5 Tips for a Great Last Minute Road Trip Adventure

Road trips don’t have to be boring drives to get to a destination. I take road trips all of the time and never realized how many people follow my travels on Facebook until I had a gap in the trips.

“When is your next adventure? I love following you.” “You should write about your Grand Gypsy Adventures.” The reason, they are rarely boring. These comments are also followed by “I would love to go on one of your adventures.”

So here we are. The hardest part of this type of trip is the first tip below. Get past that and you will have the time of your life.

1. Get out of your comfort zone.

Most people have a hard time just letting go and not over-planning everything. Planned trips can be a lot of fun and I do those as well, but an unplanned trip can be totally freeing. Unplanned allows you to take a side trip and not feel like you missed something if you didn’t make it to your final destination.

2. Load hotel sites like Hotels Tonight and Priceline.com on your smartphone.

I use these all of the time. Hotels Tonight is my favorite for last minute deals with Priceline being a close second. Priceline’s name your own price tool is fantastic. If you are creative and learn to use it right you can get a 3.5-4 star hotel for an incredibly low price.

Nothing on there that you want or you know a hotel you really want? Walk in and ask them what kind of deal they can offer you. I recently stayed at a great 4 star hotel for more than $100 under the website price just by walking in at around 3pm and asking what they could do for me. I didn’t like the first price, said I would think about it, walked out and up the road and then called them back. They gave me a better offer. They want to fill rooms.

3. Decide which direction to head.

If you are going with others this can actually be a fun beginning of a trip. My last trip I had two wine bottle—one that indicated North and one the indicated South covered by a sticky dot. When my travel mates showed up I had them pick a bottle... uncovered the direction and off we went less than 10 min later.

However, before I did that, I had already looked at maps going in both directions to find some points of interest and a potential end location.

4. Take the backroads.

Online maps typically take you the fastest route... which is typically the interstate and major highways. Reroute reroute reroute. You have most likely seen the interstate...boring. Take a backroad. The last trip (wine bottle trip) landed us at a small airfield for breakfast in Wesley Chapel, a car show and a flea market in a small town called Umatilla, grabbing roadside boiled peanuts—no clue where, a ghost tour in St. Augustine, a winery and toes in the Atlantic. All in two days! None planned, all fun. A previous trip landed me on an airboat ride in the Everglades, a town called Yee Haw Junction for a great burger and both sunrise and sunset in Key Largo. There are so many things to see that are not on the main roads.

5. Don’t be afraid to not get to your penciled in destination.

If your side trips take a bit longer than expected or you find a place you want to explore more, don’t be afraid to stop before you get to that final destination. If you have not booked the hotel yet you are not out anything at all. The idea is to have total freedom to do what you want, as you want with no barriers.

You can keep following me and enjoy my trips or you can go on one of your own and let me follow you.

Adventure on....