When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I have seen several threads about folks taking long road trips and their SO not wanting to go along for various reasons. Let's face it sitting in the passenger seat can be pretty boring.
So I was thinking this thread could be a place to share some ideas of how you break up road trips and keep the right seat involved in the trip.
For us, I tend to be destination driven. I want to go from point A to point B. So, my wife and I have agreed on some basic rules for our trips. She is the navigator, the route changer, the photographer, etc. When she says she wants to stop, we stop. We also tend to limit the distance traveled to a tank of gas a day. Stopping when she wants to tends to stretch the day out, so this isn't much of an issue. we also look for deviations from the day in the car. We look for the Starbucks' state mugs. or decide to make an impromptu course change and small town stops.
My wife and I love going exploring. We look for old towns to visit, look at trip advisor to find places that might be entertaining or photogenic. For us it is the journey, not the destination.
My wife usually enjoys the trips but she just isn't in to "car stuff". So, we usually compromise and I let her shop and do the things she enjoys. It works out pretty well. On a recent trip to Europe I visited the BMW, Porsche, Audi and Mercedes Benz Museums and assembly plants. In return, she shopped in Paris. Guess who spent the most money?
We do it your way, OP. Wife is the navigator. We only go for a single tank, no more than 400 miles, frequently less. Stop frequently. She often books a hotel online via her iPad while we're in motion. She's afraid to drive the car, so that leaves me. Last trip was 6700 miles in 30 days. We leave again Sunday next!
My wife and I love going exploring. We look for old towns to visit, look at trip advisor to find places that might be entertaining or photogenic. For us it is the journey, not the destination.
Couldn't agree more on doing leisure trips being more of a journey rather than destination. I have no problem driving 6-700 Interstate miles per day when there are time constraints, but when this is not the issue we stay off Interstates, hit the state/county roads, the small towns you go thru, the rural scenery etc.
Find something interesting? Go see it, spend the time you want there as there is no time frame.
Besides that, the very best food is at these smaller towns....ya know, the Grandma's Cafe's.
If she's taking pics and navigating, you're halfway there!
We jump in the car and go. No plans, no reservations, no nothing, just fill in the blanks.
I would say stay in nice or interesting hotels, don't eat junk food, stop every half tank and get a quick stretch.
In LA, we stayed at the Marriott for $160. It was the cheapest in town, a great place, and of course had an in house bar and restaurant. Best Western around the corner wanted $200 a night, etc.. In Chama NM, we stayed in a cool little cabin for $75.
Here are the two links we used as templates for our East Coast and West Coast road trips in March and June/July.
My Girl planned a trip to the Tail of the dragon via skyline drive, devils whip,hell bender & the moonshiner to name a few. She planned it for us to stop at wineries & breweries at the end of the day.It was an awesome trip.
We will do 800-900 miles in a day, but stop to stretch, eat, bathroom break etc after about a half a tank of gas or if we see something interesting.
You "ain't" seein' much if you're doing that many miles a day.... stop and smell the honeysuckle and watch the ducks in the stream... makes a much better trip...
600,000+ miles in Corvettes
300,000+ miles in P-cars
1,000 miles a month in an old Ferrari
My wife and I download podcasts and audibooks that we are both interested in. Put them on a flash drive and listen to them. We also fight like a couple of kids once in a while. I'm sure you remember the routine when you traveled on your family trips and were always fighting with your brothers and sisters. We get over it though and have a good laugh.
You "ain't" seein' much if you're doing that many miles a day.... stop and smell the honeysuckle and watch the ducks in the stream... makes a much better trip...
600,000+ miles in Corvettes
300,000+ miles in P-cars
1,000 miles a month in an old Ferrari
I agree, we have done the long drive trips without stopping which are not as much fun as discovering things along the way
My wife and I both love taking trips in our C7 and before that in our C6 starting in 2006. I am referring to 4-5 day "destination" trips of 500 to 900 miles one way. Popular with us are Corvette-centric trips: Corvette Corrals to watch the Corvette Race team and the Bash at the Corvette Museum.
My wife prefers to be the passenger but is willing and competent to take a driving stint. Fine with me!
What has worked for us to make these trips fun:
- my wife enjoys and is good at locating good hotels at good prices and locking in reservations well in advance (critical for trips to races and to the Bash).
- I do the navigating by adding all stops (restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues) into the Nav system in advance. Avoids us getting fatigued or hungry, etc.
- we stop about each 2 hours and cover no more than 500-600 miles in a day.
- Identifying our lunch and dinner stops and entering into Nav system in advance is a recent addition for us and helpful. Having an enjoyable meal (we are particular) while taking a break from the road does wonders. We take our dinner stop before reaching our hotel to further break up the trip and avoid ending the day hungry. For trips that we repeat each year, we have our favorite restaurants. Have used YELP to find really good local restaurants.
- I did all I could to sound deaden our C7; really helps on longish trips. We both enjoy the "Bridge" channel on Serrius radio and find having great music a real plus.
The above are simple steps and involve some planning, but they work for us!
My wife leaves it all up to me while she plays card games or reads books on her tablet. We run mostly back roads or the lesser used interstate routes just to keep the scenery interesting. We do tend to stop at the older small towns (lots of them on back roads) to check out the mom & pop diners and antique shops. Old Route 66 has a ton of them.
We make very few hotel reservations; we tend to use the Choice Hotels chain. Sometime between noon and three we look ahead at the towns coming up, and using the Choice app, we (the wife's job) pick a room for the night.....system works well, we have never been without a room. But our fall back system when we are way back in the woods, we first stop at a diner for an early dinner or late lunch and speak to the waitstaff...lots of good info available here.
This is a great thread! Lets hear more! Just finished our 1st road trip ever and it was freaking amazing!
-Is there a better spot for us to post road trip info on CF? It seems to me that limiting it in a C7 thread is cheating everyone out of a great discussion.
-I agree that one tank of gas/day in a C7 is about right unless you are on it really hard and you might need close to 2 tanks. But limiting to 400-500 miles or less per day is a must to make the road trip enjoyable where you do more than just drive.
-Finding great lunch spots was difficult for us as we had better luck with great dinner spots. So anytime we found a great lunch spot we were really happy. The Griddle in Winnemucca, NV was surprisingly one of my favorite lunch stops.
-Take lots of pictures... I need to get better at this. Lucky for me we had lots of amateur photographers and a few professionals so I learned a lot and feel that I missed all kinds of great photo ops.
-The back roads can be crazy fun to drive... Way more fun then the Interstates. I have always been about being fast point to point. Big mistake IMO... will work harder to find the road less traveled in the future.
-Driving with a group is a lot of fun... Way more then I thought it would be. Roll with multiple like minded vehicles when possible.
-Stop and add fun activities along the way. Never be in too much of a hurry to enjoy where you are at now, especially if your location is iconic, historic, beautiful, unique, etc. We took a hot air balloon ride, hiked, drove on a track, dragged down a drag strip, met with locals, and enjoyed multiple scenic spots.
-Google is your friend. Research to find great roads, great stops, great food, great activities, etc.
If you have a Google connected mobile device with you on the trip check out and post us your route in a cool map format. Below is Day 2 of my 11 day road trip in July. I was not even aware my phone was compiling and tracking my trip.
Google Connect works well for phones; I use "Base Camp" to program my Garmin GPS (free download from Garmin). The learning curve is a little steep mainly because the U-tube videos are for an older version. But once you master it, it works well. I just finished a 5K+ trip using this system. I programmed each days trip the evening before, marking all the POI's I wanted to stop at in the program. Nice thing about it is the file stays on your computer and can be emailed to others to use on a late-model Garmin.
The second part of the road trip covered back roads across OH, PA, & CT. to Maine Via the coast going up and back roads down through the mountains....awesome trip.
Road Trips
My wife usually enjoys the trips but she just isn't in to "car stuff". So, we usually compromise and I let her shop and do the things she enjoys. It works out pretty well. On a recent trip to Europe I visited the BMW, Porsche, Audi and Mercedes Benz Museums and assembly plants. In return, she shopped in Paris. Guess who spent the most money?
