Great Road Trips – Share Your Ideas!

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I want to hear your favorite road trip ideas on this post! Inspire us in the comments!

As a child, I remember my grandmama telling me about the road trips they used to take as children. Her mama would cook up some chicken, pack it in a basket, and mix up a gallon of tea in a big old glass pickle jar to pack in the trunk, wrapped in blankets to keep it chilled and prevent the glass from breaking. They’d get in the car and head off to visit family, stopping along the way for picnics on the side of the road. There were no drive through restaurants back then and even roadside diners were a new concept so bringing your own food was a necessity. Sometimes, though, Grandmama said they’d stop at a local gas station that had a deli counter and buy some fresh sliced bologna and a loaf of “light bread” as they called it. This was considered a huge treat for them and made the road trips even more special.

My family has always loved impromptu road trip adventures. We hop in the car on a sunny day and head out to parts unknown just to see what we can get into. Early in our married life, Ricky and I tired of fast food on long road trips and I stopped at a local deli, picked up some roast beef, cheddar slices, and Hawaiian sweet rolls and our little family road trip sandwich was born. Some of our happiest memories and best conversations have taken place sitting beside each other while I make little sandwiches in my lap to hand him and now just the thought of a road trip sandwich brings all of those precious memories to mind. We sure have been blessed these past twenty years!

Another fun addition to our road trip menu is Southern Breeze Sweet Tea. I keep the little cold brew packets of it in my purse, all different flavors, and we can have guilt free Sweet Tea on the road anytime.

In fact, did you know:

  • Southern Breeze is calorie free and guilt free so it can be enjoyed glass after glass.
  • Cold brew Southern Breeze is single serve-take it on the go or enjoy at home.
  • Southern Breeze cold brew is easy to make: pour 8oz of water over 1 tea bag, let steep for 5 minutes, toss out the tea bag and pour over ice!
  • All of the zero calorie Southern Breeze products (cold brew and family size tea bags) are available by clicking here.

Southern Breeze Sweet Tea is just one of the things that make our road trips even more fun and don’t have to be planned or thought about earlier.

There is still plenty of time for more summer road trips so today I wanted to share some of my ideas with you but most importantly – I WANT YOUR IDEAS!

Be as general or as specific as you like but please chime in and know that your answer will help inspire friends and family to spend more time together.

Some ideas from the Jordan camp:

  • Road trips don’t have to involve a lot of time on the road! Check out local attractions first – budget friendly memories are just as sweet.
  • Pretend you are a tourist in your hometown:
  • Check out the visitor’s bureaus of nearby towns and see what their most popular attractions are.
  • Festivals are an easy find! This time of year there are so many fun festivals all around. You can also find these at visitor’s sites and all that is needed is saving the date on your calendar!
  • Feed the ducks
  • Watch the sunset
  • Free outdoor concerts and movies
  • Hikes at state and local parks (or national if you’re close to one!)
  • Tailgate picnic! There are some gorgeous spots with amazing views of the valley where we live so some evenings we grab the fixings for our road trip sandwiches at a local deli and head on up to a pretty spot, sit on the tailgate, and enjoy the view.
  • And one of my absolute favorites: Take a glass of iced tea out to your back porch.
Some of our road trips so far this summer!

What are some of your favorite ideas for summer road trips both near and far? Let’s talk about them in the comments!

While you’re here, you can head on over and see all of the zero calorie Southern Breeze products (cold brew and family size tea bags) by clicking here. It’s perfectly sweetened sweet tea with no calories and no carbs and if you place an order online by June 30th using code CHRISTYJORDAN you’ll get free shipping. But you can also get in on a chance to get a free sample sent directly to your home by clicking here.

Special thanks to my friends at Southern Breeze Sweet Tea for sponsoring this post and for making the tea that I drink all day long! All opinions contained in this post are my own. #ShareTheSweetness & #guiltfreesweettea

75 Comments

  1. We went road tripping every Sunday after church growing up. We would come home from church, my Mom and Dad would fix them banana and mayo sandwiches, and then we would head out to wherever the road took us. Sometimes our neighbors came along with us. They would always take me to McDonald’s to get chicken nuggets, that was my weekly treat! Great memories!

  2. My parents who had grown up in a city, and had never been camping, decided to take our family of 6 on a camping trip to Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the month of September. We knew absolutely nothing about camping, so we just brought our blankets and pillows. The campground had raised wooden platforms with a canvas tarp tented over the platform. Well, it is COLD in September at Cape Cod! We couldn’t go in the water at the beach, it was so cold. At night we couldn’t fall asleep because we were all so cold on that hard platform with just our blankets, so we decided to sing songs to take our minds off of it. The only song my baby brother knew was “Happy Birthday to You,” so we sang that about a million times. My little sister still remembers how I wouldn’t kill the spiders in the latrine, because I was afraid of them, too. The one really good thing I remember was how tasty the canned corned beef hash was because it was HOT!

  3. You reminded me of the time almost 25 years ago when my parents packed all 9 of us kids (I’m the oldest) in the van and we toured the west for 2 weeks. The sights were wonderful, but the menu got a little old, haha! We were a 100%-whole-wheat-homemade-bread family, so the first few days of “store bread” lunches were great… and then the wonder faded. Whichever older kid was sitting in the front seat had the lunch-time duty of slapping a slice of baloney and a slice of cheese between 2 piece of bread, passing it back, and repeating 20+ times until all had eaten, every day, as Dad drove on. The “privilege” of the front seat was questionable from about 11:30- 1:00 every day. : ) I’ll pass on the baloney sandwiches today, but oh the memories!!!

  4. Great article, Christy! It brings back fond memories of our many travels with our boys. We always make sure to plan our driving and itinerary before we go, so we don’t get lost or forget to do something (we check with family we’re visiting, too). My favorite trip-planning tip is to find fun, back-road and out-of-the-way places to stop. For closer-to-home trips, we don’t worry about getting lost and just enjoy the drive 🙂

  5. We would get up early Saturday mornings and drive to a state park. Sometimes we would camp, sometimes home, sometimes go the beach. Kentucky has some beautiful state parks. Now I take my daughter on road trips all the time.

  6. We have a “backyard bucket list” and have been visiting places we’ve always meant to check out but haven’t. And we just got back from a little road trip getaway to Nashville Indiana. Just about 3 hours from us but never been. Downtown is similar to shopping in Gatlinburg. And the hills and winding roads just beautiful!

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