Road Trip Resolutions
Or, Writing Reviews and Fleeing Zombies
It’s a new year, according to the calendar (the Gregorian one, anyway.) Whether or not you mark January 1 as the start of something new (or if, like me, you think “the year” begins on the first day of school), I figure now’s as good a time as any to think about ways to improve my road trip game in the year ahead. With that in mind, here are a few resolutions I’m hoping to put into practice in the coming months:
I don’t want to take mini road trips for granted: Due to a variety of family and logistical considerations, we didn’t schedule any big trips for winter or spring break this year, and I can’t really get inspired about planning a long weekend getaway over Presidents’ Day. It’s not for bad reasons–we’ve had a number of wonderful family milestones this fall and, honestly, I’m a bit “planned-out.” Still, for someone who enjoys thinking about travel possibly more than I enjoy the trips themselves, this is a strange situation to find myself in. I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do to procrastinate grading essays if I’m not looking up driving times on AAA or researching vegetarian-friendly diners on TripAdvisor. So, I’m trying to reframe smaller journeys as “mini road trips”: searching for a pretty park to visit on the way to dropping my daughter off at camp this summer, selecting a podcast to enjoy on our drive home from a day trip to see the German holiday market in Philadelphia, designating one of those long weekend days for visiting a quirky castle two hours outside of the city. It’s easy to fritter away a day off when you don’t have an overnight destination in mind, so I’m trying to think about ways to make even an errand like picking up a new bathroom faucet from the Lowe’s in Staten Island into more of an adventure (and, sure, reserve some frittering time as well, since that’s also important.)
I want to support local businesses when I can–and avoid third party vendors!: It’s so much easier to book lodgings through a national chain or to go to some third-party travel site to compare prices, but if I am going to sing the praises of family-owned motels and charmingly offbeat inns, I need to put my money where my mouth is. And, often, that doesn’t even involve spending more money–in fact, I’ve found that if you call the hotel directly and ask about rates, you’ll get one that matches what you can find through Expedia or Hotels.com, and you might even save a little because they can offer you AAA or military discounts that you can’t get online. Plus, it’s usually easier to cancel or reschedule when you’ve booked directly with the lodging, since some of those third-party vendors have awful cancellation policies (same goes with booking airline tickets, btw.)
I want to get better about leaving reviews: I know I rely on reviews when I am comparing places to stay, eat, and visit, and I appreciate how much the advice of my fellow travelers has helped me in my planning, so I want to pay it forward when I can–and I encourage you to do the same! Leaving a review can seem like a drag when you’re on your way to the next destination, but it really only takes a few minutes and might be really useful to someone else (myself included.) It helps to include details others can incorporate into their planning, beyond just indicating what you liked or didn’t like about a place (“The botanic garden has a nice tea room, but you need to make reservations in advance” “Look online for 2-for-1 ticket offers for weekdays.” “The hiking trail involves a lot of uphill climbs and some poison ivy–you’ll want sturdy, closed-toe shoes.”) I thank you in advance for any advice you can share with me.
I really want to write more positive or even moderate reviews: I also know that people are so quick to leave eviscerating reviews when they are unhappy about something, and those reviews can tank a business’s standings for years to come, even if the complaint is completely irrelevant for a future stay (“The other guests at the pool had an unruly toddler. One star!”) or beyond the control of the business (“I couldn’t find parking anywhere because the town was having some sort of parade, so I can’t give the restaurant five stars even though the food was good.”) These troll-y reviews can be offset by positive reviews, even if they aren’t over-the-top effusive (“The diner was clean and my food came quickly.” “The museum has a nice little display of mammoth fossils; maybe not worth going out of your way for, but definitely interesting for an hour or two!”) It’s always easier to motivate people to complain than it is to get them to praise, but don’t we want to live in a world where we spend more of our time enjoying what went well, rather than focusing on what went wrong?
I want to inoculate my brain from robots: In other words, I want to be sure that the research I am doing when I am planning is trip has been written by a real human being who has been to the places they’re writing about, not some AI bot spewing slop and compromising my ability to determine what is real. A shocking number of travel sites and even published guidebooks are written in part or in whole by generative AI, and while some may offer useful advice scraped from internet postings written by real humans (like, for example, this Substack), a lot of it is rife with hallucinations; I’ve read about travel guides that encourage bargain-hunters to visit “under-the-radar Kyiv,” and while I have no doubt that Kyiv is full of wonderful sites to see and people to meet, I suspect they don’t really need a lot of clueless American tourists wandering their streets just now (Slava Ukraini!) When I seek recommendations or planning advice, I’m going to do my best to check authentication credentials and make sure I’m getting information from reliable sources, whether those are well-established travel guidebooks or real humans posting reviews and comments based on their own, actual experiences. The robots may take over our world sooner or later, but I’m doing what I can to hold them at bay, at least when I’m planning my road trips.
I want to refresh my map-reading skills: It scares me to realize how much I rely on GPS to tell me where to go; I find myself using it even when I am walking around familiar areas to check whether a store is at the corner of 17th Street or 18th, instead of just, like, walking ONE MORE BLOCK to see for myself. On road trips, it’s so easy to plug the destination in and let the machine tell us where to go, and using GPS is definitely a good way to avoid traffic or find alternate routes. Still, I remember how much good old-fashioned geography I learned planning our first cross-country trips in the pre-smart phone days, and I think I should familiarize myself with an atlas again. If nothing else, I want to be ready for the zombie apocalypse, when I won’t be able to offer much in the way of hand-to-hand combat or engineering skills but might be able to earn my spot in a survival team as a Co-Pilot.
What are your travel resolutions for the year ahead? Leave a note in the comments!
Safe travels and happy Snack Bag wishes to you in the new year!