The Dispatch
Most road trip planning advice stops at "pick scenic routes." The trips here go further. Hour three of cornfields is when the back seat breaks down. Gas station coffee 90 miles from a real exit is when an itinerary fails. We plan for the actual parts of driving: how long until kids need to be out of the car, which stops have decent bathrooms, which towns have one good lunch spot. The posts cover everything from weekend Chicago trips to ten-day cross-country drives. Same principles. Different distances.
7 posts tagged Road Trip Planning. See all posts →
Six western drives, ranked by what they actually deliver between the trailheads: ocean cliffs, red rock, alpine switchbacks, and one road Charles Kuralt called the most beautiful in America.
A driveway check, a jump pack, and one habit that's saved more kids than any dashboard alert.
Heat kills more car batteries than cold does, and that's only the third-worst thing the southwest summer is doing to your vehicle.
There are a few key car problems that cause the AAA to rescue 7 million drivers every summer? Spoiler Alert: Almost all of them show up in a simple 20-minute driveway check. Are you ready for summer?
Ten Midwest weekenders, ranked by drive time, kid-tested, and honest about which one's a stretch from Friday to Sunday.
Here's a season-by-season guide to the best road trips from Chicago, with real drive times, what each spot does best in that window, and the stuff worth spotting out the window along the way.
A record 60.6 million Americans hit the road for July 4th 2024, and a huge chunk of them were families staring down two-to-six hours in the car. This is a rundown of the best family road trips from Chicago, with real drive times, two or three concrete kid hits per stop, and an honest take on the part most posts skip: what to do between mile zero and the parking lot.
