How Road Trips Are Good For Growth

I’ve been on a lot of road trips, and am convinced they’re good for growth. Whether traveling new highways or familiar ones, there’s something meditational about sitting for so long and not being able to completely zone out. My favorite time to drive is right before sunset when the light reminds me of how much wonder and magic is left to discover. 

There are many moments I vividly remember from road trips. While this morning, I didn’t remember my son asking for toast rather than a bagel for breakfast last night, I’m able to recall magic, epiphanies, and conversations had at forgotten coffee shops while on a road trip. Memories are more perfect in hindsight as well.

How Road Trips Are Good For Growth

On a (lone, lonesome) highway between Colorado and Virginia (maybe even east of Omaha), I realized I needed to end a relationship I’d invested a lot of time and emotion into. I was listening to The Secret Life of Bees (a great book if you haven’t read it), and I don’t know.

Something about windmills, swaying cornfields, and the story on tape helped me see my life more clearly. I realized I’d been working so hard to have one particular person love me that along the way, I’d lost love for myself. I realized he was using me, and needed me in a way that wasn’t good for me or any of my future selves.

Road trips are good for growth that way.

On another road, in an earlier time, I was heading deep into the mountains to spend the weekend with the same man. I wasn’t able to leave until after work, so planned to meet him there. It was dark, and city light had left the rearview mirror miles ago. The sky was clear, and I glanced at the stars. Ended up pulling over to marvel at how stars look in a truly dark sky.

There aren’t words to describe what infinity feels like, but looking at the Milky Way and being able to truly see the swirls and patters is something I’ll always be grateful for being able to experience.

I want to take Tucker and Robert to a dark sky place, while we’re here in Colorado. I want to see it again myself.

Seeing infinity helped me grow, and to believe in possibility.

In 1987, I was a freshman in college, and my friend Julie and I took a road trip. Not just any road trip, but one from New Jersey to San Francisco, making a U on the map with our destinations.

We had no cell phones, and not much money. But we were 18 years old, and had friends who let us crash on couches along the way. We drove to her grandmother’s in Virginia the first day, and as she hugged us goodbye, she gave us each $25. She’d met me for the first time the night before over a never-ending “have another helping” dinner and gave me – her grandaughter’s friend – $25 bucks. I’ll never forget that. 

We stopped at the Grand Canyon, and in Dallas. We spent a night sleeping in her car in the hills above Las Vegas. I’m a bit sad that digital photos weren’t a thing back then, but I do have a page in a faded photo album with cigarette package state stamps lining a page (each state marks – or did then, anyway – cigarette wrappers with a seal). 

On some highway on that same trip, her windshield wiper quit stopping at the edge of the window, so the driver had to catch the blade with her hand. It was pouring rain, and cold. Somewhere in Mississippi, a guy in a van held a sign out his window. We thought something was wrong with the car, and slowed down to get a better look. “It’s a picture of his penis!” I screamed. “Speed up!” We got off at the next exit. He didn’t follow us. 

That college road trip was supposed to include another friend of ours who ended up not coming at the last minute. I’ll forever be grateful for that, because that’s the road trip that cemented Julie’s and my now 30+ year friendship.

Oh, and the night with her brother in New Orleans asking for vampires to turn us in a graveyard didn’t hurt either. 

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Highways and lowways will forever hold magic for me. I no longer make road-trip mixed tapes, but do download an audiobook or some favorite songs to play while the light fades during my favorite time to drive. 

How do you feel about road trips?

This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post, with the prompt “Road Tripping.”