Editor’s Letter August 2024: Going for a Drive

G et your motor running, head out on the highway. Looking for adventure in whatever comes our way. Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair. The night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere. You got a fast car. I got a plan to get us out of here. Ah, the thrills and romance (and soundtrack) of taking a road trip—a certain type of freedom you can only find in a vehicle with friends driving to some place over there that isn’t here.

I’m one of those people who believe the journey is more important than the destination. A road trip is only partially about where you’re going. Sometimes it’s about what you’re leaving behind. Or who you’re with. Or how loud you can play your music. Or it’s about why you’re on the road. Sometimes you don’t know why, and that’s all right. You just gotta go.

I vividly recall road trips that defined different eras of my life as much as any birthday, job, or relationship could. There was the drive to the beach as a kid, nine of us crammed into a station wagon with bologna sandwiches and no seat belts. The all-night drive to New Orleans for my first Mardi Gras. Driving with my brothers to move my meager belongings to Cincinnati. A drive up the coast from Santa Barbara to San Francisco with my fiancée (now wife). Driving in the past month to Chicago and Nashville for a nephew’s graduation and a niece’s wedding.

OK, those last two were just about the destinations. Nowadays, road trips are the necessary evil required to get where I want to go and, more importantly, to get home. The construction, the trucks, the rain, the heat, the price of gas, the talking GPS, the signs I can’t read, the idiot drivers trying to run me off the road—seriously, it’s a jungle out there.

Yet the open road sings her siren song, and the adventurers and young at heart among us still heed the call. We offer dozens of options in this issue for fun road trips you might not have tried yet. Get going while the weather’s good. Just stay in your lane when you pass me on the highway.

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