Planes, trains, automobiles - and boats. Each mode of transport has its merits, and its own unique character. After driving just shy of 6,000 miles, the Great American Road Trip - or its counterparts, the Great Canadian Road Trip and Great European Road Trip - is something every Road Warrioress really needs to experience at least once in her life.
I have a friend who hates to drive. Oh, yes, she's perfectly capable, licensed, clean driving record, and all that. She just hates doing it! Won't even drive to the supermarket, but has hubby take her instead. Long-distance road trips - at least one US and one European annually - she meticulously plans, maps, organizes. And hubby does all the driving. Obviously, she's not a Road Warrioress, despite being a very avid traveler. Guess it's a good thing opposites attract since hubby is decidedly a Road Warrior who loves to drive, even winding little one-laners along Italy's plunging coastlines.
My friend's perspective is totally lost on me. Just don't get it. More akin to her husband (except for driving on the "wrong" side of the road, which he handles with aplomb), I love to get in the car and go.
Doesn't much matter where. I've been known to take a left turn on the freeway - abrupt decision, no accident - and end up hundreds of miles from the originally intended destination. Or decide "I just want to get out of here" at the Laundromat Saturday morning, then pack laundry and kitties and take off, arriving home just in time to get back to work Monday morning. I simply love to drive. Love going places. Even when I don't know where I'm going, but just "follow my nose" to see what there is to see.
Love to fly. Love boats, even for a speedy trip on a lake or Long Island Sound. Love trains - one of my greatest adventures was riding the rails through China for a few months.
But driving a car is a completely different experience. Answering to no one, adjusting my route on a whim, stopping whenever I'm hungry or just to shoot a few photographs because something caught my eye. There's nothing like driving across Nebraska at 80 miles an hour, glad you can race past cow-stench, or sorry you had no idea there was such a spectacular bridge to photograph and could find no place to pull over fast enough to capture it.
Definitely, Road Warrioresses, take that road trip!
May your road rise to meet you - wherever you go!
Ann
Showing posts with label solo road trips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solo road trips. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
The Joy of the Road Trip
This time, it's a road trip. No TSA, no keeping other people's schedules, just footloose and fancy-free, as they say. It's a great way to leave whatever ails or irks you behind.
By the time I drove across a big bridge, I was smiling at river scenes and boat traffic below. By the second state-line crossing, I was grinning! Fall foliage in the Poconos is already a searingly beautiful flame color. Leaves actually sparkle in sunlight. Once I hit farmlands and the Great Plains, the harvest is almost all in. Colors of browns, beiges, and evergreen windbreaks surrounding farm buildings - along with brilliant glints of light off silver silos. (I could do without smelling the cows, however! A stockyard-full was particularly intense for several miles.)
Now it's the foot of the Rockies. There's some snow up there, particularly atop what Coloradans call "the Fourteens" - those 14,000 feet and up giants. Surprisingly, there's less fall color than back East! Mornings are crisp (to say the least) but the sun is brilliant and downright hot.
Before I left, friends were all in a panic. They love me dearly, worry about me. But I've lost count of the number of cross-country road trips I've taken. This is not even all the way across. No big deal to me.
But it made me wonder why so few woman drive solo cross-country, in foreign countries, or wherever it takes more than a day to get where you want to go. Probably fear, I guess. Perhaps time constraints. Definitely the sore butt after driving 500 or 600 miles!
Have you driven long-distance yourself? If not, why not?
Considering how wonderful road trips are, why not give it a go?
May your road rise to meet you - with freedom and pleasure!
Ann
By the time I drove across a big bridge, I was smiling at river scenes and boat traffic below. By the second state-line crossing, I was grinning! Fall foliage in the Poconos is already a searingly beautiful flame color. Leaves actually sparkle in sunlight. Once I hit farmlands and the Great Plains, the harvest is almost all in. Colors of browns, beiges, and evergreen windbreaks surrounding farm buildings - along with brilliant glints of light off silver silos. (I could do without smelling the cows, however! A stockyard-full was particularly intense for several miles.)
Now it's the foot of the Rockies. There's some snow up there, particularly atop what Coloradans call "the Fourteens" - those 14,000 feet and up giants. Surprisingly, there's less fall color than back East! Mornings are crisp (to say the least) but the sun is brilliant and downright hot.
Before I left, friends were all in a panic. They love me dearly, worry about me. But I've lost count of the number of cross-country road trips I've taken. This is not even all the way across. No big deal to me.
But it made me wonder why so few woman drive solo cross-country, in foreign countries, or wherever it takes more than a day to get where you want to go. Probably fear, I guess. Perhaps time constraints. Definitely the sore butt after driving 500 or 600 miles!
Have you driven long-distance yourself? If not, why not?
Considering how wonderful road trips are, why not give it a go?
May your road rise to meet you - with freedom and pleasure!
Ann
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