Ten days. More than 2,800 miles. Eleven states, not counting that wacky District of Columbia. Four overnight stops. Enough cheap coffee to stew a yak.
Only one (no kidding) fast food stop. A plate of southern stroganoff in Asheville with pork medallions, cilantro pesto and a heapin’ pile of goat cheese grits. (Heaven in a bowl.) Streams. Feet in streams. Kid in streams. Barefoot with that icy, cold water tingling your feet. Smooth, slippery river stones. Picnics and Smoky Mountain air. Hiking. Chipmunks. Skipping stones. More cheap coffee.
Metro stations. Yankee beaches. Cousin’s wedding. Dogs who eat Swedish Fish. A tall green lady in New York harbor. The world’s slowest gas pump (still finishing the job as we speak.) And a vehicle that looked like the Clampetts paid a visit to “Sanford and Son.”
There’s nothing like a good, long road trip. Few better ways to experience large expanses of a great country like ours. How else can you be high atop a mountain ridge one day, watch pandas the next and then find yourself breathing in that wonderful Atlantic Ocean breeze on the pristine beaches of upper Long Island.
From forests of trees in the wilds of North Carolina to forests of skyscrapers in New York City. I think you can find bears in both.
Road trips are not merely a longwinded way to get from point A to point B. Rather, they’re a way to experience every single thing between point A and point B. Travel has become simply about how quickly you can get somewhere. How smoothly you can pass through airport security. How lucky you’ll be if your bags arrive with you. How poetically you’ll curse if your flight gets canceled. Generally, how miserable an experience you can have before you get where you’re going. You often need a vacation to relax from getting to your vacation.
Travel has become an exhausting, utilitarian experience — a bland, uninspiring relocation from here to there. It’s the equivalent of stale salt-free crackers. Zero flavor, no nutritional value and a chore just to chew.
But a road trip! Oh, my, a road trip is the way to experience everything. All the senses get a workout. Even your ass going numb in the car seat seems like a gift from above. “It happened again. Both cheeks, totally gone. See? Touch ‘em. Yippee.”
When was the last time you experienced a bathroom in an airport that looked like a herd of sheep just used it? But you’ll find roadside bathrooms like this all over the country. And for some reason I love them, just as much as I hate them. “Did you see what someone drew on the door of the stall? Could you even bend your legs around like that?”
How else could you experience the twists and the turns of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and all the amazing little rally-car roads that connect to it? I have never had so much fun driving in my life. One minute I’m zipping around a curve in a rush of adrenaline and the next I’m bracing to go over the side of a cliff as I frantically jam down on the brakes. If only I had a Porsche.
Maybe you’ve ridden in a New York taxi through commuter traffic on the beltway one early morning workday. But you just haven’t lived until you’ve driven it yourself, dodging potholes, out-of-control Towncars, and some little dude from Queens who ironically thinks driving 25 mph in that mayhem will help him live longer. It’s exhilarating. Like flying a spaceship through a meteor shower.
“You all right?” my wife asked.
“Ask me in a minute if we get through that broken refrigerator in the middle of the road.” I can’t remember ever having to use the parking brake … WHILE DRIVING!
Yip-eeeee!
A road trip doesn’t get you to the experience. A road trip IS the experience. You get there and you forget what it was you wanted to do. A road trip forces you to slowdown. To look out the window and explore with your eyes. To smell the smells (one minute it’s wildflowers and the next that indescribable fragrance of the New Jersey Turnpike.) To pull off in the middle of nowhere and have a picnic. To see some vista that makes you realize your life wouldn’t have been complete if you hadn’t shared it with your family. To watch your kid with her feet in a stream pretending to fish like she’s Huck Finn.
Did you know that the sound of an early-morning waterfall has the same effect on the body as 10 days worth of cheap coffee? I do. No airplane will ever give you that. But a road trip will. And if you just survive the beltway drivers and the mountainside cliffs, you might even write home about it.