Despite her extensive list of ” Places to Love, the trip may be just as important to Samantha Brown as the destination, despite her extensive list of “Places to Love.”
She told Travel & Leisure, “I grew up in the ’70s.” My favorite way to travel is by car. Even if your folks packed the station wagon for a 13-hour journey.”
Her first recollections of traveling are spent in the backseat of my family’s car with her brothers, eating a packaged bologna sandwich whenever hungry, and staying at a motor lodge. Brown’s PBS show just finished up its sixth season.
“We were thrilled if they had a kidney-shaped pool,” Brown said. “We love road trips because they bring out the youngster in all of us. Traveling by train is both charming and lasting because of this.
Despite the world’s uncertainty over what constitutes the “new normal,” road vacations, traditionally considered a nostalgic, no-frills retreat, are making a resurgence as a more secure mode of transportation, as Brown explains.
Traveling with your automobile and leaving from your own home removes two major uncertainties from your trip: the airport experience and the rental car experience.
Even Brown is taking more road trips than she would have done before the outbreak.
Mom of two, Brown, tells T+L, “I guess we have one excursion this summer when we are putting our kids on a plane.” “But other than that, I am simply getting in a car and driving.”
The travel guru, of course, has a few pointers for a good road trip and a list of the best spots to stop along the way.
If you are planning a spring road trip and have a few days, you will want to select a location that is not too familiar but not too far from your end destination. “A genuine huge change of landscape for not a lot of work” is the ideal spring road trip location, according to Brown.
“You feel like you are in a different period, not just a different area,” Brown said of Cape May, New Jersey, which she characterizes as the ultimate road trip destination because it collects Victorian buildings.
Beautiful beaches, fresh vegetables, and an unexplored past all await visitors to the town (in the form of the new Harriet Tubman museum). Phoenicia, New York, and Lafayette, Louisiana, roughly a three-hour drive from Manhattan, were also on her list of suggested destinations (about two hours from New Orleans).
If you are on the road for an extended period, make sure you have got some food and a decent selection of music or podcasts that everyone can enjoy.
As for a break, stick to local restaurants and bars, but do not overcomplicate things. In the travel expert’s opinion, cultural encounters do not have to be overly complex or extravagant.
Sheetz in Pennsylvania and Wawa in New Jersey are two of Brown’s favorite gas stations. This is a quick way to see what the regional food’ is all about without taking a big detour.
Rest pauses without food are especially useful if you are traveling with impatient youngsters who may be becoming antsy in the backseat. According to Brown, bring a Frisbee for older kids and some inflated balloons for smaller kids to play within a recreation area.
There is nothing better than looking out the window at the changing scenery on a road trip, especially in the days before cell phones and tablets.
Brown felt that simply glancing out the window was completely acceptable.