Travel Poll: Road trip!

[GilliC]

What is the most memorable road trip you've taken?

What made it memorable?

[Deleted]

I did a one month road trip while living in South Africa (there was one short flight).

Drive from Cape Town to Semongkong, Lesotho --> small island off Maputo, Mozambique --> Johannassburg --> flight to Botswana (Okavango Delta) --> Victoria Falls, Zambia --> Bulawayo, Zimbabwe --> Johannesburg --> Cape Town

A lot of things made it memorable, too many stories to share! But I do still have the distinct feeling several times when I was in remote locations (especially Semongkong), thinking about how big the world is and how much more that I want to see and experience and those feelings continuing my passion for travel and learning.

I recently planned a trip to London and realized I'd have 2 extra days so polled ML about adding on a side trip to Paris. Most people said it was a good idea but there were several responses saying that 2 days isn't enough to properly explore Paris so I shouldn't do it. I think that goes against my whole travel philosophy! I never really have enough time to properly explore anywhere for weeks on end, but that's not going to stop me from trying to get a little taste of as many places as possible.

My South African road trip solidified that travel philosophy for me.

[frlcb]

Before kids we did the Baltic and it was amazing - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Our favorite part was the hill of crosses

With kids we just did a 3 week one this summer - Atlanta to Charlotte to DC to Boston to Portland to bar harbor to Quebec City to Montreal to Burlington to Philadelphia to DC to Atlanta. It was fabulous.

[Deleted]

Drove from Barcelona along the coast to the Cabo de Gata (south eastern tip) then west along the coast and inland through Jaen to Madrid.
It is memorable because it was a bit crap. The English have destroyed the coast of Spain with tackiness.

Best road trip was in Iceland where we got the 4WD stuck on a snow covered mountain and had to try and move it. Several hours later we got rescued by an Icelandic man who spoke no English and hauled us out with his monster truck. Best £50 ever spent.

[rupertpenny]

I don't really road trip. I hate driving and ever since I became pregnant with my daughter I get insane carsickness on any drive over 5 minutes.

In college fraternities would organize road trips to away games and charter busses and everything. That was fun because it was basically just a moving bar. That is the best road trip kind of experience I've had, although it isn't really ever going to happen again haha.

[GilliC]

@wandering, my most memorable is also in SA and Mozambique! Though the bulk of the truly memorable part was in Mozambique!

We rented a car in Johannesburg and planned to drive to Tofo Beach in Mozambique. The trip across South Africa was fine, but things started to get interesting as soon as we reached the Mozambique border.  It was the beginning of a school holiday, and there were huge crowds at the slow land-border crossing, so we spent hours queued up with all the other drivers, killing time and trying to stay cool.


Waiting in the queue, still nearly a mile from the border

By the time we made it across the border, it was getting quite late, and we had a long drive to where we had planned to spend the night. It was getting dark by the time we reached Maputo, but we foolishly decided to try to continue farther north. Somewhere on the northern outskirts of Maputo, we were waved off the road by someone in a police uniform. We'd been warned by someone at the border not to hand over licenses or registration materials, since some officials will demand a bribe to get it back. Presumably this guy and his two cohorts (dressed in camo and carrying AK-47s) were not on official business and were not pleased that we were making the extortion difficult. He kept demanding to see all of our documents and saying that we were going to be arrested and never allowed to leave Mozambique, but refusing to take us to a police station to discuss the matter. We were terrified. Eventually he seemed to give up, waved another car off the road, and let us go.

About a mile down the road, we got flagged down by another police officer. This time XH just handed over the documents because we decided we'd rather pay a bribe than deal with all that again. This officer was wearing a name badge, asked us where we were going, and handed back the papers saying that it was quite a drive ahead of us. He also seemed genuinely surprised when we mentioned that we'd just been stopped a mile earlier.

We were so rattled by the situation, that we gave up the idea of reaching our original stopping point and just wanted to get off the road as soon as possible. We ended up staying at the first local roadside motel we found in the middle of nowhere. It was definitely not a place used to seeing foreigners, and there was a huge language barrier, but the people running it were incredibly nice and even roasted a chicken for us for dinner.

The next day we continued driving up to Tofo, and the highway was a nightmare since we didn't have a 4WD. The potholes were nearly as deep as our ground clearance, and the paved part of the road was mostly just one lane with large drops on either side.
 

Highway EN1 in 2010 (I believe it has since improved)

Somewhere, in one of those potholes, we managed to damage a tire, which began to slowly leak air. We made it to Tofo without realizing this, but after leaving the car parked at our beach lodge for a few days, it was flat. And the car was completely stuck in the sand. One nice thing about making this epic trip in a tiny little VW Polo? A group of the muscle-laden guys who worked at the dive outfit were able to literally lift our car out of the sand! To address the flat, someone brought a scuba tank over to refill the tire.

Unfortunately, the tire was still leaking air, and we didn't get too far on our trip back before it was going flat again. We stopped in Inhambane and asked around to find someone who could look at it. We ended up finding a local mechanic who saw that the rim was a bit out of shape, so he took a hammer to it and bashed it back into shape. Surprisingly, this got us as far as Chidenguele - about halfway back to Maputo - where we stopped for the night.

Our mechanic in Inhambane - a magician with a hammer.

We had planned to make it back to Maputo, but the mechanic stop had put us off schedule. We found a place to stay, but we didn't have enough cash for two rooms, and the nearest ATM was about 20 miles further on, so we booked one triple room, and the owner found us an extra mosquito net so that I could set up my air mattress and sleeping bag on the floor. Sorted!


Jury-rigged mosquito net. This is a "make it work" moment.

Then on the way to dinner, our friend who was driving hit another pothole, and the tire went out completely. Once again we were lucky to have our camping gear, because the headlamps came in handy for changing to the spare.


Dealing with flat tires was getting too familiar, so let's try it in the dark!

The next morning, in spite of it raining cats and dogs, we finally happened upon some good luck. There was an industrial mechanics' shop just a mile down the road. This was the kind of place that usually dealt with big trucks and construction equipment, so our little Polo was no problem for them. Before we knew it, they had the problematic wheel off the car and popped it into some kind of fancy pneumatic machine. Unfortunately, we were still seriously low on cash and had only $20 among us.


This trip is becoming the "Tour of Mozambican Mechanics."

They figured out the problem and fixed the issue, and we were ready to be on our way. The total price for 45 minutes of intense labor with high-end equipment? $5. We gave them $15. And the wheel was just fine for the rest of the trip.

[meowmaps]

I love road trips!

We've only rented a car out of country once and that was to drive the Great Ocean Road for three days. The scenery was amazing and because we drove through three different territories it varied greatly. We also saw a lot of cool wildlife.

We've taken several road trips in the U.S. Our most memorable were the PCH/CA Coast, Oregon Coast and Columbia River Highway, and a Southwest journey that took us to Zion, Bryce, Monument Valley, and the Grand Canyon.

This past summer we flew out to Colorado to visit my BIL and from there we took a short two day road to South Dakota and that was amazing as well.

ETA: Oops.  Reading comprehension fail - you said most memorable.  Hmm.  In that case, the Southwest because it's so foreign to me.  I've never lived in/near an environment like that.  The colors/rock formations are out of this world.  

[majesty318]

I went to Costa Rica a couple years ago on a girls' trip. We rented a car to travel between a beach town & the rainforest. We rented the cheapest car possible which was just some small 2 door thing. Driving to the place where we stayed in the rainforest, the directions mentioned a "gravel road." Well, gravel was a bit of an understatement for large rocks. And when we came to a (one lane, dilapidated) bridge, we passed this lovely sign, which is not what you want to see when driving through jungle back roads in a tiny car over giant rocks! We were convinced we were going to destroy the car!

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[marytini]

I can't really think of any major road trips we've taken. We drove from WI to Arkansas a few years back, but it was fairly uneventful.
Other trips where we've rented cars, but just for daytrips, so I don't consider those roadtrips.
As a kid, we drove from WA to CA for thanksgiving and got caught in a wind/sand storm for hours. We sat on the highway forever going nowhere and counted all the ambulances and rescue vehicles that went by. Quite a few people died in that wreckage.

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[Wanderista]

Err, I've been on a lot of road trips so I wouldn't say that one stands out. I do remember a family road trip from DC to Montana and back when I was in high school in early October. It was spectacular to see the mountains and light snow. It was lightly snowing while I was in a jacuzzi with a mountain view. That was really a different experience for me. It was very different than anywhere else I'd been. I would go back to somewhere like that again when I get a chance.

I remember a bus trip through Austria where I was the only American and we stopped at a few rest stop areas that were basically like Austria's version of Cracker Barrel. After that, I concluded, "Every culture has its kitschy lowbrow side. Quit judging America. Lol."

There were mechanical birds dancing in lederhosen hehehe. Every culture is capable of poor taste. 

[mich1]

I like road trips! Best one was when me and 2 other friends picked up a rental car in Glasgow Scotland after our research meeting and meandered around Scotland. If something piqued our interest, we went for it. We went looking for Nessie, we visited castles, whatever struck someone to do, we did. All we had to do was to show up in London 8 days after we picked up the car.

[gardengal]

I've never done a road trip before. It's always been more about the destination.

I do love driving around England though on country roads. So beautiful!

[Brit]

Gosh, I have a lot of favorite road trips. I think my favorite has been Mongolia because it was such an adventure. It was a beautiful landscape and the vastness and emptiness of the country was incredible. I think the thing that 'made it' for me was navigating through a country with almost no paved roads.

[cheezer]

Most interesting was Montenegro to Croatia to Bosnia. Not a ton of tourists in Montenegro & Bosnia and beautiful scenery. It was also such an adventure because they had no automatic cars to rent and H couldn't even got the car to start at the airport!

[Deleted]

Sept 15, 2015 8:51:29 GMT -5 GilliC said:

By the time we made it across the border, it was getting quite late, and we had a long drive to where we had planned to spend the night. It was getting dark by the time we reached Maputo, but we foolishly decided to try to continue farther north. Somewhere on the northern outskirts of Maputo, we were waved off the road by someone in a police uniform. We'd been warned by someone at the border not to hand over licenses or registration materials, since some officials will demand a bribe to get it back. Presumably this guy and his two cohorts (dressed in camo and carrying AK-47s) were not on official business and were not pleased that we were making the extortion difficult. He kept demanding to see all of our documents and saying that we were going to be arrested and never allowed to leave Mozambique, but refusing to take us to a police station to discuss the matter. We were terrified. Eventually he seemed to give up, waved another car off the road, and let us go.

About a mile down the road, we got flagged down by another police officer. This time XH just handed over the documents because we decided we'd rather pay a bribe than deal with all that again. This officer was wearing a name badge, asked us where we were going, and handed back the papers saying that it was quite a drive ahead of us. He also seemed genuinely surprised when we mentioned that we'd just been stopped a mile earlier.

Yep, sounds about right. We were stopped 3 times within 15km. We barely had any money, we paid something like R10 to the first set of guys, but then for the other 2 we just talked our way out of it. My friend was trying to use his limited Spanish and they looked at him like he was crazy, it was pretty funny. The only reason I was nervous is because we had the flight to catch in Joburg and I did not want to miss it! Luckily, we made it just on time. 

I had much better luck the second time I went to Mozambique about 6 months later and we were stopped only once and they didn't have automatic weapons. 

[brewco]

One way plane ticket from Detroit to Montana, rented a car and drove home for 2 weeks with stops at Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Devil's Tower, Deadwood, Crazy Horse, Wall Drug, Mt. Rushmore, the I-80 truck stop, the corn palace, the Badlands & antique archeology.

It was most memorable because as a kid the only trip we ever took was from Michigan to Florida. I have been on the MI-FL route 30 times or more. So, anywhere besides Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida was amazing! And of course, the scenery was just amazing everywhere we went!

[MNH2013]

We almost always traveled by car when I was growing up. Those were memorable in what shaped my love of travel.

The first "vacation" H and I took when we were dating was to a concert in Dallas/Ft Worth from Houston. We had a GPS and at the time they could have some quirks. It made us get off the highway, travel through a neighborhood of people staring at us (y'all ain't from round here type) and then get right back on the highway. We fought about the stupid GPS and who's fault it was lol. Other than that the vacation was good, we ended up getting drunk at the concert and all was right in the world.

[anna7602]

It's a toss-up between driving 22 hours to Miami with a friend from England the summer after I graduated college and the time DH and I drove from Alabama to Texas over the course of a week (we had a wedding in each place 2 weekends in a row), stopping at random towns in Mississippi and Louisiana whenever we felt like it. 

With the Miami drive, it was a drive I had done dozens of times as a passenger when I was a kid, but it was like seeing something new both as the driver and as the tour guide for my friend who had never seen much of the U.S.

The southern drive was great because it was completely unstructured, except for the designated rental car pick-up in Alabama and the designated drop-off in Dallas. I can't do something that unplanned now with kids in the picture. 

[frlcb]

Sept 16, 2015 9:46:18 GMT -5 anna7602 said:

It's a toss-up between driving 22 hours to Miami with a friend from England the summer after I graduated college and the time DH and I drove from Alabama to Texas over the course of a week (we had a wedding in each place 2 weekends in a row), stopping at random towns in Mississippi and Louisiana whenever we felt like it. 

With the Miami drive, it was a drive I had done dozens of times as a passenger when I was a kid, but it was like seeing something new both as the driver and as the tour guide for my friend who had never seen much of the U.S.

The southern drive was great because it was completely unstructured, except for the designated rental car pick-up in Alabama and the designated drop-off in Dallas. I can't do something that unplanned now with kids in the picture. 

I totally read this as driving to Miami from England and I was like ok, now she is just making stuff up

[anna7602]

ha, frlcb. I did once try to take a bus from Berlin to Moscow and was swayed to fly instead because it was several hundred dollars cheaper and saved me a transit visa fee, too.

[daisypaloma]

We've had some pretty hairy and memorable road trips but hands down it was in Costa Rica. 

Between dealing with cows, other cars, and pint-sized dogs on our muddy, rainy, dark drive from Monteverde to La Fortuna; to steep, tight downslope gravel road driving to our hotel in Manuel Antonio; to cloud-level cliff-side, low visibility driving from Jaco to San Jose; to one-way streets of San Jose after dark.   It was also the most fun driving experience we've had.  And we had a car that practically had tires with no more than 3 inches wide.