Is the road trip dead?
Posted on June 11th, 2008 – 8:16 AMBy Chris Welsch
U.S. Highway 101 near Gold Beach, Oregon: My vote for prettiest highway in the country.
I grew up with family road trips. Summer vacations with a car, camping gear and a cooler are still part of every summer for me. I just got back from a 1,300 mile road trip through Iowa and Nebraska, taking my 7-year-old nephew on his first road/camping trip. We did an overnight canoe trip on the Root River (this was last Monday, before all the flooding started), we camped at Black Hawk Lake State Park in Iowa. We hiked in the Loess Hills at Preparation Valley (a stunning setting, for those who think Iowa is all cornfields). I had a great time introducing him to the wonders of the road. But I wonder if that is a tradition I’ll be able to maintain. Or even one that I should maintain, considering the costs.
All signs point toward a future of expensive gasoline; It will take years to retool Americans’ auto choices; for the next couple of years, people will be using their SUVs and big pickups (and big station wagons — my choice) as a way to send their savings to Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries. My Volkswagen with a V6 burns a gallon of fuel every 18 miles in town and 23 on the highway.
I went through 59 gallons of gas and spent about 230 bucks. That was averaging $3.85 a gallon. I’m assuming that $5 a gallon is a distinct possibility by July.
Is this the beginning of the end for a great American tradition? Is the road trip dying?
22 Responses to "Is the road trip dead?"
I’ll say this. My friends and I still plan road trips and will keep doing so for the forseeable future. If you can get 3 or 4 people committed to it, gas becomes cheap then. At $4.00 a gallon now, it becomes $1 per gallon each with 4 people on the trip.
For my wife and I, the road trip is still in full force. We’ve been on two of them in the last two months and we’re planning a road trip to Disney for the 4th of July weekend. It just made more sense to drive there than fly, rent a car at the ariport, etc.
Interesting….we come from the same background. I’ve been “on the road” my entire life. My wife Chris and I covered the entire U.S. by car, on more than one occasion ! What a thrill it is for some of us to get in the car & hit the road, sometimes with no destination in mind. I’m unwilling to give it up, but reality has to take over eventually. The “good ol’ days were better !!
If more writers, bloggers, bored people, keep writing stories about this, then yes, I agree, more people are going to stay home! The more you tell people how ‘bad’ things are, the more they are going to believe it!
Keeping travel plans to a minimum, say, staying in Minnesota/Wisconsin, will help the local economies this summer. These destinations are less than a half-days drive even to northern border towns. Some are 1-3 hours away; don’t let the naysayers affect your summer plans.
I agree the ‘good ol’ days were better. I live in northern MN and we have already decided to break our family tradition of going to the MN State Fair in September. This would have been my 28th year. It is sad to say, that with gas prices the way they are, we will have to settle for the county fair until gas prices improve.
The day’s of Americana roadtrips are going to be curtailed from here on, I’m afraid. It’s sad, to me anyway, that a rather significant part of American Culture is being scaled way back. With energy prices being what they are, folks are unable to be as carefree as our parents were. Though the advantage is it takes a lot of those oversize behemouth SUV’s that people actually commute with off the roads.
People keep complaining about gas being so expensive, but it never was easy to travel out of Minneapolis to begin with. The airport here is the worst ever! Cars — and road trips — will never go out of style. Well, until we get Northwest to stop monopolizing air travel here.
I don’t think that road trips will stop. One of the great things about America is how vast it is and how easy it is to get around.
I think if anything, it might just make some trips a little shorter.
I just went on a 2500 mile road trip. There were three of us and it cost about $300 in gas total getting 30-35 mpg. Not too bad in my opinion.
A way of life is changing. The ones who are commenting that it doesn’t change their choices must have more money than we do. We used to go to Colorado and Yellowstone but now we’re looking to things closer to home. I think it can help out our state by more people traveling locally though. We’ll still maybe get a trip to somewhere more distant but it’ll be much less frequent.
Road-trips will never go away. When we look at prices, the only ones we ever wish to go up are on the things we own. The reality is that prices will always rise and mostly on things we want and don’t own. I’m sure people that want to travel by car will simply make trade-offs just as they have done forever. Our family has started by driving a smaller vehicle with better gas mileage, packing food instead of eating out, drinking tap water instead of Aqaufina… Heck, maybe the manual water pumps at rest areas will make a come-back and coolers and picnic baskets will become fashionable again. If you want to travel, you’ll figure it out.
I’m going to write a story on this topic, asking experts and citizens for their thoughts. If any of you would be willing to be quoted, please e-mail me at welsch@startribune.com I’d really like to talk to Getreal, peteyboy, Itorbes and Lifestyle change.
There are conversations with kids that happen in a car that don’t happen anywhere else, and that’s why I’m going to take my economic stimulus check (and my tax refund, and my holiday bonus, and my credit cards) and head south with my teen and my pre-teen sons next week. This will be our fourth trip since their father and I divorced, and the destinations may be closer, the rented vehicle smaller, the hotels less cushy, but I wouldn’t dream of giving up the trip. Even their friends who vacation in Paris and Aspen and Israel think their adventures in Thunder Bay and Rapid City and Detroit sound pretty cool; they are certainly unique. We will definitely be packing our cooler and replenishing it this year and I will encourage the utilization of every pocket of the boys’ cargo shorts at the continental breakfast bars. Super 8: you have been warned.
Well, hopefully, we’ll have cars that do a bit better than 18 mpg. When that happens, road trips are back in full force.
People will probably limit their travel by taking shorter trips, but rumors of the road trip’s death are greatly exaggerated.
The difference between $2.00 and $4.00 per gallon costs me about $50 extra per day. Over the years hotels and food have gone up at a higher rate (although more slowly) yet most of us didn’t cancel trips. Actually, hotels will probably cost less this summer due to fewer travelers offsetting much of the incremental fuel expenses.
Gas is expensive, certainly in the context of the last 20 years, but it’s not all that much higher (inflation-adjusted) than it was through most of the mid-20th century. And, that’s when the road trip was born.
I’ll probably take them differently, though. I used to often drive solo up north such that I could come back earlier (or later) than the rest of the group, but now I’m more willing to compromise my schedule. For longer trips, I’ll probably seek out a third or fourth person to spread the gas costs (With the advent of the iPod, I don’t need the back seat to hold all my CD’s anymore!)
I was at a classic car show this past weekend reading an ad for a 1950’s Nash which was talking up the aerodynamic styling, which, according to the ad, afforded the car 25 mpg at highway speeds. In the 1950’s! Plenty of modern cars that I’m sure weigh the same or less get half of that…
I am going to take a road trip this summer. My 2nd road trip to Boston and NYC. It turns out to still be cheaper than flying even with renting a car! We are dropping the car in Boston and taking the train to NYC and in both cities, ya don’t want or need a car. I have flown to Boston and NYC many times but nothing beats driving and seeing the different areas and listening to the local radio! Plus, it is kinda fun to say, “Hello Cleveland!!!” when driving through on the way to the coast.
We are a family of four and need to go to Seattle for a Baptism in July (we are the Godparents). It would cost us $1500 to fly + car rental extra. We are choosing instead to take 15 days and drive out stopping in South Dakota and Yellowstone along the way for a few days each. I budgeted for gas, site seeing, camping, and food at about $2500 (not holding back on the sites). So for about $500 more than staring at the back of a cramped airline seat for 3 hours and only staying a few days, we are creating memories and getting so much more for our money.
Since we’re all talking numbers here, I think that’s exactly why the road trip will remain a viable option for a retreat. You can drive a long, long distance for the price of putting 4 butts into an airplane seat. They might be fewer and farther between, but that might make them more special and memorable.
Nitpick: the highway in the photo is US 101, not US 1 which is on the East Coast.
I was out to sea this spring and saw gas prices jump a full dollar a gallon just during those 3 months I was gone. While it’s cut down a little on my local roadtrips, it is not stopping me from doing my big multi-state road trips. Fortunately, I have a 30+ MPG car so the impact on me has been about 3 cents per mile.
Thanks Froggie, consider it corrected.
I am a former farm kid who grew up with a F350 truck and other monster vehicles. I have lived in urban areas for years and have been clueless as to why so many urban people bought all these ridiculous gashog pickups and SUVs for driving to work or around town. I drive a smaller car that gets 30 mpg highway (I even drive it on rural field roads where most urban 4×4 SUV drivers fear to tread!).
I have told people for years another gas crunch is coming, so prepare for it. They usually scoffed and responded that since I grew up on a farm I must approve of their choice of gashog. I laughed back and they raise their eyebrows in confusion. “But..but…you grew up an a farm…Why don’t you drive a pickup?”
I don’t like trucks or SUVs for freeways and Minneapolis city streets because they are hard to handle when a guy swerves in front of you, they rock sideways, are prone to tip, they are hard to park on the street, they get horrible gas mileage and I ain’t hauling pig feed in South Mpls!!
Anymore stupid questions?
I don’t think the road trip will ever die, as long as people are still reading Kerouac and want to explore and have adventures. I appreciate and echo Getreal’s post. For those of us who value travel experiences; we have made, and will continue to make trade offs that allow us to travel. People are always amazed when I tell them all of the places I’ve been (which is not many by my own standards). What they don’t realize though is that I don’t have a personal television or computer, I car share with my girlfriend, and buy a lot of things second-hand. Those who value the road trip will always take one. Often times the trip itself creates as good of stories as the final destination; like the time my buddy and I road tripped to Colorado in my 92 Chevy Lumina through the mountains in a blizzard; no 4WD, no chains. We drove with the windows cracked and heat on because the engine was overheating. How can you not enjoy something like that?
Kerri Westenberg has globe-trotted for National Geographic and other magazines. Now she zips around the region, on the lookout for travel news you can use.
Elizabeth Larsen lived in Salzburg, Austria, and has traveled throughout Europe and the Americas. She can say "diaper," "bottle" and "crib" in four languages.
Troy Melhus has heli-skied on glaciers, dived alongside Monk seals and raced for 24 hours on a mountain bike. All this, and he rarely spends more than $500 on a trip.
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