Definition of a Road Trip
A road trip is any trip that requires at least one stop for bathroom, snacks, and/or gas AND involves spending at least one night somewhere else.
Naturally, people have a variety of opinions, but there are some simple reasons for this definition. If you don’t have to stop in the middle, it’s not a road trip. It’s a commute. If you return home within the same day, it’s a day trip, not a road trip.
Road trips take long enough to require a driving break and last long enough to require travelers to spend a night away from home.
The ideal road trip lasts between 2 and 7 nights.
Road Trip Traditions
Road trips are America’s way of making memories together. Whether you’re planning a family reunion, solitude time in nature, or a bachelorette party, the road trip is the means of making it happen.
Part of the reason road trips are so memorable is that they allow people to experience the joys and the struggles of the journey together. Spending time together driving gives everyone time together and shared memories.
Road trip memories occur both at the destination and the journey to get there.
For every time the toddler asks “Are we there yet?” is a time your best friend reveals a huge part of her story or a time your high schooler opens his eyes in wonder at the magnificence of nature.
In 2007, four of my friends piled into my Honda Civic as we drove to a retreat for our campus ministry. This was eight years before I had a smartphone, which meant my navigation was entirely based on previously received directions and the occasional, turning into frequent, phone call along the way.
Fifteen years later, I don’t remember much about the retreat itself. I remember the road trip to get there very well. What should have been a 90-minute drive turned into 4.5 hours of 7 u-turns, 90’s Disney music sing-a-longs, an emergency bathroom stop after a giant milkshake, and dodging raccoons.
These kinds of road trips support the idea that the journey is more important than the destination.
Road Trip Food
The most popular road trip snacks are beef jerky, trail mix and twizzlers, but some travelers prefer veggies and hummus, anchovies and sandwiches.
You can check out this list of 200 of the most popular road trip snacks for more ideas.
People typically think of junk food when they think of the stereotypical road trip.
If your health-conscious, you obviously don’t have to follow those patterns. And you also don’t have to settle with just trail mix as a kind of compromise between nutrition and sugar.
With a little planning, you can prep or find convenient, creative, and healthy protein, carbs, and fiber for a road trip.
You can even cook on a road trip! We love to use the Hot Logic portable oven to make food from scratch while traveling.
You can find more detailed content about healthy road trip ideas to combat road trip hunger cravings here in one of our other posts.
Summer Road Trips
Road trips are most popular in the summer because of the long break from school.
The classic road trip typically involves the whole family, making summer the ideal season for road trips because kids are typically out of school.
The weather is generally nicer across the country, making any destination at least accessible and in many cases attractive.
Snow makes traveling dangerous in some parts of the country in winter months. North Dakota in February? No road trips for you unless you plan on traveling in a snow plow.
Montana in July? Much better.
Of course, in many southern states, the pattern is reversed, while the beaches are still very popular the heat makes it difficult to enjoy the outdoors. Try Georgia in the winter instead of the brutal heat and humidity of August.
Florida in August is brutal. The whole state is a sauna.
But if you go in December, the temperature and humidity are much less oppressive.
Family Road Trips
Road trips are often a family vacation because it can be much cheaper than flying with a larger group. It is a great way to have a budget vacation.
A family drive to the beach or National Park is a memorable low cost trip.
A family road trip can also be a drive to visit family. I know I grew up traveling 12 hours every year to visit my grandparents.
For some families, a road trip may mean driving five hours to the beach to see grandparents. For other families, a road trip means embracing adventure by always exploring somewhere new.
National Park Road Trips
National parks are excellent road trip destinations for the families that love exploration. A few years ago, my dad took a sabbatical from work and really enjoyed some of the national parks in the midwest.
National Parks offer educational experiences and programs the whole family can enjoy and incredible places, hike, kayak, stargaze or camp.
National Parks have a program for kids called The Jr. Ranger Program that allows kids to collect badges and do activities at most of the parks.
National Parks are popular destinations for Americans and visiting tourists. These are often bucket list items.
You can very easily find a national park in your state if you prefer a shorter road trip instead of a gas-sucking marathon. The National Park Service lets you search for parks by state, and every state has multiple.
What Do You Call A Road Trip?
The definition I typically use for a road trip is any trip that requires at least one stop for bathroom, snacks, and/or gas AND involves spending at least one night somewhere else. If you don’t have to stop, it’s not a road trip. It’s a commute. If you return within the same day, it’s a day trip, not a road trip.
Naturally, people have a variety of opinions on this one, but you’ll find that most people tend to agree on some common themes in road trips, typically about stops, destinations, and time spent both on the road or away from home.
How Long Is a Road Trip?
The length of the road trip is probably the most divisive. People tend to agree about needing to spend at least one night away from home to avoid it being called a day trip, but that still leaves a lot of gray area.
One strategy is to distinguish the “technical” minimum for a road trip from the ideal road trip.
A road trip that lasts a weekend could meet the definition of a road trip, but people might easily refer to the experience colloquially as a weekend trip.
So, a road trip can be as short as two days, but an ideal road trip would last three or more.
Are Road Trips An American Thing?
Road trips are an American thing. Europeans travel as much if not more than Americans, but gas (they call it petrol) is more expensive in Europe, and many European cities are not designed for heavy car traffic. As such, Europeans tend to use interrail (what Americans would call a train) much more often for leisure travel and sightseeing.
A common rugged example would be a European hopping on the interrail and spending a week or two sightseeing in different countries, staying at backpacker hostels along the way.
By contrast, American road trips involve people driving themselves to their destinations, meaning that train travel or any other public transportation use would not meet that definition.
Vehicles in America are also often larger and designed for long drives and multiple occupants. These large vehicles are less common outside the US.
That doesn’t mean Europeans can’t take road trips, of course, but many of the conversations on reddit, for example, about road trips in Europe are often being planned by people coming from outside Europe.
Why Are Road Trips So Popular?
Road trips embody our yearning to connect with each other, ourselves, and the environment by exploring something new.
That exploration could be as organic as spending time in nature or culture-based in meeting new people.
American movies from multiple genres hit on many of these points. Road trip movies range from the coming of age film Almost Famous in 2000, across character transformations in Rain Man from 1988, all the way to the delightfully stupid Dumb and Dumber in 1994.
None of these movies, good or bad, have to be your basis for evaluating the joy of your road trip obviously. With the right food, people, music, and destination, your road trip can be a meaningful and memorable experience.
You can find some tips and tricks for road trip planning here.
