Roadtripping 101 (I truly love this country)

October 21, 2025 through November 3, 2025, I drove from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Miami, Florida. And back. 3218.50 miles. Returned in time to vote!

With the issues surrounding cancelled flights and lack of air traffic controllers fresh on our collective minds, it seems to be a good time to talk about road trips. During a particularly long stretch, I reflected on my first several road trips. In 2007, my mom and I moved cross country, Pennsylvania to Utah. Hard in more ways than one. It wasn’t just a road trip, it was a herculean undertaking.

It would be 2019 before I would next venture cross country, Las Vegas to Lake Placid via Denver and Chicago, down to Philadelphia, Amarillo, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, and back to Vegas. Before that trip, I scoured travel sites for tips on less stressful travel, implementing a bunch of ideas that simply made Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond richer but didn’t help me at all.

The 2019 trip taught me a great deal about traveling by car in these United States. When I (thankfully) moved back to Pennsylvania from Las Vegas in 2022, I applied what I had learned three years earlier. Which made that second trip much more fun. And 2019/2022 in turn made this road trip downright pleasant.

If you’re considering driving to family events (or bowl games!), here are my tips.

Take fewer clothes.
(Optional) Know the difference between way stations and away stations.
Even if you’re young and don’t need a lot of sleep, limit driving to “five or six hours a day” when you map your route.
Route at least an hour every day off the highway.
Paper maps!
Keep a trip diary.
Leave your anger and prejudices in a box on the kitchen counter.
Take fewer clothes. And bring only necessary snacks.

Take fewer clothes

The worst advice I received from travel sites in 2019 centered on how to take lots and lots of clothes on a road trip. I spent a couple hundred dollars on vacuum packed inserts for my big suitcase, with the idea being I would pack two days of clothes in one of those bags and transfer it to my carry-on, with the bags doubling as laundry hampers.

Nah. Stupid idea. And expensive. You think you can predict what you will want to wear two days in a row. But Mother Nature rarely obliges. I cannot tell you how many times I ended up taking my entire big suitcase into a hotel, even if it were a one-night stay only, because I had guessed wrong.

Use the “way versus away station” concept instead. You’ll stay saner.

And, buy laundry detergent sheets. They’re flat. You can pack a couple of them in your carry-on to use as needed. Most hotels will have a laundry room. Much easier to do laundry once a week than it is to lug a ton of clothes all over creation.

Know the difference between way stations and away stations

When I undertake long trips, I differentiate between places I am staying for only one night and destinations where I can spend a few days. I call those one-night hotels my way stations. They serve solely as a place to eat a good dinner and sleep.

If you are headed over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, you may not be able to schedule “away stations,” those places where you camp out for two to four days.

But if you are able to turn that trip to watch the TCU Frogs or Tennessee Vols play in a bowl game, or if, like me, you can tack on a few days at the end of a conference, you’ll enjoy the trip more if you can soak in a new place, or a favorite old place, on your way home.

I sleep better on those nights when the next day is unplanned, when I can walk a boardwalk or explore a national park. I research my “away stations” a bit, not extensively, but enough to know what I could do on my lazy day.

Occasionally a way station will become an away station. During this most recent road trip, Jekyll Island, Georgia was a one-night stay that will bring me back in the future. Speculator, New York is one of those “way stations” that makes me return over and over to upstate New York. Yours will be different. Keep your eyes peeled. You never know when you’ll fall in love with a place you never knew existed.

If you can incorporate these two different sorts of hotel stays into your travel plans, you will come home tired, but with stronger memories.

Limit driving to “five or six hours a day” when you map your route

I plan my routes with the aid and assistance of Mister Siri. I will put in e.g., Gettysburg to Miami. Mister Siri generally gives me a choice of three or more routes. You can either plan your driving dates around your itinerary, or vice versa. For me it’s easier to say, “I am traveling from 10/21-11/03,” and map accordingly. You do you.

I know, for example, that I hate I-95 anywhere within 25 miles of Baltimore and Washington, DC. And I avoid I-81 at night. I’ll choose routes, therefore, based on those criteria.

Then I play around with distances. Driving to Miami, I limited myself to two nights. First stop was Charlotte, NC. Second stop, I wanted to be on or near the ocean but not too far off I-95. Not Hilton Head (too expensive). That choice of Jekyll Island for night #2 was perfect.

All three segments were approximately six hours according to Mister Siri. The first leg to Charlotte? 8-1/2 hours. Second leg was six hours, almost exactly, which gave me time to enjoy the beach in the afternoon. Final leg to Miami was miserable and nearly did me in. It was not six hours. Closer to nine.

So route with six hours, expect seven, and don’t be upset if it’s 8+.

Remember too that Mister Siri does not plan for lunch or potty breaks or fillups or Starbucks or scenic overlooks. Nor does Mister Siri correctly anticipate traffic patterns.

Route at least an hour every day off the highway

Caveat: Make the off-highway travel towards the end of that day’s leg. Odds are high that Mister Siri will route you off-highway because an accident has completely shut down the interstate. The leg from the Pensacola area to Chattanooga had a single hour planned as off-highway, but a horrific accident resulted in over 100 miles on Alabama’s back roads. I didn’t mind it. Beautiful scenery.

If Mister Siri throws you one of these unplanned detours towards the beginning of a travel leg, you can replace the off-highway route at the end to make up time. In the case of my Alabama detour, despite multiple refreshes for fastest route, Mister Siri kept me off the highway for most of the leg.

There’s a reason for this travel tip.

If you only drive on the highway, you will only see billboards and commercial nonsense. America exists and thrives on its state highways and county roads. That’s where you’ll find the quirky hamburger joint or a local coffee place.

That is also where you will bump into the most interesting people, people who will open up to you in a heartbeat.

It’s important to spend some time every day not trying to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible, but as rationally as possible.

Paper maps!

Take paper maps! Even on interstates, there will be (not may be, there will be) stretches with no or very poor Internet-WiFi-phone signals. If you are solely relying on Mister Siri, you may find yourself in an uh-oh moment.

I was disappointed in AAA before this trip. I could not find a way to order their standard paper maps. It looks like they want you to print out letter-sized maps from their Web site. I am following up on this, because… no

(And yes, I’ve been there, done that multiple times, where suddenly Mister Siri dies and I feel helpless.)

Keep a trip diary

I take a spiral-bound notebook with me for note-taking. Things I always record: Daily mileage; stops (gas, food, overlooks, whatever); names of people I chat with and their addresses if the conversation gets really interesting; notes about places or events or traffic or hotels or food. Your list will assuredly look different from mine.

If you’re traveling with children or teens, perhaps this can be their task. If your family has specific interests, you could make it a game to track things you see, such as funny texts on billboards (schools, churches, synagogues, restaurants), or catchy business names (especially if you’re a writer!), or school mascots.

When you’re safely home, you can scan this. But do keep the paper version. It’s surprising how much my old trip diaries mean to me.

Note: If your trip will last two or more weeks, I recommend our travel calendar product. We will turn your itinerary into a comb-bound daily planner.

To the right you can see the Make Things Happen travel calendar (day planner) I took to Munich, Germany for a conference in October 2023. I bound in pages for every day of the week, along with flight, hotel, and car rental information, the conference schedule, appointments I'd made for meetings.

If my phone died, or if something went wrong with T-Mobile's international data (calling) plan, I wouldn't be lost.

For a quote, please contact me. "Quote" because it depends on how many copies you want and what's involved.

Know yourself, know your family

These tips apply for solo travelers, as well as for trips with friends or family members. If someone likes to hike, map only four or five hours of driving per day so there’s time for that activity. If there’s a specific type of food or restaurant, route to include it.

Get input from everyone who will be in that car with you. I learned the hard way that when planning an itinerary, it’s a bad idea to have your fellow travelers say, “Whatever you want to do is all right with me.” Believe me, it won’t be.

Once you’re on the road, stops that are for the benefit of someone not you? Remind them that it’s coming up. Let them take the lead for that activity.

Know how long a driver—you, your partner, friends, or young adult children—can last without becoming cranky. Not just driving. Sitting in that car or SUV.

I will never forget one trip from Houston to Gallup, New Mexico when I was little. My dad could go twenty hours without sleep. He would drive three or four hours, my mom would drive an hour or so. While my mom was driving, my dad would sleep. Soundly. While my dad was driving, my mom could not sleep (nor can I sleep in a car).

He therefore did not believe in stopping very often. During a rare stop in the middle of West Texas, my mom crawled under the car. She said she would only come out if he promised we’d stop at a hotel at the next town so we could all sleep. My dad never, ever planned twenty hours without a stop again. Heh.

So yeah, know yourself, know your family.

Leave your anger and prejudices in a box on the kitchen counter

Yes, I will grant you, there’s good reason to be angry in this era. In fact, I would be surprised if you’re not angry at a great deal of the rubbish we deal with every single day. So much of our agency has been stolen from us. Whether corporate layoffs (yea AI!, not), or the orange guy, or stress from trying to make ends meet, or… fill in the blank. We are not living in a peaceful age.

But once the last suitcase is loaded into your car, make a point of shutting off current events. Clear your mind. At night in your hotel room, watch an Eagles football game or Ghosts. Avoid MSNBC (or Fox, if you lean that direction).

My route on October 21 took me through Catoctin Mountain Park. It hit me while driving: There’s no telling how much longer we (in general) or I (specifically) may be able to travel freely. From that point forward, I absorbed every sight, every sound. I reveled in conversations with perfect strangers. I took in all that our magnificent country offers.

That’s not “exceptionalism” by any means. We’re simply luckier than we realize. Our abundant natural resources, the blessings of diversity, a strong sense of community (in most places)… Ask refugees seeking asylum in our land. They will tell you how lucky we are.

I made a point of not discussing politics with those strangers who crossed paths with me. Astoundingly, although traversing the back roads of West Virginia, Virginia, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, I saw very few MAGA hats. I observed zero houses decked out with Trump flags.

Yes indeed, there were other political statements, and I will cover those in additional travel posts. The South was not the walking advertisement for MAGA that I expected to find.

I listened to people. Got them talking about their families, their dreams, their wishes. Laughed with them over silly things. Sat with an older woman helping her husband grieve the death of his son. Followed conspiratorial directions regarding sneaking into a closed National Park, and when I exited, whispered the same tips to new arrivals.

And not once did we talk about Trump or Biden or DC.

It’s funny. Shortly before the final edit of this essay, I read John Pavlovitz’s post I’m Devastated By America, So I’m Getting Out. I co-sign every single thing he said:

Get out of your head. Get out of your phone. Get out of your house. Get out of corrosive relationships.

We build impenetrable barriers and then wonder why we are a divided nation. On your next road trip, do your part to unbuild a wall or two.

Take fewer clothes. And bring only necessary snacks.

I hate AI. Every time I’ve written “take fewer clothes,” Microsoft’s AI has tried to revise it to “bring more clothes.” No! A million times no.

Also, go easy on the snacks. You really need to stop every 1-1/2 to 2 hours. Even if all you do is walk around the car and do ten jumping jacks.

Not only will you have more room in your car (and more room equals less stress), you will also enjoy picking up local snacks. Pull over at a farmer’s market if you see one. Or on one of those back roads, buy munchies at a mom and pop store. Worst case scenario, you shop at a local Publix or HEB. Break up the monotony of driving and minimize oversnacking.

Concluding remarks

The above works for solo travelers, couples, families with kids, and friends.

If you are a solo traveler—especially if you’re a woman—you will have to trust your gut if you feel uncomfortable in a situation. I’ve rarely encountered those uneasy sensations. When I do, I move on and don’t question my instincts. Most of the time, people can be more approachable if you’re a solo traveler. They’ll talk more openly.

Additionally, I do not recommend taking a firearm along. Laws regarding transport of firearms across state lines are complex. Last thing you need is a run-in with law enforcement.

If you’re traveling with a dog or cat, please check hotel rules and make all reservations in advance. You will also have to plan space for their comfort and safety in your car.

I often find myself listening to the advice of my dad and my mother’s brother (Uncle T.A. was a Houston police officer) when driving. If a car tailgates too closely, or if a car passes then slows down and repeats that a couple of times, or if you are finding yourself boxed in by two similar cars, pull over on the shoulder and wait about five minutes. It is absolutely worth the wait not to be in a precarious situation.

I’ve also repeatedly mentioned hotels as my accommodation. That’s on purpose. You may be an AirBNB afficionado, and if so, have at it. When I’m roadtripping, I prefer the consistency of hotel quality, knowing what I will get and not having to guess. I like President Obama’s praise of Hampton Inns in 2019, when he said he likes knowing where the light switches are. 100%!

But you do you. Roadtripping is about you having fun, about you seeing our fabulous and imperfect country, about you getting out of your comfort zone and hobnobbing with people unlike you.

All of the above? The preferred Denise methodology.

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