I like hyper­bole, so I admit that the title above is a lit­tle over the top. This isn’t the Ulti­mate Road Trip Guide (URTG from here on), or even close. These are just a series of thoughts and guide­lines I had while tak­ing a Thanks­giv­ing road trip to Florida.

1) Why am I qual­i­fied to cre­ate a URTG?

I’m a vet­eran of many, many road trips. I think I have some­thing like 40,000 miles of road trip expe­ri­ence under my belt at this point. My first big road trip was in 1995, when my brother and I drove from Ithaca NY to Florida, and then to Col­orado. Since then I’ve dri­ven from Ithaca to Col­orado and back sev­eral times (1700 miles each way.) I’ve done Ithaca to Cal­i­for­nia and back twice (both times in the win­ter, which is a lit­tle nuts.) I’ve done Austin to Ithaca (1700 miles each way) at least 4 times, once with a 40 foot mov­ing van and a trailer on it. I’ve done Austin to Col­orado three times (1000 miles) and Austin to Salt Lake City twice (1400 miles.) I’ve now done Austin to Florida twice (1300 miles.)There’s a few oth­ers in there I’m prob­a­bly for­get­ting, so I’d say I’m qualified.

(Quick dis­qual­i­fier: My first road trip was tech­ni­cally when I was about 8. My fam­ily drove from Ithaca to Florida. But I didn’t drive, and had very lit­tle to do with any­thing. So that doesn’t count.)

As with every­thing at this point, I’ve blogged about Road Trips many times by now (this blog is over four years old. Who knew?) If you wish to review any road trip blogs, they are here, here, here, here, here, and here, where it turns out I’ve already writ­ten some about my road­trip history.

2) Food

Food is totally crit­i­cal. A com­mon rookie mis­take is the fast food trap. This must be avoided at all costs!!! Do you know what hap­pens to your diges­tive sys­tem if you eat fast food for three days straight? It’s not good. And do you know what can save you? Sub­way! This is a more recent devel­op­ment, but Sub­way now has branches in most Pilot travel stops. There seem to be Pilot stops on most major inter­states, so this can be a huge help. I think I ate a sub­way every sin­gle day of the most recent trip. TA also has Sub­way in some travel stops, as does Love’s. The other food options are usu­ally things like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and the like. Avoid at all costs.

Sub­way is good for Lunch and Din­ner, but what about Break­fast? Two options are almost always avail­able. Two very dif­fer­ent choices, two dif­fer­ent foods. A fork in the road, both well trav­eled, so no dif­fer­ence to be made.

I’m talk­ing, of course, about Cracker Bar­rel and The Waf­fle House.

The easy way to go would be to call Cracker Bar­rel the classy choice and Waf­fle house the low class choice. But that’s too sim­ple. I think it’s more of the culi­nary equiv­a­lent of the Madonna-Whore com­plex. Cracker Bar­rel is just total break­fast insanity.

Now Waf­fle house is a whole dif­fer­ent story. If you’ve never been to a Waf­fle House, I’m not sure I can really cap­ture the true spirit. I’ve prob­a­bly eaten at Waf­fle House around a dozen times, and I always seem to come away with a story of some kind. Not always a good one, but a story none the less. A few examples:

a) One of my first trips to Waf­fle House was in Ft. Collins, Col­orado. I was there with my Brother, and just for fun I asked for a job appli­ca­tion. I wish I could remem­ber the exact details, but the ques­tions were seri­ously a basic lit­er­acy test. Things like “What is 4 + 6?” There might of been a “Which word is mis­spelled” question.

b) Dur­ing one drive to Ithaca from Austin, I stopped at a Waf­fle House in Jack­son, Ten­nessee. I was mak­ing small talk with the wait­ress, who seems approx­i­mately six hun­dred years old. I told her it seemed like a nice lit­tle town. She said “Yeah, it was, until all the black peo­ple moved in. You know?” No, I didn’t.

c) Dur­ing a trip to Arkansas with Alli­son, she ordered a ‘lite’ waf­fle, while I had the reg­u­lar. So the wait­ress brings our food, and there’s only one waf­fle. When she comes back, we ask her which waf­fle this is. She picks it up, smells it deeply, and says “This is the reg­u­lar.” and puts it down and walks away. Wow. Never had a wait­ress smell my food two inches from her nose.

d) This trip, I ate Waf­fle House in Gulf Hills, Mis­sis­sippi. I had my head down when my wait­ress came over. She said, in a accent right out of Design­ing women “What can I get you, sugah?” I looked up, and she was His­panic. Named Carmelita. With a per­fect south­ern accent. She did not smell my waf­fle, make racist com­ments, and seemed lit­er­ate. So it was a suc­cess­ful waf­fle house trip. Her name tag said she had worked there for 12 years, so that might explain the accent. And did I men­tion one of the most unusual fea­tures of Waf­fle House? This Waf­fle House was located on the north side of Inter­state 10. There was also a Waf­fle House on the south side. I’m talk­ing about 300 yards away. It’s a sin­gu­larly unique expe­ri­ence to eat in one restau­rant with a view of the same restau­rant. It kinda messes with your mind a little.

3) Cof­fee

Now we’re really get­ting down to it. Cof­fee is the most crit­i­cal aspect of a road trip. Well, sec­ond most crit­i­cal. Gas is prob­a­bly first. But cof­fee is a close sec­ond. Gas keeps the car going, and cof­fee keeps the dri­ver going. I’ve become more of a cof­fee drinker, and more of a cof­fee con­nois­seur as I age. I sup­pose I’ve fol­lowed the arc of the cof­fee craze of the last ten years. I try not to drink too much, sav­ing for the times when I really need it (I always get sleepy in the late after­noon) so to max­i­mize it’s impact. Cof­fee on a road trip can be a real prob­lem. Gas sta­tions and travel stops are usu­ally of the worst qual­ity. Acidic, burnt, and just down­right nasty. I would of thought that it would of got­ten bet­ter with the rise of the gourmet cof­fee, but sadly, it hasn’t. For the most part all that’s changed is the fancy dis­plays. I got one cup at a Pilot rest stop which claimed to be 100% Kona. For one, I knew that wasn’t true, as real Kona is hard to get out­side of Hawaii, and pro­hib­i­tively expen­sive. This stuff had a nutty yet burnt bou­quet, with just a hint of bio-diesel. It seems like every cof­fee cup is a roll of the dice. The high end of the spec­trum is some­thing drink­able. The low end is some­thing you wouldn’t feed to a ani­mal. So what to do?

Enter Star­bucks.

Yes, I said it. I’m not a huge fan. Not even a big fan. But I can trust in Star­bucks to give me mediocre but drink­able cof­fee at high prices. The hard part is find­ing one. Yes, you heard me right. At this time Star­bucks has not tried to move into the Travel Stop mar­ket, which I have a hard time under­stand­ing. The king of over­sat­u­ra­tion, Star­bucks has (as far as I know) any stores in travel stops. So even though there are places in Austin where you can find three Star­bucks within a two block radius. Maybe they’re fol­low­ing the Waf­fle House model. But on the road it gets a lit­tle tricky. So what do you do?

Tar­get!

That’s right. It’s very easy to find a Tar­get. Many are located just off exit ramps, and all Tar­gets now have a Star­bucks inside. It takes a few extra min­utes, but it’s worth it. Road Trips are all about con­trol­ling what you can con­trol. I also can rec­om­mend drink­ing some­thing like a Latte, which is eas­ier on the stomach.

4) Mak­ing Time, and mod­ern technology

The point of a road trip is to get where you’re going. Keep­ing your­self mov­ing is the idea. I keep track of my aver­age speed in my head. It’s not really all that hard. When I leave in the morn­ing, I take note of the time (round­ing to the near­est 15 inter­val). Then every hour I check my mileage for the day, and do a quick aver­age speed cal­cu­la­tion. My goal is to keep it above sixty, which is harder than you think. If you drive 70 mph for one hour, but stop for 15 min­utes, you’ll cover 52.2 miles. If you stop for ten min­utes, it goes up to only 56 miles. So it’s easy to lose aver­age speed quickly. The key to cov­er­ing ground is to not stop, and to keep your stops short. My per­sonal best for a full day that I can remem­ber is 67 miles an hour, for about ten hours. It was from Nebraska to Ft. Collins, Col­orado. I know I did the drive from Las Vegas to Los Ange­les in about three hours, which is well over 75. As I’ve got­ten older, I’ve noticed my times have got­ten slower. I’ve thought about why, and I think it’s just that I drive slower. I sup­pose I’m just wiser. I’m sure my next car will have cruise con­trol, and that will help keep the speed up.

This was my first road trip with my iPhone, and there were two apps that made a big dif­fer­ence. The first one was called Gas Cubby, and it was use­ful to keep track of my mileage. I’ve always done this on road trips, and using this app is much eas­ier than the note­book and cal­cu­la­tor I used to carry.

The sec­ond app was called around me, and it is super handy. The basic idea is that it will tell what is within your gen­eral area in terms of Restau­rants, Phar­ma­cies, gas sta­tions, cof­feeshops, ect. On the return trip, my wife was hav­ing a crav­ing for Ital­ian, so we checked Around Me and dis­cov­ered that there was a Johnny Carino’s within 6 miles. Then it will give you direc­tions from your cur­rent loca­tion to the place. I think road trips are much more fun with stuff like this!