Road trips are interesting—especially when you have an unplanned itinerary. To live for a few weeks with a fixed intention, or end point and have the intervening time as an unwritten journey is magical.
Some might freak out at the prospect of heading into a town without a hotel booking and nowhere to sleep, however, that is an adventure in itself.
My husband and I just spent 5 weeks travelling the US. We arrived in Seattle and stayed for five days, doing some speaking and other work. After that, we jumped in the hire car and headed for Canada. From that point on, our itinerary was open. We landed back in LA a month later after 7000kms of driving, having traveled through BC Canada, Washington State, Oregon and California.
On the road, you think you may like to spend some time in a location, but when you arrive it’s not what you expected, so you drive to the next one instead. Often we would drive through a town looking for some lights and hope a kind innkeeper would give us a room.
In a journey such as this, you find some amazing locations, meet some incredible people and learn something about yourself in the process.
10 Road Trip Lessons
1. The more remote, the more fun the trip is. I love cities, but getting to remote places, climbing waterfalls, hiking mountains and experiencing rare moments of complete quiet adds something to your life you can’t get in cities.
2. Meeting people is fascinating. Hearing others’ stories and being inspired by them is priceless. I hope to share some stories of the people we met in my Creative Community posts in the next months. http://www.elainefraser.co/blog/creative-community-amanda-viviers/
3. Wasting Time Can Be Fun. Sometimes you get lost on road trips—even with a GPS. You find yourself on side roads leading who knows where. As long as you’re heading in the general direction of where you need to go, detours can lead to unexpected delights.
4.There’s Freedom In Unlocking Timeframes I hardly looked at my watch for four weeks as we travelled with the sunrise and sunset. As a photographer, my husband is keen to capture the most beautiful parts of the day. As long as we fitted in with the locations and light, we could do what we liked. The freedom to go where you want, when you want makes you feel free. Time expands and becomes less of a driver in life—even if it’s only for a few weeks.
5. Stop and Smell The Roses This is a cliche, but so true. We drove out to a tulip farm and spent a couple of hours admiring these beautiful blooms. The colours and shapes were a kaleidoscope of joy.
6. Meditation Is Good For The Soul Sitting on a cliff top, mountain top or under a waterfall waiting for the right light gives you time to be still. Aside from the occasional clicking of a camera, or the changing of a lens, the only sounds are from nature. Being alone with your thoughts and pondering life, God and nature is not something we do in our everyday as much as we should. Meditation is good for the soul and road trips provide opportunity for that.
7. Break Some Rules I’m a rule keeper. I hesitate to cross on the red signals and if there’s a sign saying ‘Do Not Enter’—I probably won’t enter. My husband, however, tends to tread his own path in getting the shot he desires. Sometimes we cross fences or boundaries and it feels naughty to me. He usually does it with a smile on his face. Being chased by a ranger or warned off by a local, happens occasionally, but stepping out of the comfort zone has given us some incredible adventures. (Disclaimer: we don’t do anything illegal!)
8. Comfortable Shoes Are Essential This last trip I wore high heeled boots on the plane trip. When our bags didn’t arrive for three days, I walked around the city for several hours in them. They are great boots and quite comfortable, but not meant for hours of walking. I lived in hope each day that our bags would arrive and I could get into my comfy shoes. In the end, I bought a pair of flat shoes that were like slippers-amazing! When my bags arrived, out came my all purpose walking shoes and icebreaker socks-aahh the relief!
9. Go Somewhere New Some people go to the same places year after year. I do too. I usually go to Dunsborough in the South West of our state every year, however, when doing a road trip— especially in another country—it’s great to tread new paths. Discovery does something indefinable in you. Seeing a place for the first time opens up places in your soul. Crater Lake in Oregon was one of those places on this trip. There was still snow and the road around the lake was closed, so we took off with our back packs and hiked around this most amazing place. It was followed up by a hike behind a waterfall in the nearby region later that day. Breathtaking!
10. Walk, Don’t Speed Past Take time to walk the trails and streets. That’s how you get to know a place. We did a lot of kilometres on this trip, but every day we took time to walk, to slow down and breathe. Isn’t that important in everyday life too?
