The (lost) Roadtrip?
an art form
One can’t help but wonder what the golden age of The Road Trip might have looked like, when the highway and not the internet was the lifeblood of the nation and took people to places they wanted to explore … in the physical world, not the digital one.
Now, if someone experiences a road trip, it’s in the form of YouTube or some Hollywood movie, the idyllic windows down and cruising with a breeze in your hair and the radio blaring. Funny, I can’t actually think of an easier experience than a real-life road trip.
You have a car, don’t ya?
What you do is pull up Google Maps, in whatever State or area you find yourself in, and find a section you haven’t visited much, or ever.
Rocket science, I know.
I can assure you there are more parks, rivers, small towns, oddities, and historic sites within a 150-mile radius than you could visit in a weekend, if you never stop driving.
If you take a few minutes to do your research, you will find those oddities all scattered around your road trip path, dotted here and there, places and things that others only watch on a screen. You can meet new people, see new towns, drive roads, and see views that relatively few other people see behind locals.
While others are too busy, or lazy, to experience life, the gift of life and all it has to offer, you and a few friends or family can make memories that have no price.
Rainstorms are just part of the fun. When you’re on a road trip, nothing lasts that long; as in life, you drive through the bad stuff just about the time you start to wonder what’s going on.
Traveling all those miles, they fly by with the chatter about endless topics, both deep and shallow, and you end up somewhere new before you’ve hardly left the driveway. I’m still unsure if it’s the destination or the journey that makes a road trip a road trip, probably both.
A road trip both hurries you up and slows you down at the same time. Rarely does reality meet expectation or the plan, but that’s part of the process. You learn to think on your feet, be flexible, present in the moment, and enjoy the beauty and diversity of the people and spaces around you.
Maybe it’s an old, worn-out antique shop that has endless layers of refuse and dust that seem to stretch on forever, where you just can’t make yourself stop. It’s like the turning point of the road trip, at some point you know you have to turn around and high tail it home, but you get to the point where you don’t want to stop, caught up in the simplicity and joy of just being.
I am personally partial to the odd museum and nature center that I can find on a route. To be drawn into the beauty of some new landscape that you’ve never laid eyes on, to learn of some history that shaped the place you call home, yet has been buried in time.
Like the road trip itself, these new experiences explode, overwhelming the senses in a good way. In a way that no Instagram story or YouTube video can convey. The sights, smells, emoitions, conversations.
The best part is that all you had to do was “say yes” and strap in. That’s it.
I, for one, find it easy to play the part of the frontiersman or pioneer, heading out over the rolling hills into the unknown. Totally unaware and full of anticipation at what might show itself over the next rise. All part of the road trip.
It’s probably something that was left in us by our forebearers, who were much harder and more adventurous than we are. We think we are the brave ones, armed with some coffee and beefsticks, heading out to meet whatever comes next.
The only bad part about the road trip is heading back home. I guess it’s not all that bad, but of all the parts, it’s the one that sneaks up on you the quickest. The closer you get the heavier all the cares of that life you left for a day or two comes charging back.
No escaping the real world.
That’s ok, there’s always the next one.