Get Off the Highway: Roadtripping on Back Roads

Roadtripping on the highway is like sailing on a cruise ship; you may be on the water, but you’ve never been further away from it. You might as well be in an airplane. So here’s what you do: Get off the highway and onto the back roads.

The purpose of a road trip is to experience the country you are traveling through, meet its people, see its sights, get lost in its strange tangle of byways. Every town is unique, but you’re not going to see that from the highway.

Don’t worry; you’ll get where you are going (though going without somewhere to get to is often more rewarding). It just might take you a little longer. But on a road trip, it’s not the time that is important, but the quality of that time.

Highways do not make for quality time.

So slow down, make a wrong turn, read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; you’ll discover that every town, every national park is a whole world awaiting your discovery.

While you are traveling back roads you will find places that are not on the map (or GPS), meet people who can tell you things that aren’t in the guidebook and witness events you would have otherwise missed.

You may jump in the Rio Grande in Yuma because, hey, that’s what everyone else in town was doing and it was hot. You may stumble across a chili cook-off in a town you’ve never heard of and find the recipe that changes your life.

But you’re not going to do either of those if you’re hard-heading it down the highway. So get off the highway and get some life in your road trip.