Road trips are always an interesting activity since I enjoy driving. Hitting the open road and taking in the sites, the different landscape and spending quality time with people that you care about are the norm when road tripping.
I also love adding numerous new business cards to my collection from places where I may never go again, especially if they’re randomly on a business card wall or if I find them on the ground. The former was the case for my most recent road trip down to Maryland, where I went for a wrestling seminar.
Afterwards, I got pizza on the way home from a place called Luigi’s in Runnemeade NJ… I have no idea where that is, but I went off the beaten path when getting hungry & needing charcoal for our hookah pipe. Those business cards are in the pile of the leg’s length of new additions to my collection pictured.
But, taking this road trip to Maryland made me remember some of my most fond road trip memories. Here are a few of them.
Cape Hatteras NC
My family would go at the end of a couple of summers to a beach house in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina when I was a young boy. I remember fondly going on those road trips, even though I fully knew school was to come. That’s because:
- It was a first place I ever experienced a hot tub, located on its own balcony
- I played a form of bingo with my family using landmarks as squares
- My father would communicate with his friends in the other cars via walkie talkie
- One of my dad’s friends telling a legend of the Hatteras Creeper, which he clearly made up but he acted like him when we were driving in the dark one night to scare us
- Sleeping in a bunk bed, playing games & with action figures just steps from the beach
- I once got a piece of gum from a machine shaped like a corn on the cob and this gum actually popped in my mouth & tasted like corn
Vero Beach FL
My grandparents had a trailer in Vero Beach, Florida and my brother, dad & I would visit every year for a few years over February winter break in school… they call it President’s Day week now, but they never called it that when I was a kid from what I recall. These road trips were some of our favorite times because:
- We would have a TV with a VCR in the back of my dad’s Chevy Blazer with the seats laid down… we’d play with action figures and watch wrestling & movies on the way down & back
- The ungodly smell of farts between myself and my brother when the windows were up due to the cold weather
- Staying at South of the Border once and even then knowing it was a tourist trap of sorts, but we did get bootleg wrestling figures there
- The anticipation of spending time with my Uncle Skip & cousin Kevin by going to places like Disney, Universal Studios and the mini-golf course with an arcade & batting cage
Ludowici GA
More recently, I’ve gone on a couple of road trips with my significant other and the kids to her mother’s house in Ludowici, Georgia. What makes these trips unusual is that they usually occur in the middle of the night to ensure that the kids sleep through most of the 12-hour endeavor. Here’s what I love about these trips:
- Opening up to my significant other and getting to know each other better… same goes with the kids
- Spending a day in nearby Savannah with my significant other and enjoying the city
- Spending time with and getting to know my new family
I’ve been on some others too going to various wrestling events I’ve been a part of getting to know the people in the car. That’s my favorite thing about road trips: getting to know people on a deeper level. I hope to make more road trips in my lifetime and I plan to in the near future.
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