar. 3A) Gaining an appreciation for the diversity of our world and country and people, and a new perspective on "home".