Road Trips
A car is the wrong tool for a lot of travel and exactly the right one for some of it. It earns its keep where the distances are long and the public transport is thin, where the interest lies between the towns rather than in them, and where being able to stop when something catches your eye matters more than arriving on time.
These are road trips we have driven ourselves, written up afterwards rather than designed in advance: three weeks around the North Island of New Zealand, and a month across North America from Boston to San Francisco. Where a route worked we say so; where we would do it differently we say that too.
Each journey says plainly how we know it. A trip marked Driven by us is one we made ourselves, and we write about it in the first person. A trip marked Researched is one we have not driven, built from official and published sources and labelled that way.
Find a road trip by country
Two so far, in New Zealand and the United States. More will follow here as we write them up.
New Zealand
Coast, forest and thermal country, at a pace slow enough to stop for a week in one place.
Planning a wider trip? Visiting New Zealand covers the country, its regions and how to get around.
United States
A month off the Interstates, by way of Canada, the Great Plains, the Rockies and the desert.
Planning a wider trip? Visiting the USA and Visiting Canada have our city guides for both countries.
A final word on road trips
A road trip is the one way we know to see the country in between: the stretches no itinerary sells, where stopping is the point and the next town can wait.
Andrew + Margaret
- All our journeys, by how you travel Journeys
- Cycling journeys Journeys
- Journeys on foot Journeys
- NZ Transport Agency: road closures and journey planner Official
- US National Weather Service: tornado safety Safety
- William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982) Reading