The Unlikely Roadtrippers

My family took road trips a lot when I was a child to visit family and friends. We covered territory from Florida to California and about halfway up into the northern states during many summer breaks. I still remember eating at roadside diners and the souvenir trinkets I would pick up along the way. And my dad popping over the counter NoDoz pills so we could make it to the next town while my mom folded and refolded maps as our guide.

Recently, my husband, daughter and I took off on a road trip from California to Colorado to move my daughter to grad school. It was an ambitious undertaking for a group whose tolerance level for long car rides is low. I had been watching so many people on social media use their ‘remote work’ situation as a free ticket for road trips throughout the US since they could work anywhere, so I thought we should give it a go.

We took off with all of her stuff in the giant luxury SUV we had rented for the journey following the path of the carefully planned route I had mapped out on Roadtrippers.com. I am a planner and just winging it wasn’t an option for me. We didn’t stay at fancy hotels. It was about the journey, not the stay. It wasn’t a logical path and certainly not the shortest that I planned, but it was the most rewarding in its off-the-beaten-path curiosities.

But it was the unplanned stops that resonated most with me. Such as the roadside stop in Utah where we witnessed wild horses and the little hole in the wall Mexican restaurant in Nevada with the best green sauce in the history of green sauces where when the server found out my daughter speaks Spanish, insisted on speaking to her only in Spanish so she could practice. And gambling with my daughter for her first time (and winning) in a cheesy casino while taking advantage of the free drinks.  And the joy of meeting people that were so knowledgeable and passionate about the history of their environment we could not stump them with any question about it.

We marveled at the mountains, valleys, rivers, red rocks, and the arches shaped by millions of years of wind, water, and ice. The giant rocks balancing precariously made me feel that at any moment they could come crashing down, but somehow they stay on their perch as they have for many years. It made me think about how precarious our world can be and our place in it. We may be a relatively new country, but we are an old land.

Witnessing the engineering marvel of the Hoover Dam puts everything in perspective. When people want to work together for the greater good they can do it, even during a depression. Clearly, COVID had taken a toll on many small businesses and restaurants along the way. It is a sad byproduct of this crisis, but at some point, a new entrepreneur with big dreams will hopefully take their place.

There is something about getting out of our own environment and seeing new things and meeting new people that is good for the soul. It gives us perspective. Particularly when getting off of the beaten path and out of the big cities. It made me so happy to see my daughter staring out the window for hours at the scenery instead of at her phone. Social media, misinformation, and the small-mindedness that swirl around us constantly can wear us down over time.

Our road trip won’t soon be forgotten or the people we met along the way and experiences we had. And thankfully, we didn’t kill each other in the process. I look forward to taking a different path home when grad school is over and she makes her way back to California. So if you get a chance, hit the road. It will do you good. More new adventures await.

“A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies, and adopting new viewpoints.” ~Wilferd Peterson, American Author

The Balancing Rock, Arches National Park, Moab, UT