What happened to road trips?

We still love road trips.
We always road tripped with our kids and pop up camper when they were young.
Now we will fly across the country and rent a car to road trip new areas for a week or so.
We've have visited 48 states so far and hoping to see the last two on our bucket list next year.
When we were young, we thought we would spend our retirement years road tripping but due to some health problems decided to see as much as we can now while we are still mobile.
 
The ever expanding difference between the haves and have-nots?

Air fare would nearly double the cost of any of our vacations. We always drove.

Our only trip to Disney, everyone thought I was crazy not to fly. Cheaper and faster I was told. Well, it costs us $250 in gas was a lot cheaper than 4 plane tickets for $350 each. Not only that, but our stay in Disney was 6 nights no matter what the travel plans were. We drove to Savannah and spent the night. The next day drove to Disney and my kids were standing in front of the Castle at noon. Had I flown to "save time", we would have gotten to the Orlando airport at 7 pm. That's not saving time at all.
 
We took a road trip for a vacation 12 years ago, pre kids. We had a list of places we wanted to see, but we winged the entire trip as far as hotels we were staying in. It was 3 weeks, 8 states and 8 national parks, starting in Texas and going all the way up to Yellowstone and then back via South Dakota and Colorado. It was amazing and I hope we can do that with the kids. I have finally stockpiled enough time off, so maybe next summer.
 
Now we will fly across the country and rent a car to road trip new areas for a week or so.
We've have visited 48 states so far and hoping to see the last two on our bucket list next year.

We've done this too. We still have three trips before we knock off all 50 states. Well, three road trips and then an Alaska cruise. It's fun to look at the map and then just plan a trip. Even when we did a long weekend getaway, a trip to New Orleans, we rented a car one day and took a drive along the Gulf coast to knock Mississippi and Alabama off our list. We're saving the biggest road trip (we haven't been east of NY and want to do that corner of US and Canada) for after retirement, but hoping to have some of the others done in the next few years if family health cooperate so we can get away.
 


Growing up in the 80s, I went on road trips a lot with my parents. My friends also went on these trips.

Now, I don’t know anyone that road trips anymore. They fly everywhere and complain about how much it costs.
We're taking a road trip from Texas to Orlando for a New Year's cruise on the Disney Fantasy, and the same trip again in June for WDW.

But in general, I think with people working more & longer hours, there is less time available for road trips.
 
My family does road trips. My husband won't fly, so it's really our only option. Last year during Thanksgiving week we drove from our home in Arkansas to Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon. It was a wonderful trip that I'll treasure forever. We do long weekend road trips throughout the year as well.
 


I enjoy road trips but my bf doesn't mostly because driving is mentally exhausting for him. So even if its a 2-3 hour drive, he would be so drained and tired that it's no longer fun. And there's no way I can do a full road trip with me being the only driver...
Also, as everyone else said- time constraint. Personally if I'm going to take a week off, I'd rather fly to Europe and take another country off my bucket list than road tripping around the states.
 
I generally prefer road trips, but the unreliability of traffic has pushed me towards flying. I recognize that flying is no guarentee, but generally at least I can spend the delays reading a book or strolling thru gift shops. Almost every road trip we take these days over 6 hours encounters significant construction, accidents, or heavy traffic delays resulting in lost hours sitting in a car. The roads in my area (Washington, DC) are a mess and can't handle traffic on a good day, let alone a weather or accident delay. We just drove back from the northeast. A drive that took us 8 hours years ago took us 11. Its a 80 minute flight.
 
I generally prefer road trips, but the unreliability of traffic has pushed me towards flying. I recognize that flying is no guarentee, but generally at least I can spend the delays reading a book or strolling thru gift shops. Almost every road trip we take these days over 6 hours encounters significant construction, accidents, or heavy traffic delays resulting in lost hours sitting in a car. The roads in my area (Washington, DC) are a mess and can't handle traffic on a good day, let alone a weather or accident delay. We just drove back from the northeast. A drive that took us 8 hours years ago took us 11. Its a 80 minute flight.
I feel like I'm unlucky because every time I've driven through Atlanta it's been a hot mess of terrible traffic. Timing of course has a lot to do with it but that normally just can't be helped.

The last time we drove through Atlanta in god awful traffic on our way back from our actual road trip (that I mentioned earlier in the thread) we got hit from behind by a car that had been hit themselves. The car that did all the mess ran away. Yay...not really. It would have been worse for us but we had a luggage rack on the Explorer--that was crumpled up and damaged beyond use. The accident caused back frame damage to the Explorer too.
 
The road trips we always took were a week or two long on the road, different hotel every night or maybe two nights in one. But it was trips that there was lots to do and/or see all along the trip. Road trips through TN and up the east coast were always favorites. We have taken a road trip around our own state and south Louisiana too.

Although we drive to Orlando, I don’t consider it a road trip because from here to Orlando is the most boring drive ever. Nothing to see. On the way back we sometimes take a detour to Tampa or down to the beach. But mostly it’s just the way we get to our destination.

Next summer dh and I are planning to visit Wyoming. We will fly into Cheyenne, rent a car and then road trip around the state. So sort of a combo trip! Lol. We were originally going to drive the whole thing but it would stretch the trip to at least two weeks and that’s a bit long to take off work.
Just an observation but you might save a good amount of money if you rent the car in Denver and drive from there-its only about 90 minutes from DIA to Cheyenne, you will likely have a lay over in Denver to fly to Cheyenne and will end up spending less time in the flight business and more seeing the country driving from Denver.
 
Oddly enough I forgot about our road trip last Fall until the other day. Took my oldest to San Diego for grad school and drive with him, my wife and his girlfriend down. Everyone else flew home and I took detours to tiki bars on the way home!
 
We hate the airport/flying experience and love driving so our family of 3 road trip whenever possible.

We are in the Philadelphia area and so far we have gone as far south as Orlando (9 times), as far north as Acadia National Park in Maine, and as far west as Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
 
We are the opposite. Almost all of our vacations are road trips. I absolutely love it and the kids actually do pretty well on them. I find the extra time to/from the location kind of builds the excitement. My youngest has never been on a plane because we always drive. His first time on a plane will be for vacation next year when we go to Mexico. Since he was 4 months old he has been on some very long distant road trips...

Our road trips started when we moved from California to Texas in 2005 and we needed to come back somewhat often to spend time with family in California. Originally we would fly and then with littles it was hard to manage security and was pretty stressful. Then we decided one year to road trip it. We bought the kids some activities and they did great! We typically leave ultra early in the morning and they are pretty sleepy until about 10am or so. Then we start stopping every couple hours and let them out for about 15 minutes at a time. Then about dinner time we stop, eat, and then stay the night in a hotel. Usually the kids swim to get out some energy and we are in bed by 8pm to start again early the next day. Our trips are usually over 1k miles to 1.3k miles each way.


We have driven to WDW from Austin 2 times (once was in an EV), we took a DCL cruise out of L.A. and drove to/from that from Austin. We just went to Steamboat Springs, CO this past June. So my kids are unusual because they like the road trips. And I don't find the time to/from the destination as a waste we usually make it an adventure.
 
I'm sure this as been mentioned before but IMO there is a difference between a "road trip" and driving to a destination. We drive to Disneyland, about an 8 hours drive, but this is not a road trip. I have done road trips which to me means that you have multiple destinations along the route and stop and visit various things between those destinations. To me a road trip can never be accomplished if you fly to your destination. We could fly to Disneyland and save maybe 90 minutes - 2 hours of travel time and have the same trip.
 
I'm sure this as been mentioned before but IMO there is a difference between a "road trip" and driving to a destination. We drive to Disneyland, about an 8 hours drive, but this is not a road trip. I have done road trips which to me means that you have multiple destinations along the route and stop and visit various things between those destinations. To me a road trip can never be accomplished if you fly to your destination. We could fly to Disneyland and save maybe 90 minutes - 2 hours of travel time and have the same trip.

I agree with you. We do road trip because we stop at random stuff. Like one time to California we stopped at points along Route 66 and the grand canyon. The only thing is these things really aren't planned and we just do it on a whim. My last trip to WDW we stopped in Baton Rouge and got Beignets (sp?) for my daughter (which took us about 20 miles off course) and other stuff like that. We do make it into an adventure. I know people like you mentioned where they drive straight through and that isn't any fun. We stop and take in the sites even if they aren't necessarily worth seeing :)
 
We are the opposite. Almost all of our vacations are road trips. I absolutely love it and the kids actually do pretty well on them. I find the extra time to/from the location kind of builds the excitement. My youngest has never been on a plane because we always drive. His first time on a plane will be for vacation next year when we go to Mexico. Since he was 4 months old he has been on some very long distant road trips...

Our road trips started when we moved from California to Texas in 2005 and we needed to come back somewhat often to spend time with family in California. Originally we would fly and then with littles it was hard to manage security and was pretty stressful. Then we decided one year to road trip it. We bought the kids some activities and they did great! We typically leave ultra early in the morning and they are pretty sleepy until about 10am or so. Then we start stopping every couple hours and let them out for about 15 minutes at a time. Then about dinner time we stop, eat, and then stay the night in a hotel. Usually the kids swim to get out some energy and we are in bed by 8pm to start again early the next day. Our trips are usually over 1k miles to 1.3k miles each way.


We have driven to WDW from Austin 2 times (once was in an EV), we took a DCL cruise out of L.A. and drove to/from that from Austin. We just went to Steamboat Springs, CO this past June. So my kids are unusual because they like the road trips. And I don't find the time to/from the destination as a waste we usually make it an adventure.
I'm also planning a road trip from Austin to Orlando. In what city do you like to stop for the night midway? Thanks!
 
DH works for an airline. It costs me less to fly than to drive, even when I have to pay $8 per day to park at the airport
It often costs us less or the same to fly. I think it’s gas prices but also the Southwest Airlines & such that exist today that we didn’t have back then.
 
We also traveled a lot less back then. We are going to wdw for a short trip in Oct b/c I have a couple extra days off. I don’t want to spend 2 extra days in the car.
 

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