Does your family love road trips and side quests?

Our family takes a lot of vacations. We typically travel by air, but once in a while, we take a road trip.

I personally love the freedom that car travel provides. You can stop anytime you see a gorgeous scenic overlook or a fun place to get out and explore.

I wrote recently about how to plan the perfect side quests to break up long drives – it’s a particular passion of mine.

Writing that post made me realize that road trips – and, in particular, fun side quests – have been some of our absolute favorite vacation moments as a family.

Then I realized what a fun blog post this would make – both so that I have them all in one place for memory-keeping purposes, and to share these places and ideas with you.

Ready to roll? Here’s a list of our family’s favorite road trips and side quests:

For spring break 2023, we road-tripped to Virginia with a wonderful side quest in West Virginia. The entire trip was too epic to tell you about here – it deserves its own post. Check back soon!

For spring break 2021, we drove from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon with a side quest in Vegas. We also drove from the Grand Canyon back to Vegas with a side quest in Oatman, AZ. These were some of our favorite highlights of the trip.

Once when we drove to Florida, we side-quested in Savannah for a visit to a kitty cafe and the beautiful Bonaventure Cemetary. It was just the right amount of time out of the car stretching our legs and scritching some sweet cats.

On one of our family trips to Niagara Falls, we took a side quest to Presque Ile beach. It was the halfway point of our drive and a huge hit for the whole family. After a walk along the beach and some time spent skipping rocks, we were all set to hop back in the car and finish our drive.

In 2019, we drove to Gatlinburg and stopped in Kentucky at Mammoth Cave National Park. This particular side quest added about four hours to our drive, but it was well worth it to check off a very cool national park we had never visited before.

What road trips have you taken with your family – and do you usually plan awesome side quests to break up the driving, or do you power through to your ultimate destination?

I’d love to hear your tales from the road in the comments below or over on Facebook or Instagram.