5 Tips For a Great Road Trip

Follow these 5 tips for a great road trip, and learn to love the open road.

Are you planning a road trip this year? I personally love to take a road trip, when there’s time. When I think of a road trip, my mind immediately goes to a lonely stretch of asphalt — always two lanes, not the freeway, and incredible scenery to guide the journey. But for others, a road trip is a dull ride down the freeway while the kids are asking “are we there yet?” Oh wait, they’re on their phones not even looking out the window. Sigh!

We all know that driving is far more dangerous than flying, not to mention the risk of speeding tickets. But the biggest worry on a road trip is often … boredom. Most of us have taken a dull road trip, maybe several of them. Most of us can describe a monotonous stretch of road that we endure rather than enjoy. If you’re planning to drive to your destination this summer, you may be thinking of those experiences and dreading all that time in your car.

But a road trip doesn’t have to be miserable. Done right, it can be the best, most memorable part of your trip. Getting there really can be half the fun!

Just use a few (or all) of these 5 tips for a great road trip.

1. Accomplish Small Goals

A successful road trip is a lot like a successful diet. You may want to lose 20 pounds, but that should not be your short-term focus. Why not? It’s too far into the future. It’s better to focus on losing 1-2 pounds a week. Accomplish a little at a time, give yourself a few victories along the way, and eventually you’ll reach your desired weight.

Now, let’s translate that to our road trip. Let’s say you’re driving from Chicago to Los Angeles. That’s a lot of driving, more than 2,000 miles. But St. Louis is much closer, under 300 miles. Forget about L.A. for now, and focus on St. Louis. Stop and see the Gateway Arch, even if you only take a few pictures before moving on. The point is, you’ve made it to St. Louis! Now you can focus on your next destination.

You simply break down (in a good sense) a long trip into its component parts to make a long drive feel more manageable. It’s a simple trick that really works. If your time or money restricts you to just one of these 5 tips to a great road trip, this by itself can make your road trip a lot more enjoyable.

2. Slow Down

Several years ago, I took a rushed road trip to Seattle. My parents had offered to buy my old car if I’d bring it to them. I didn’t have much time, and drove non-stop from Michigan to Seattle. It took 36 hours, including a couple of roadside naps along the way. I promised myself I would never do that again!

The best road trips usually take some extra time. Maybe it’s enough extra time to get off the freeway and take a scenic route. Just enough to go into town and find a great local restaurant, some great food you can only experience in this one place. If you have time, you could even stop for an extra day or two, and explore cool places along the way.

Longer trips allow us to explore more, see more, and take more memories home with us. Places we’ve never given much thought to can surprise us, because we took the time to discover them. Slow down and enjoy the journey.

3. Travel Without Reservations

I’m usually a meticulous planner and rarely travel without hotel reservations. They make a lot of sense when traveling on a schedule. But let’s face it, reservations can be the enemy of spontaneity. If you discover a place you’d like to spend more time in, your reservation 150 miles down the road may be the only thing stopping you from sticking around.

It can be a little unnerving to travel without a reservation. There’s a chance you may not find a room and will need to move on. But unless you’re going to a busy tourist town during its peak season, it doesn’t happen all that often. Even if you embrace travel without reservations, you can still have a back-up plan. Make reservations you can cancel without penalty, should your plans change.

4. Use a Map, Not Just the GPS

Your car or phone’s GPS remains an amazing piece of technology. GPS can track your location from satellites to within inches of where you are. It gives (mostly) accurate directions to nearly anywhere. GPS isn’t perfect, but its failings remind us how good it really is, how accurate we expect it to be.

GPS is great for directions. It’s handy for estimating the time it will take to get somewhere. We put in a destination and follow along. But GPS does not easily replace a good map, not on a road trip where getting there is half the fun.

Maps serve a fundamentally different purpose than GPS. Maps give us the lay of the land, allowing us to easily see places that might be of interest along the way. We can do something similar with GPS, and with an incredible level of detail. But when you zoom out on a GPS, the detail goes away and you won’t see much of anything. Meanwhile, a paper map’s detail is consistent throughout. It’s easy to look near and far, and thus becomes a great tool for planning (and revising) a road trip. It doesn’t replace GPS, just complements it. I recommend the Michelin North America Road Atlas.

5. Take an Alternate Route

Since its completion, the interstate highway system has fundamentally changed the way Americans get around, mostly for the better. You can hop on a freeway (I-90) in Seattle and take it all the way to Boston without a single red light. Everything a traveler needs is available at the end of an exit ramp: “Gas, Food, Lodging — Next Right.”

The freeways are so easy to use that travelers often bypass much of what our country has to offer: great towns, scenic beauty, and a somewhat slower pace. But if you look around, you can find some easy detours. In South Dakota, Badlands National Park is just off I-90. I remember driving through the Badlands with my parents when I was young, before the interstate was open. In Washington State, I-5 will take you straight to the Canadian border. But you’d be missing the incredible views of the San Juan Islands on Chuckanut Drive. It only takes an extra 30 minutes.

Of course, most road trips also run in both directions. Wherever you go, you’ll eventually have to come back. There’s no rule that says you need to return via the same route. I like to come back a completely different way and give myself some different views.

Final Thoughts

These 5 tips for a great road trip aren’t the only things to consider. Your budget and time will obviously factor into the equation. If you have kids, it’s another story altogether. You’ve got to keep them entertained and hopefully engaged in the trip. If you’re heading to Walt Disney World, they may only be interested in the destination. But if you can find great fun along the way, it could just be the memory of a lifetime — for them, and for your entire family. My childhood road trips with the family weren’t always perfect, but they inspired my love of travel.

During the pandemic, many of us were looking for a safe means of travel and took to the open road. While airlines and interstate highways have changed the way we travel, I can only hope that more of us can rediscover the joys of a great road trip.