Oh Lawrence, In NY we use both systems with elevators. In some buildings you enter at the ground floor or the lobby. It usually depends on the type of build. The next floor up could be labeled 1 or 2 depending on if they want to seem taller with more floors. In Trump Tower in NY there are 10 floors missing because a certain orange spoiled brat wanted to tell people his building is 68 floors when in actuality is only 58. This cause a problem when in one of the condos a fire broke out and the Fire Fighters who entered couldn't figure out which floor they were on and go lost in the star wells. On missing floors it is common that there are no 13th floor in tall buildings while in Hong Kong they commonly omit the forth floor. I've seen in some buildings with M for Mezzanine floor which is 1 up from the Lobby (L) or Ground (G) floor. Just to be different there are hotels here where you enter in at the ground floor G and take the elevator up to the lobby which is 6 floors up. Then the floors are numbered from the lobby while ignoring the first 6 floors which is owned by another business. We also have LL, LLL,... floors which refer to Lower Level, Lower Lower Level,... for floors below the ground that can have shops or parking. With underground parking which is common NY they might also G1, G2, etc... for garage. Then in some rare case you might have S floor which is the Hotel's entrance to the Subway. Deviating a bit. 100 years ago the rich had mansions along Park Avenues and in their basements they had garage type doors that opened up by the train tracks that lead into Grand Central Terminal. The rich would have a private car/carriage moved to their door and the servants would move int he furniture, etc... Then the car would be taxied into Grand Central to be hitched to a train so they could travel for vacation. That it for now. If you would like more on how NYC is not like the rest of the US let me know.
American truck stops are also used by passenger vehicles. It's just a large gas station with some got food, a place for semis to fuel and park, and showers, at least in most American speech. I also never heard of the headlight game's name before. Most of us play slug bug.
One slight correction. Cars are perfectly allowed to stop at truck stops, and they are often the best place to stop, with the cleanest restrooms and the best selection of snacks!
Something happened in the 80s - truck stops were suddenly clean and had fresh, high-quality coffee! I always look for big truck stops when I need a break from driving and maybe a little gas.
I love long road trips, especially overnight! Every year I drive from Minneapolis to visit family in Athens, GA, then back, about 1,200 miles each way. I stop a lot. It usually takes me 19 hours each way because of all my stops, but I really love the drive, and I do it all in one go. I'm never even tired when I get there either. Now if I had to drive commercially every day, I'd have a different attitude I'm sure, but I find long drives like that energizing. Or maybe that's all the coffee... Which also makes me have to stop so often...
As a normal driver (not a trucker), I consider 1,000 miles a decent day of driving. I can go further, but I don't push it. At 1,000 miles, I still have energy when I get home and I can finally sit down and eat dinner. A 400 mile trip is nothing.
As a Brit, I have never gone on a "road trip" except in the US. You don't do a "road trip" in the UK, you just go to somewhere in a car. It feels long and boring, but it doesn't feel like a road trip. You have to have a road trip in America because everything takes so long that you have to plan intermediary destinations. That's what a road trip is, it's a drive where the journey is as important as or more important than the end point.
When we go on a road trip, from Portland to visit family in Central Oregon (a little over 200 miles or 322 km), we plan stops for Starbucks and for our fur babies. The trip with stops takes roughly 4 hours. We also avoid taking the interstate freeway opting instead to drive through the countryside and then taking the Santiam Highway. It's a beautiful trip!
I took a road trip through the Scottish Highlands. It was nice. In the U.S., I've only been on really long drives because my parents didn't want to pay for airfare.
I took a road trip through England and Wales on my way from the Netherlands to Ireland. It was fun, lots to see and do. In the US I took a road trip from Yellowstone to Yosemite (like every other tourist, lol). I noticed that there's a lot more to see on the way in Britain (Europe in general). Since I looked at a map before I left, I expected it to take longer in the US, so it didn't phase me. I guess it helps if you enjoy driving.
Well you don't have to. I live in Illinois and spent many a year going to New York to visit my grandparents. That was a 14-hour trip. We only stopped for bathroom breaks and gas.
SLUGBUG This allows siblings to punch each other without getting in too much trouble. Every time you spot a VW Bug, you call out, “Slugbug (& the VW’s color) yellow!” Then because you called it first, you get to slug (usually in the arm) the person nearest to you, EXCEPT the driver, You never slug the driver! By The Way, I grew up in the 70s in Texas. Our family trips traveled all over Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas/Missouri & Louisianna
In the 60's we bought a frozen family sized Salisbury steak meal and put it on the manifold of our dodge station wagon. Smelled wonderful, and hot & bubbly when we got to the camp ground. 😅
On a road trip when I was about seven years old, I was sitting in the front passenger seat -- this was something kids could do back then -- with my father driving. My mother and sister were napping in the back seats. Bored by midwestern scenery, I treated my dad to a full rendition of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", counting all the way down to zero bottles of beer. It think it took about as long as two, maybe thirty Inna-Gadda-Davidas. It is a testament to Dad's love for me and self-control that I did not finish the road trip strapped to the roof like Aunt Edna.
I don't think I've ever been with a group (or solo) who made it below 80 bottles of beer on the wall. Did you "take one down and pass it around," or sing the more kid-friendly "If one of those bottles should happen to fall?" I remember being on a school bus going to summer camp, and they told us we could sing the song, but we weren't allowed to "take one down and pass it around." Grownups. 😠
Brings back memories. My kids asked all the time during vacation what we did for fun without electronic devices when we were kids on a road trip. Of course my wife and I would tell them about some of the games mentioned here already. We explained we would talk at length with our respective families, even though we had family dinners almost every evening as kids. And my favorite activity to pass the trip would be to stay beyond arm's length away from pop's swiping hand after we made him mad bickering with each other for 100 miles. The trick to that always exciting event was to make sure my little sis was always the winner and got flicked in the forehead. We knew we were in for it when our patient mother took off her seat belt. We knew she had enough too. We knew not to laugh if dad had to unexpectedly hit the brakes. We knew not to laugh, but that did not always stop us. That of course was if one of us wasn't playing on the floor board at mom's feet. Different times. In all seriousness, I do miss those days.
On a long-ago 9-hour road trip of three grown Americans, one went through the entire 99 Bottles, and followed that up with Found a Peanut. The driver (I was the 3rd wheel) was going nuts and could do nothing!
This truly sounds like pure hell on earth to me. I wonder maybe Dad had ear plugs on? Did he try switching on the radio ? Were you mad at your Dad? Did you not love him? After all he let you sit up front? lol jk ......kinda
What a hoot. Fourty years ago I had a job that took 45 minutes to get to. An accident slowed me down one day and it took an hour and a half to get home.
When I started making a lot of road trips, I was complaining about how stiff my joints were. My friend told me I needed a bigger vehicle. I decided to go from a sedan to a crossover. Made a world of difference.
Heated, Cooled, Massaging seats for the win! My spouse said “why do you want massaging seats” 1st 700 mile trip she said “we will never buy another car without massaging seats” 😂
@@anndeecosita3586getting a vehicle the right size for you definitely makes a difference! We have 2 sedans now and an F350 dually. They're either too small or too big for me and both make my back hurt. When I had a Dodge Ram 1500 it was the perfect size for me. Could easily go 3-4 hrs longer in it before having back pain and needing to walk around
Spent the night at a Rest Stop once! I was in a pickup with a canopy and the truck had broken down. We were about 20 miles from the nearest town and the truck's water pump decided to stop working. We were about 200 miles from home and my dad hitched a ride with a trucker home so he could get a new pump and tools to install it and then return the next day. Since we had been camping, I had all the comforts of home, food, water, tv and a gun in the truck as well as the Rest Stop's restrooms at my disposal. I saw MANY STRANGE THINGS THAT NIGHT!
@@brucewilliams8714 WELL, this was on a major highway and there were 18 Wheelers pulling in and out all the time so I could not get much sleep. I spent the night in the cab and around 2 AM two cars drove in and parked not to many spaces from me. I was parked so I could see the Restrooms and four people got out from the cars, 2 from each, looked like two men and two women and went up to the building where an argument began. One guy handed something to one of the women and she threw it back in his face. They left soon after and I walked up where they had been and there was $100 in $20 bills lying on the ground! DO NOT know what that was about BUT I was $100 richer the next day!
Many , many decades ago when hauling my horse half way cross country ( US ) , I stopped at a rest stop in the middle of the night to stretch my legs & unloaded the mare to let her walk a bit too . I was surprised how many people were using the rest stop at that ungodly hour & they were happily surprised to see a horse there which resulted in some fun conversations .
Growing up in Ca we had slug-bug(hit your siblings when you see an original VW beatle, black California (hit your siblings when you see a black Californian license plate), Out of state, (hit your sibling’s when you see an out of state plate) Honk (hit your sibling whenever you could get a semi to blow its horn) Seeing all of this it was just see whatever to hit your siblings.
@@VespasianJudea The games my family played on road trips had no names--and were invented on the spot, solely to keep us kids from getting too out of control.
American married to a brit and we’ve lived in both - biggest differences not mentioned are - road trip snacks. Husband cannot get on board with junk food purchased en route as ‘road tripping food’; the miles markers used in usa and general road signage in the uk (The North being a real example…like just go ‘north’??) and my husband’s family is so cute but oh dear lord….leaving at 6.30 am; tea first. stop by 8 for a coffee and bun; stop at 10 for leg stretch and apple; stop around 12 for lunch; again around 3 for tea and something probably packed; and if still driving at 5 it’s time to consider supper stop - no wonder it takes 8 hours to go from hampshire to france!….my family? load up car, loo, doors lock and you stop when petrol runs out….but the singing thing is funny - never considered it but spot on! love your content :)
oh yes, the signage. the American system is superior by far. it's unhelpful to me and my husband that when looking for a destination in the UK the sign merely points to the next village. we don't know where that is in relation to our destination. and several times we couldn't find our exit off the Peachtree Roundabout and circled many times.
I grew up in the grand era of the station wagon. The night before our road trip began, our parents would put my sister and me to bed in sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon so they could get an early start in the morning. We could sing for hours without repeating the same song - mostly folk songs and cowboy songs. We kept a look-out for a nice roadside picnic table when it got to be lunchtime. These were very common back then. Often, though, we would eat on the move, passing around sandwiches from a cooler on the front floor board. We used gas station rest rooms but would also step behind the roadside bushes when we were out in the country. “Rest areas” were just beginning to be “a thing “ and there were very few of them. My family toured from camp ground to camp ground - we never stayed in motels.
@@ruthf6035 No. We did not like to sing popular music, neither at home nor in the car. We all played musical instruments and had a large collection of records of old folk songs, classical music, and opera. The music we liked was not on the radio and we preferred to make our own music most of the time. Only the TV signed off at midnight. At night I could get am stations several states away. There was one local station that had classical music and jazz programming, both am and fm, way into the wee hours. You are not a psychic.
In 1972 when I was 6, my family of 6 (4 kids from 6 to 13) went on an epic cross country trip in a small RV. 30 days, coast to coast, about 23 states, many national parks, campgrounds, Disneyland, breakdowns, meltdowns, ... It was the defining moment of our family.
We did the same trip, 1976 in a brand new station wagon. My father special ordered it, with no AC or power steering bc that was just showing off. It's very very hot in AZ, in July.
@@russb24 Yes, so many stories. We went to Disneyland, no hotel reserved. Ended up in an hourly rate establishment, my brother and I refused to sleep between the sheets. Lol
Fun fact: the difference between a hotel and a motel is room door access. Motels open straight to the outdoors and hotels have hallways to access the rooms
@@flamingpieherman9822 Nope. Plenty of motels have multiple stories. Mostly 2 to 3 in the ones I've stayed in. With outdoor stairs. And they usually reserve the upper floors for people with ridiculous amounts of luggage. Some even have ramps for wheelchairs!
What do you call one that has both? I stayed in one like that that had an outside door and an inside door to the hallway. I think they called it a motor inn.
@@johncooper4637 I think that is unusual but a motor inn is still a motel. "Motel" means "motor hotel." So, as long as it provides access to your vehicle (allegedly, parked right in front of the door but that depends on the parking of others) it is a motel.
@@chrisbrown7362 O.K. but in all my years (too many) I have never come across a motel with a back door before that one. Out of curiosity I checked their website to see if they had an elevator. If they did it was not mentioned but their website did call it a hotel. It does have three stories.
Having done road trips in both the UK and the US I've found that the US is less stressful, once you get out of the cities the roads are usually fairly empty and you're not fighting traffic all the time. I regularly drive from St Louis, Mo to Trenton, SC, that 750 miles each way, whilst I have done the trip in one go these days we always stop overnight in Nashville, Tennessee, I'm getting old these days! Another useful thing is on the interstates is before every exit there are signs telling you what gas stations, hotels and food places and attractions there are, and on the off ramp they tell you which way and how far down the road they are. Rest stops are often located in places with great views overlooking lakes and the like, they tend to be basic favilities wise but usually have picnic areas, benches and tables and dog walking areas
That's a good point, in the UK as soon as you leave the motorway newtwork you are going to be slowing/stopping every few miles to get past the next town, that doesn't happen as much in the US as the towns are so much further apart (and have proper wide roads through them mostly).
I grew up in Los Angeles, and our favorite car game was “spot the out of state license plates”, and there were lots of them, because it was the 1960’s, gas was dirt cheap, and Disney World didn’t exist yet. Thousands of families would take road trips to Southern California to visit Disneyland and other tourist attractions like Hollywood Boulevard. Route 66 as it used to exist was also still around in the 1960’s, so that brought road trippers from all over to Los Angeles as well.
In my case, that's just driving across town. It's the intersection of 2 major interstates here, so if I don't see (and try to avoid, they're awful drivers) at least half a dozen Florida plates it's a weird day. It's a few thousand miles to California, those aren't uncommon here.
I live in Oregon. When I was little, it was odd to see any license plate that wasn't Oregon, California, or Washington, and the very occasional Idaho. Now, I see out of state license plates every time I drive somewhere.
@@sandersson2813 Yes it is but people on the political right blast the price of gas and fuel as they drive by in a 5000 lb jacked up pickup going 85 mph with one person in it down the interstate.
Been a subscriber since long before the pandemic, you weren’t full-time UA-cam creator yet, we were still trying to get you to stop calling yourself negative adjectives, reminding you that you were smart, brilliant, creative and that we wanted to hear what you had to say to us. Lawrence thank you for listening to us. You are a treasure and we love you. You and your sweet family, wife, cat and dog…did I miss anyone deserve wonderful wonderful things…yes, I told you this before. Be safe and carry on. Your first million subscribers will happen sooner than any of you…including Uncle Toby can ever know. Thank you for being you!
Tomorrow I am driving 743 miles from Raleigh, NC to Port Charlotte, FL. ~11hrs driving time. Returning from evacuating for Hurricane Milton. With my mother and two cats. Lucky me... Thankfully, no damage to either of our homes. Also thankfully, my Mercedes wagon is very, very comfortable even on an endless day on the road.
Put the car on cruise control, and all you have to do is steer. With more recent models that have lane assist and adaptive cruise control, you have to do barely anything at all.
Wow, I've just checked & I live in the northernmost city in England & we're 560.5 miles from the centre of Paris (10hrs30mins, course that involves queuing up to drive our car onto the Eurostar train in Kent)
We also played the alphabet game where you looked for each letter of the alphabet (in order) on signs and license plates. Some letters were easy and others were quite hard.
When living in Italy we took a train from Milan to Sicily - which is an island. Everyone kept asking me how we were getting to Sicily on train. All I Could tell them was "I don't know, but the ticket says we're going straight to Sicily." It turned out when we got to the coast, the train cars were loaded onto a FERRY. We couldn't get out of our train car, but could look out the window and see were inside the ship. No scenic beauty of ocean or sea. Years later I discovered this was something we actually did in the USA around the Great Lakes.
I experienced train-on-the-ferry en route to Copenhagen from Hamburg. Except they would not let us stay on the train in transit. (Your way would be problematic in an evacuation!) But, I, too, hadn't realized that was a thing. Years later, in New Zealand, the ferry between south Island and North Island also carried trains and cars.
Before the Øresund Bridge was built, there used to be a train ferry running between Malmo, Sweden and Copenhagen. I rode it once as a kid. Unfortunately, it was late at night, and we stayed on board the train, so we couldn't really see anything.
@@johnmaster3748 We did that trip when I was in high school. European trains are so, so much better than Amtrak. People who try to shame Americans for not taking the train do not understand how much.
I've done road trips in the U.S. all my life. And almost all of them involved a basket of snacks and a cooler for drinks, sandwich makings, and other snacks.
We were in West Virginia on a road trip last week. We drive an Recreational Vehicle called a Motor Home, similar to a big camper van. One aspect of rest stops that you didn't mention was that many of them allow overnight parking so as long as you don't set out camping equipment, you can sleep in your RV for free. You can also do this at truck stops (some chains cater to RV travelers) where you can pay for a shower as well. And, many National Forests and some other public lands also allow parking for free known as boondocking. Of course, there are also countless campgrounds and RV parks that offer electric, water, and sewer hookups as well as bath houses (showers and toilets) and usually other amenities. I grew up with RV travel, but it has had a big resurgence since COVID.
Don't most rest stops also have facilities for you to dump portable toilets? on RVs? I've never had an RV, but I recall seeing signs for that at a lot of rest areas. I usually stop at truck stops nowadays (which aren't exclusively for trucks and RVs) because since the 80s they suddenly became very clean and pleasant places with excellent coffee, and usually your choice of good restaurant food or (my choice) really bad-for-you road food!
@@beenaplumber8379 Some do, but sadly, there are fewer than in the past because of vandalism or misuse. Truck stops are putting in more of them, charging a small fee.
I think the next time you're in West Virginia, especially in October - The spooky season itself - You should talk about one of its numerous cryptids or ghost stories. For example, did you know that West Virginia is the site of the only murder trial where a ghost was entered into evidence? And of course, there's always the famous Mothman and Flatwoods monster. It would just be funny to watch you talk about them as opposed to say, Spring Heeled Jack, or a famous British ghost story.
Yep. We usually got in fights as to whether the spy saw what they said they saw. Cemetery was a favorite. The person who saw a white horse got all the cemeteries.
@@shirleyadams6159 We also played that game growing up. We've crossed the Mississippi using the Grafton Ferry many times. Love driving through Calhoun County. We spend hours just driving around and exploring once or twice a month. Not quite a road trip, but we probably put as many miles on the car as if we did!
We did a road trip in the UK in May of this year. We did the short drive from Heathrow to the Cotswolds where we stayed for a week and then drove to Northern Wales. One very significant difference that I noticed was on the major motorways the view across the countryside was almost always obstructed by trees and greenery. Someone told us it was to combat the exhaust pollution and possibly to dampen the road noise. But being from the Pacific Northwest it really threw me because watching the view is so much a part of the enjoyment of a road trip.
All the beautiful waterfalls in the PNW! Being from Chicago, I loved seeing those as we were driving! Beats the flat corn and soy fields we have in the Midwest.
Memphis, Tennessee has their interstates constructed this way. It was the first time I noticed it in the States. I've been there twice and it was really frustrating, because if you're not familiar with the area, you have no idea what to expect once you leave the highway. They also construct every single entrance to any freaking establishment, I swear, with this 3-4 inch squared-off curb and sharp incline to where it's damn near impossible not to scrape the bottom of your front end! It was awful.
To see "prettier" roads you'd just have to go off the motorway. It boils down to distance again. Motorways are supposed to be the fastest way to connect areas by car but if you're on holiday, you could take a longer route to incorporate better scenery (because you're not travelling as far as in US)
There are plenty of trees in the Pacific Northwest but there are also MOUNTAINS to look at. When we came out of the trees on the road from Dufur, Oregon to Hwy 35 there was Mt. Hood right in front of us. The other side of the PNW are the Channeled Scablands where there are very few trees but miles and miles of basaltic lava with neat places like Dry Falls, Washington.
@@StellaMayfair7 Oh my, the flatlands of central and northern IL are a tedious part of any road trip. But then there's NE and the Dakotas. I swear, in those states, if your car's steering is aligned well, you could take a nap and wake up an hour later without missing a curve. I prefer to do those drives in the dark, when I can't see the vast stretches of nothing. A good audiobook on the stereo also helps. One of the most breathtaking drives I've done is Knoxville, TN to Charleston, SC. The mountain vistas in NC are unbelievable!
Pub cricket! Divide into two teams, take turns, spot pub signs. Count the legs in the sign, eg fox and goose = 4+2=6; you just scored 6 runs. If the pub has no legs eg The Crown, you have been bowled out and hand over to the other team. Develop your own house rules about what counts as a pub and what is just a hotel or restaurant, do derelict pubs count, does a leg have to be paired on the sign to count it do you go by the name. Eg The Queen... She had two legs but do they show in the picture? Etc. the arguments are as fun as the game.
"This is typical. Absolutely typical... of the kind of... ARSE I have to put up with from you people! You ponce in here, expecting to be handwaited on hand and foot while I'm trying to run a hotel here!" 😂
My husband, two sons, and I took a 30-day road trip in England. We stayed in as many historic hotels as we could find. Charming. Many delightful villages, towns, and cities. We had the luxury of time, so we could stay several days in a particularly interesting place. Folks in pubs (oh, slept in a lot of those) asked how long…, what seen…, etc. Almost all said we had seen more of England than they or anyone they knew. (We intended to do more than a couple hours in Wales, but time was growing short. We did buy a Tudor era clock to have shipped home. Best antique shops in the world.)One of the best trips of my life, and I’m now a widely traveled octogenarian. Love your podcast! 0:06
I have had road trips in both the UK and US. You touched on many of the items. I would add that due to the length of the US road trip there's often several side trips for interesting things yes, but also the nonsensical items as well. Things such as the largest ball of twine or a building that looks like a giant basket. These places cover the usual gas refill and toilet break but also are stops for the mind which might otherwise need a brief distraction from the work of driving.
I’m Australian and recently retired. In the last 2 years I visited the UK and drove about 7000 km over 3 weeks visiting Dover, Land’s End, Lowestoft and John O’Groats among other locations. I’ve also had two 30 day trips to the USA driving a total of about 22000km and passed through 48 states. Both were completely brilliant and the petrol costs were roughly similar.
I'm Canadian. We used to travel down to Maine - about 8 hours. I loved the good quality of the interstate highway we travelled on. Lots of lovely views as we made our way through Vermont, New Hampshire and finally a short way up the coast of Maine.
We drove from Montreal to Portland two weeks ago!!!! Fantastic drive! Loved the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire... and the views when you turn from Burlington towards Montpellier. The roads from there on were in great condition and we ate it up
When I was 7 years old, my family (of 5) took a road trip from our home in Beaumont, California (approximately 60 miles east of Los Angeles) to Detroit Michigan ( a distance of about 2300 miles) in a '79 Ford Mustang, which is a rather small car. It took us about 3 days each way. My parents sold their '73 Mercury Grand Marquis just before this trip because gas prices were very high (for 1980, anyway) and it had a 7.5 Liter V8. The Mustang had a 2.3 Liter 4-cylinder. This was when there was a national speed limit of 55 MPH. The Marquis would have been MUCH more comfortable for a trip of that distance. Most interesting thing about the trip was when we were driving through Wyoming, there was a thunderstorm in which a bolt of lightning went horizontally across the road right in front of the car.
as a teenager, back in the early 70s, me and my 870 pump (which i hid in the used tire rack) worked at a "last chance" gas station in the sonoran desert where the "camino del diablo" and the old dixie overland road intersect. i sold over priced gas, frozen sandwiches and hot soda pop while fixing overheating cars, flat tires and panicked people on their last dime and hope....one hot summer day (yes, you can cook an egg on the road along with bacon as well) a german family stopped. they were extremely hot and not prepared for this journey as they were going to phoenix from san diego (a distance of 350 miles ) in a small rental car through the one harshest deserts in the world.. as it was still mid morning and the temperature was still getting hotter, i stopped them from continuing their journey at least until the sun went down and took them in to rest in the shade through the afternoon., they were totally miserable from the heat. many people don't understand the extreme climates of the u.s.... anyway, i remember them fondly, as the two daughters were fairly close to my age and to keep themselves cooled down they wetted each other with my water hose...
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER it's tacna, az... the old gas station was destroyed in a desert storm many many years ago and a new corporate mini mart was built.. and actually the little town has grown some ... phoenix has grown from 150,000 people to almost 5 million people (which is good right?)... if you are interested in the "old wild west" , that's the area
@@superman9772 Thank you. That means it's probably where the Chevron is now, since US 80 is the Dixie Overland Road. So South Ave 40E is probably the Camino Del Diablo, even though it's not labeled as such anymore. I see an intersection south of there in the desert with a faint "road" that goes off a different direction in the desert. One of my little hobbies is looking up places I don't know anything about when someone makes an interesting comment. It's like a puzzle to try to figure out. I've been through there many times years ago. It's super hot, not a place for people from cool weather countries.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER the camino del diablo was used by Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 to secure a spanish land route from mexico to california... today, it's used as a smuggler's route ( i don't advise exploring south of the highway ... don't want to discuss the reason for that advise on here)... 40E is the closest highway intersection to the route but "in olden times" the route ended at a place called fulibuster camp (that was the starting point of the infamous filibuster Henry Crabb and his "army" which was massacred in 1857 in sonora, mexico.... some places of interest close by is the cantina where the last of the vasquez gang was captured (the real life zorro in my opinion) oatman massacre, the "westernmost american civil war battle site, the infamous glanton gang massacre (the subject matter of the famous novel, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthey, the author of "No Country for Old Men" another massacre was the Cocoph massacre by the Quechen just after the Yuma War... and with all those events and the harsh environment is the reasons for that route's name... oh yeah, and the ufos every now and again...
Truck stops are not used only by large trucks. They literally are just large gas stations with showers and a large parking lot for semi trucks to park and drivers to sleep. They usually have at least a fast food restaurant or 2, and sometimes have a full restaurant. The trucks usually either fuel up at a side or back for semitrucks and the non-bus passenger vehicles fuel and park in the front.
@@cheriestl Oh heck yeah! We’d make spur-of-the-moment road trips from Missoula, MT, to Spokane, WA, and other various points when I was in college. Such fun. Sigh….
When me and my cousins would go on a road trip to go camping we'd pump imaginary big truck air horns out the window and truckers passing by (if they were game) would honk at us.
I Spy was a favorite game my brother and I played in the car growing up, but we had a different name for it. We called it “Maritha, Maritha, Marie.” As in “Maritha, Maritha Marie, I see something that you don’t see and it’s…blue (or whatever color you choose ).” I don’t know why we said that little phrase instead of “I Spy”-I guess that’s the way my mom taught us to play. But it’s more fun to say, “Maritha, Maritha, Marie” anyway, lol.
I'm a retired truck driver. Did it for 30 years and drove from New Jersey to California on a regular basis. Now that's a road trip. LOL!! Cheers from Tennessee
I used to know a guy who had been a truck driver. He told me that on 9/11, he was headed to NYC. When the events of the day began unfolding, his dispatcher radioed him and told him to go to Memphis instead--as if that was just a minor detour!
@@JRBWare1942 Kinda is. My ex-wife always said I had a problem with distance and time. To me a short ride is anything under 2-3 hours. When we lived in Florida I took her to Marjorie Kinnen Rawlings homestead as a surprise. It was about 2 hours from where we lived at in Leesburg. After about 15 minutes she got antsy wanting to know how much further, I told her it was just up the road. When we got to Cross Creek, she was happy to see her favorite authors house but she was bent outta shape with me. Saying that wasn't a short drive, but in my world it was. Depends on your point of view I reckon. LOL! Cheers
When I was a kid we would drive from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Calgary, Alberta (1770 miles each way) to see my paternal grandparents. My dad only got two weeks vacation so one week for each set of grandparents. That meant no overnight stops on the way to or from Canada. My dad even made a custom padded riser the same height as the seat (to go over the hump in the floor) so my brother and I would have a level surface to sleep on in the back seat. A very warm trip in the summer with no A/C. Not so bad in winter.
My mother was an English teacher (US based teacher that taught American English, not a UK based teacher, that well, was just English) and so we had two versions of the license plate game. The easy version was to come up with an acronym using the letters on the plate. 123 GZB could be “Good Zebra Buyers”. The harder version was to come up with a word containing the letters in the same order as the plate. The same plate could be “gazebo”. Winners could be who was first, but were often voted on if multiple answers were given.
Variation in states that have 3 letters on their plates: letters do not have to be consecutive. So AKE can be used for BAKE but also for bAsKEt. Proper nouns and common two word phrases are acceptable. Words in other languages only acceptable if all players know that language.
We sometimes play that as adults. When we are a little giddy from a long trip, it’s especially fun to require that it be a descriptive phrase that could apply to a person, and then afterward, try to get a look at the driver to see if it might apply to them. Surprisingly hilarious!
We did a road trip from Massachusetts to The Great Smoky Mountains, and we managed all 50 states at licence plate bingo. There was a Hawaii plate parked at one of the park visitor centers, and we saw an Alaska plate at a Dunkin Donuts 15 miles from home. We've never managed all 50 again in our travels.
@@sandratuttle Probably a military person who was stationed in Hawaii with most likely a expensive sports car they refused to sell before being stationed back to the mainland USA... I doubt if that car was a old used clunker...
absolutely, I'm in central Montana and I tell folks it's basically 2 hours to anywhere.... There's a few places where I've driven for 3 hours without seeing a single other car.... It's lovely, haha
Chicago is like an island. To go anywhere interesting is a major road trip. When I was a kid, we would drive 18 hours in a station wagon to the NH coast, staying in 1 hotel room overnight on the way. It was great! Of course, back then we didn't have to wear seatbelts and nobody sat in carseats.)
My all-time favourite road trip I've ever taken was with my aunt in the UK when I was a kid. We drove all around Wales and England one summer visiting tons of different castles, while living off Scotch eggs, pickled onions, and cheese and pickle butties. It was great!
When I was a kid in Southern Oregon, we would occasionally take a trip to Disneyland. We would take off at about 9pm and drive all night. The trip to LA took about 12 hours. It was a good way to go....missed most of the traffic and us kids would sleep all the way there. My folks would switch up on driving and we would roll into Anahiem at about 9:30 the following morning.
We used to visit our relatives in Michigan and would leave Pennsylvania in the early evening and stop somewhere for supper and then the kids would sleep the rest of the way. 9:54
In the US, my roadtrips are segmented by camping overnight. I plan it that way. In the UK, my single road trip years ago was marked by pubs; countryside pubs with names like The White Lion or the Dribbling Hedgehog, whose outdoor seating was a nice lawn with picnic tables strewn about. Imagine my delight that pints were twenty ounces and not merely sixteen. You can further imagine my delight that after seeing what seemed like hundreds of episodes of All Creatures Great And Small, I finally got to drink Yorkshire bitter. The dude abides. Now, for anyone reading this, close one eye for just a moment. Padiddle!
A thing I remember from the servivce station is the little annex full of arcade machines, because in the UK unlike the US you didnt have a local arcade, they are largely exclusive to seaside holiday destinations. So if you were heading anywhere, a stopoff for a meal usually meant an opportunity to play something interesting.
I spent a month in Britain and a couple of nights in Ireland. Hired a car and drove everywhere, all corners of Britain and everything in between. That was a road trip. Loved it. Met a lot of good people. Enjoyed the food. Reveled in the atmosphere. Yes, it was much different than road trips in the US. I’m retired US military and have driven all over America. Thoroughly enjoyed driving on the other side of the road. Definitely a learning experience, but once I set boundaries, such as stay away from city centres and stick to the M, A and some larger B roads, I was fine. (That first 24 hrs, though…. Woof…) The roundabouts were…fun. I prefer roundabouts to intersections with lights, but doing it on the other side of the road, in the opposite direction, in a manual/stick transmission car* was…an experience. Eventually I got the hang of all of it, but managed to stay away from London’s centre by one whole street. Ended up in Shepard’s Bush. Found a car park and refused to go any further. All done without GPS/SatNav and smart phones. Road atlas, baby! I can never and will never complain about US gas/petrol prices again. After doing the measurement and currency conversions, their fuel prices are downright scary! I only see that type of price at gas stations near airports. And that was in 2008! * The shifting pattern was opposite of US shift pattern. THAT was a learning curve.
The games we always played were: - the alphabet game: each player works their way through the alphabet by spotting the the letters on license plates or signs. - slug bug: first person to spot a VW bug yells "slug bug " and hits someone on there upper arm. Mom usuallly makes you stop playing when the crying starts - 20 question: we reserved this for the stretches of road in the west where you could travel 30 miles without seeing anything more than fence posts so the other two games didn't work.
My favorite way to travel is with a buddy who can swap driving with me. Travel at night when traffic is less, and there are fewer semi trucks out. Travel straight through, one driving while the other sleeps, then swap. Sometimes we pack a cooler with food to save money. This way, you get to your destination faster and only need to buy fuel. Of course if you want to see the scenery and stop at various places along the way, this method may not be as ideal. I’m just very happy to travel and have fun❤❤❤
I have plenty of fond memories of road trips here in the US with my family. My dad bought a Ren and Stimpy cassette tape with several songs from the show, and there were several times, that my mom, dad, sister, and myself all broke into song singing the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen anthem. There were a few other songs we'd break into song with, but that was the funniest one. As for road trips in the UK... I went on a day trip via train from London to Cambridge. So my impression was it was more practical to just take a train than go by car.
LOL, that's great. All my siblings and me love Neil Diamond because my dad played him constantly when on the road. Either learned to love it, or jump out of the car at 55 mph.
@@sandersson2813they do not cost in the UK (at service stations but they do in so train stations and other places) but I've been to rest areas in Europe that charge.
My wife and I are from Texas, and we spent 3 weeks roadtripping around Great Britain this summer. We started in South Hampton, after arriving on the Queen Mary 2. I got a rental car from Avis at the airport, and we basically drove in a big clockwise route with stops in Salisbury, Bath, Cardiff, Snowdonia, Glasgow, Islay, Oban, Falkirk, Northumberland, Newcastle, York, Cambridge and finally London. We spent about half our nights in hotels, but the other half in rooms let by pubs. The biggest challenge was driving in the UK (wheel on the wrong side of the car and car on the wrong side of the road), but I was able to find several UA-cam sources to learn the rules, road markings, signage, etc. So basically all was well. Our biggest challenges were finding laundries, the insatiable British appetite for parking fees, and the narrowness of rural roads; especially in Wales. The best thing was easily the people. It’s often said that us yanks ands you Brits are two peoples separated by a common language, but everyone we spoke with seemed kindred to us. Overall, the shorter distances allowed us to see almost all of Great Britain in only three weeks, and meet many of our British cousins. I watched many of your videos before our trip to see what I could learn about the cultural differences I could expect. You did a great job of training me!
As Americans, we were surprised when visiting and driving in the UK, that the speed limits on the road signs are in MILES per hour, and the distances to the next town are shown in MILES, not kilometers. Even "yards" was used, such as, "No shoulder next 400 yards." I always thought the UK used the metric system entirely, (since they used to be in the EU) because they measure weights in grams/kilograms and temperature in Celsius. When we first saw the speed limit signs on the big highways as "70" we thought, "Wait, 70 km/hour is only about 44 miles per hour, and these cars are going WAY faster than that!!!! Then our son told us it was MILES per hour! So many roundabouts in the UK, and it seemed so odd to go around them clockwise (from the left lane) instead of counter-clockwise (or "anti-clockwise" as said in the UK) from the right lane as we do in the US. And yes, the rural roads are extremely narrow! If you meet another car going opposite, it's quite a squeeze!
That's a great road trip!! It's "Southampton" btw.... our next road trip includes Texas! We are doing Texas to New Orleans via OH, Branson and Memphis :)
We were an Air Force family stationed in New Mexico and would road trip to South Carolina for Christmas and summer holidays. I was 7 and vividly remember the thrill of choosing a motel around 4pm each travel day usually a Howard Johnson because they had a restaurant and swimming pool. I was completely agog at one -they brought breakfast to your room!! Such fun🎉
I can't tell you the number of times I've done a long road trip and instead of getting a hotel or motel room, we would just pool over in a large parkinglot and sleep in our car.
My husband and I drove 13 hours straight from Maryland to Missouri and then back last year. That was a wild experience. I'm not sure I would be willing to do that again without stopping.
Instead of yellow cars we used to spot for VW Beetles! We've recently had the absolute pleasure of doing the whole length of the Blue River Parkway! As far as I know nowhere outside the US does this concept exist. Basically a Parkway is a stretch of scenic road where trucks/commercial vehicles are banned, and the speed limit is set at quite a low level (45 mph, in this case). What an experience - 476 miles of endless scenic beauty from horizon to horizon! Oh yes and there are things called "overlooks" - what we in UK would call lookout points (not that there are many). It's debatable whether it is even possible to actually see the horizon from most UK roads! I highly recommend doing this trip and be sure to allocate 4-5 days for it, and stop at the many little towns just off the beaten track along the way. They are delightful. Cheers, mate!
My first trip to Britain was in 1978 to visit a school friend who was in the US Air Force, stationed at Mildenhall in East Anglia. My friend had a car, and we did quite a road trip. Trying to see the entire British Isles in 3 weeks... well, okay, we were young. 😁
My husband and I had a couple of unique games on our road trips. In one, we had to come up with amusing alternate names for car models. For example, we changed GrandAm to GrandMa, and Explorer to Exploder. Or we would sings songs with the voice of cartoon character Elmer Fudd. My husband was expert at singing Noel Coward songs like Elmer Fudd. Lots of fun! Well, we enjoyed it.
Grew up with roadtrips in the States. Lots of singing, talking, staring out the window, wouldn't trade it for the world. Lived in England a couple of years and while planning a trip home, suggests a trip to Florida. My then husband asked how long a trip it was, I shrugged and said about 12 hours, to which he replied, "12 hours??, we could be in Poland in 12 hours!" My reply,"Then why aren't we?"😅 Definitely not a Roadtripper!
@3:07, looking out of the window of my south east London maisonette on a bronze Ford Ranger. My builder also has one. The difference between us Brits and the Americans, is that these trucks are workhorses and not for sitting in a downtown office car park for most of the day. I like playing the numberplate game where you spot one containing a whole word. Neither parents drove and long journeys were made on the train. I don't like driving and would sooner hop on the train rather be faced with endless hours of terror inducing driving.
My brothers-in-law said they played "PUNCH BUGGY." When they saw a VW Bug, they'd punch the other person. Yeah. Punch. And they punched hard. Even the driver! You need to drive in California, from LA to Yosemite area, for example. Or LA to Vegas. Long drives. Not much around for a lot of it. Years ago, we'd do the LA-Vegas drive in about 3 hours at best. More recently, when we've gone Fresno-Vegas, it's about 6 hours. What was interesting was driving in the winter, because you're going through the High Desert and by a very strange forest (Joshua Tree). It's called the High Desert because it's high elevation--as opposed to the Low Desert, like Death Valley. High elevation means it's possible to have snow. In the desert. On Joshua Trees. That was a sight!
Padiddle is a classic midwest (many Great Lakes region) game. Most Americans probably don’t know of it. But as a midwesterner I was excited hearing Lawrence bring it up
I'm American, but I've spent time in UK and Germany. The only road trip I can recall in Germany was once taking my family from Nierstein am Rhein in the Rheinland to Bergtesgaden in Bavaria. Not bad, kind of like going from Portland, Oregon to Boise, Idaho. I recall one rest stop along the way -- nothing interesting, just an imbiss (roadside food stand) with restrooms. In the UK, though, I was living in Wrexham in North Wales. In the brief time I was there, my girlfriend and I went to Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Leicester, and we did a day trip to and near Salisbury Plain. The biggest difference to me was the Motorway Service Areas. They were like mini-malls with a food court, and tourist shops. I was really impressed with the comfort of having to pull over to go to the bathroom, and always left after some fast food, and carrying food and snacks for the next leg of the journey. Many of them also had petrol stations, so sort of one stop and you're off again.
My family went on quite a few long vacations in the 70’s and early 80’s, mom made a back of the front seat entertainment sleeve. Road trip bingo was included, as well as books, coloring books, puzzles etc. We also had a tape line through the middle of the back seat that my brother and I were not allowed to cross, and all it took was “the look” to stay on our own side. Punch Bug was not allowed! Blanket and pillows were also provided. I will never forget those trips 🙂
"paddiddle." Haha, where I grew up we called that "Popeye." And whatever you called the one about the yellow car from your home country, we had something similar to that. It was called "punch buggy." You see, I'm in my mid '50s. When I was a kid Volkswagen beetles were still everywhere. So when someone saw if a VW bug, He shouted "punch buggy" followed by the color. The last one to spot it and shout it got punched by everybody else.
What I noticed driving from Liverpool to Edinburg was the absence of billboards. Only safety, information, and service signs were on the motorway. It was nice.
We've just got back from 3 weeks in the US and Canada. We did a road trip from our friends' house in Indiana to Jackson & Memphis in Tennessee. We stopped at Buc-ees on the I65 between Louisville and Nashville, WOW! It was the size of a large supermarket and had over 100 gas pumps. It was fantastic.
Way old school - calling out “woodchuck” when we saw the wood-sided station wagons. Also perdiddle (as we said it), slug bug, alphabet game, and sing “Country Roads” during the 7-hour trip to Grandma’s house.
Growing up in New Jersey we always called the game Punch Buggy! Same as slug bug, you yell PUNCH BUGGY and the color of the car while you punch your sibling in the arm!
In the US, you can take a nap in the front right hand seat during your journey. My one trip to UK, the day we landed I took a nap in the front left hand seat and woke up in terror when I suddenly thought I was in the drivers seat and on the wrong side of the road!
The first ever "motel" was right by the highway in San Luis Obispo, California. It was first called the Milestone Mo-Tel and later renamed the Motel Inn. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1991. The highway I mentioned is US 101, one of the two major north-south routes in the state, the other being Interstate 5. San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is home to a university. It is also home to a quite famous (or infamous) establishment called the Madonna Inn.
While a road trip in the UK can be fun, it differs from one in the United States. However, if you are visiting the UK for the first time, I'm sure it will be very exciting as everything will look different to a tourist. However, the United States is at the next level compared to the UK. In the U.S., you get winding, twisting roads and long stretches where there are no people other than yourself. You get colossal mountain ranges and massive cities with towering skyscrapers. You get huge valleys and coastal highways stretching for miles and miles on end. You get vast deserts, wide open plains, and massive forested areas. The U.S. is built in a way that lends itself to the drive. Not to mention, the driving experience will last much longer and offer many more opportunities for exploration compared to the UK. 🚗
Our family road trips were rich sources of inside jokes. On a trip to Wyoming, we started pointing out any time we saw an antelope. After a couple of hours, this evolved into "canteloupe". So now the family refers to them as canteloupe. And after an all-day trip to Colorado, we discovered that the motel had messed up our reservation and didn't have our room ready until the following day. All they had available was a room with a queen size bed. My sister and I had each brought a friend along, so there were six of us. So four of us slept on the floor. That became known as the infamous "six people, one bed" trip.
I have fond memories of UK road trips in the mid to late 1980s. Hob Nob crumbs all over the car and frequent stops at Little Chef or Happy Eater restaurants.
We road-tripped through Europe and the medieval towns with their red roofs and cathedral was such a treat. Also, stopping at a rest area in rural Austria and having to pay for toilet paper was a fun memory. My favorite thing about road trips in America are setting out as sun rises, and listening to all the classic Americana travel songs.
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Oh Lawrence, In NY we use both systems with elevators. In some buildings you enter at the ground floor or the lobby. It usually depends on the type of build. The next floor up could be labeled 1 or 2 depending on if they want to seem taller with more floors. In Trump Tower in NY there are 10 floors missing because a certain orange spoiled brat wanted to tell people his building is 68 floors when in actuality is only 58. This cause a problem when in one of the condos a fire broke out and the Fire Fighters who entered couldn't figure out which floor they were on and go lost in the star wells.
On missing floors it is common that there are no 13th floor in tall buildings while in Hong Kong they commonly omit the forth floor. I've seen in some buildings with M for Mezzanine floor which is 1 up from the Lobby (L) or Ground (G) floor. Just to be different there are hotels here where you enter in at the ground floor G and take the elevator up to the lobby which is 6 floors up. Then the floors are numbered from the lobby while ignoring the first 6 floors which is owned by another business. We also have LL, LLL,... floors which refer to Lower Level, Lower Lower Level,... for floors below the ground that can have shops or parking. With underground parking which is common NY they might also G1, G2, etc... for garage. Then in some rare case you might have S floor which is the Hotel's entrance to the Subway.
Deviating a bit. 100 years ago the rich had mansions along Park Avenues and in their basements they had garage type doors that opened up by the train tracks that lead into Grand Central Terminal. The rich would have a private car/carriage moved to their door and the servants would move int he furniture, etc... Then the car would be taxied into Grand Central to be hitched to a train so they could travel for vacation.
That it for now. If you would like more on how NYC is not like the rest of the US let me know.
In reality in USA it's not too long of a road trip
Have been using Incogni for a year and it has cut e-mail spam by 90%.
American truck stops are also used by passenger vehicles. It's just a large gas station with some got food, a place for semis to fuel and park, and showers, at least in most American speech.
I also never heard of the headlight game's name before. Most of us play slug bug.
Oh, Lawrence,
I hereby present you with the
My Favorite British-American Difference Pointer-Outer Award! Congratulations!
You are now award winning.
One slight correction. Cars are perfectly allowed to stop at truck stops, and they are often the best place to stop, with the cleanest restrooms and the best selection of snacks!
This! Truck stops cater to long-distance drivers of big rigs. But everyone is welcome.
You need to check out Buckees!
Something happened in the 80s - truck stops were suddenly clean and had fresh, high-quality coffee! I always look for big truck stops when I need a break from driving and maybe a little gas.
@@garyb6219 One thing leads to another, and it's especially fun if it's winter and the person riding with you can't roll the window down! ;-)
@@beenaplumber8379 Good one!
As a trucker, I chuckle whenever I hear someone call 400 miles a long trip. For me, that's a short day.
by the time you hit retirement you'll never want to go anywhere ever again
Anything under 800 miles is a short trip for us.😂
I love long road trips, especially overnight! Every year I drive from Minneapolis to visit family in Athens, GA, then back, about 1,200 miles each way. I stop a lot. It usually takes me 19 hours each way because of all my stops, but I really love the drive, and I do it all in one go. I'm never even tired when I get there either. Now if I had to drive commercially every day, I'd have a different attitude I'm sure, but I find long drives like that energizing. Or maybe that's all the coffee... Which also makes me have to stop so often...
As a normal driver (not a trucker), I consider 1,000 miles a decent day of driving. I can go further, but I don't push it. At 1,000 miles, I still have energy when I get home and I can finally sit down and eat dinner. A 400 mile trip is nothing.
@@nogetouttamyface Yes and no. Want to see what I want opposed to what I have to see when working.
In the USA, at LEAST half of the motels do have a pool. Whether you'd actually want to swim in it, THAT'S another question!
South of a certain point (somewhere around I-70 or so), they pretty much all have one in my experience.
I've driven across country about 6 times in the north and south and have never seen motels with pools.
😂😂😂😂Yes
@@jasonrodgers9063 motel 6 usually has a pool. Several other chains do as well
And only about Half of those have water, from what I have noticed
As a Brit, I have never gone on a "road trip" except in the US. You don't do a "road trip" in the UK, you just go to somewhere in a car. It feels long and boring, but it doesn't feel like a road trip.
You have to have a road trip in America because everything takes so long that you have to plan intermediary destinations. That's what a road trip is, it's a drive where the journey is as important as or more important than the end point.
Not necessarily. On a 12-14 hour trip, we usually stop once halfway for gas. (Which I believe you call petrol)
When we go on a road trip, from Portland to visit family in Central Oregon (a little over 200 miles or 322 km), we plan stops for Starbucks and for our fur babies. The trip with stops takes roughly 4 hours. We also avoid taking the interstate freeway opting instead to drive through the countryside and then taking the Santiam Highway. It's a beautiful trip!
I took a road trip through the Scottish Highlands. It was nice.
In the U.S., I've only been on really long drives because my parents didn't want to pay for airfare.
I took a road trip through England and Wales on my way from the Netherlands to Ireland. It was fun, lots to see and do.
In the US I took a road trip from Yellowstone to Yosemite (like every other tourist, lol). I noticed that there's a lot more to see on the way in Britain (Europe in general). Since I looked at a map before I left, I expected it to take longer in the US, so it didn't phase me. I guess it helps if you enjoy driving.
Well you don't have to. I live in Illinois and spent many a year going to New York to visit my grandparents. That was a 14-hour trip. We only stopped for bathroom breaks and gas.
SLUGBUG This allows siblings to punch each other without getting in too much trouble. Every time you spot a VW Bug, you call out, “Slugbug (& the VW’s color) yellow!” Then because you called it first, you get to slug (usually in the arm) the person nearest to you, EXCEPT the driver, You never slug the driver! By The Way, I grew up in the 70s in Texas. Our family trips traveled all over Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas/Missouri & Louisianna
Punch buggie! I think that just dated me. 😂
My daughter introduced me to "Cruiser-Bruiser" which entails punching me every time she spots a PT Cruiser. I should sell her.
Woody Wagon for the cars that had the wood paneling.
@@VespasianJudea Haven't heard that in a very long time but played it too.🤣
Where I come from we call it Punch Buggy
Lawrence, you forgot to mention the packed cooler people take on road trips and the road side picnics.
Do people do that any more?
@@kathywiseley4382 yes
@@kathywiseley4382 Yes; but the larger question is, is that significantly different depending which side of the pond you're on?
Roadside picnic? You stop to eat? Are you nuts? 😂
In the 60's we bought a frozen family sized Salisbury steak meal and put it on the manifold of our dodge station wagon. Smelled wonderful, and hot & bubbly when we got to the camp ground. 😅
On a road trip when I was about seven years old, I was sitting in the front passenger seat -- this was something kids could do back then -- with my father driving. My mother and sister were napping in the back seats. Bored by midwestern scenery, I treated my dad to a full rendition of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", counting all the way down to zero bottles of beer. It think it took about as long as two, maybe thirty Inna-Gadda-Davidas. It is a testament to Dad's love for me and self-control that I did not finish the road trip strapped to the roof like Aunt Edna.
😆😆😆
I don't think I've ever been with a group (or solo) who made it below 80 bottles of beer on the wall. Did you "take one down and pass it around," or sing the more kid-friendly "If one of those bottles should happen to fall?" I remember being on a school bus going to summer camp, and they told us we could sing the song, but we weren't allowed to "take one down and pass it around." Grownups. 😠
Brings back memories. My kids asked all the time during vacation what we did for fun without electronic devices when we were kids on a road trip. Of course my wife and I would tell them about some of the games mentioned here already. We explained we would talk at length with our respective families, even though we had family dinners almost every evening as kids. And my favorite activity to pass the trip would be to stay beyond arm's length away from pop's swiping hand after we made him mad bickering with each other for 100 miles. The trick to that always exciting event was to make sure my little sis was always the winner and got flicked in the forehead. We knew we were in for it when our patient mother took off her seat belt. We knew she had enough too. We knew not to laugh if dad had to unexpectedly hit the brakes. We knew not to laugh, but that did not always stop us. That of course was if one of us wasn't playing on the floor board at mom's feet. Different times. In all seriousness, I do miss those days.
On a long-ago 9-hour road trip of three grown Americans, one went through the entire 99 Bottles, and followed that up with Found a Peanut. The driver (I was the 3rd wheel) was going nuts and could do nothing!
This truly sounds like pure hell on earth to me. I wonder maybe Dad had ear plugs on? Did he try switching on the radio ? Were you mad at your Dad? Did you not love him? After all he let you sit up front? lol jk ......kinda
6:18 Singing along with John Denver is mandatory.
On any road trip,not just ones to WV
Country rooaaasds take me hooome…
As is singing along Journey's "Don't stop believing" when it comes on the radio... it's da law.
When Bohemian Rhapsody comes on the radio, it's mandatory to headbang at the appropriate part of the song.
All good songs, but Ingodadavida (or however it’s spelled) is mandatory! 😂
I'm an American living in Gloucester, England. My friends have many times suggested a 'road trip' to Bristol. 45 minutes...
Be sure to take a week's vacation for such an exhaustive journey! 🤣😎😂
What a hoot. Fourty years ago I had a job that took 45 minutes to get to. An accident slowed me down one day and it took an hour and a half to get home.
That’s not a road trip. That’s a commute.
In the UK, 100 miles is a long way. In the US, 100 years is a long time...
Ha. I used to drive 45 minutes to the next town over for school.
The all-American car trip: "It didn't seem that long at all... My lower back felt it, but my brain didn't." Very true words.
When I started making a lot of road trips, I was complaining about how stiff my joints were. My friend told me I needed a bigger vehicle. I decided to go from a sedan to a crossover. Made a world of difference.
Heated, Cooled, Massaging seats for the win! My spouse said “why do you want massaging seats” 1st 700 mile trip she said “we will never buy another car without massaging seats” 😂
@@anndeecosita3586getting a vehicle the right size for you definitely makes a difference! We have 2 sedans now and an F350 dually. They're either too small or too big for me and both make my back hurt. When I had a Dodge Ram 1500 it was the perfect size for me. Could easily go 3-4 hrs longer in it before having back pain and needing to walk around
Drive a 100 miles in the US and you've barely started. Drive 100 miles in the UK and you will find 3 different accents and 5 new words for 'bread'
In many (most?) cases that won't even get you out of your state. That barely gets you out of Houston, Tx.
Good heavens! I have driven a hundred miles just to go to a very particular store and restaurant that I truly enjoyed. Sometimes on a whim.
Tbf in the UK you can drive 10 miles and get 3 different accents at least
I drive 150 miles one way to visit mom, a good friend drives ~430 miles one way to visit her mom. Neither of us leaves California.
You find different accents all over America too.
Spent the night at a Rest Stop once! I was in a pickup with a canopy and the truck had broken down. We were about 20 miles from the nearest town and the truck's water pump decided to stop working. We were about 200 miles from home and my dad hitched a ride with a trucker home so he could get a new pump and tools to install it and then return the next day. Since we had been camping, I had all the comforts of home, food, water, tv and a gun in the truck as well as the Rest Stop's restrooms at my disposal. I saw MANY STRANGE THINGS THAT NIGHT!
Do tell!
@@brucewilliams8714 WELL, this was on a major highway and there were 18 Wheelers pulling in and out all the time so I could not get much sleep. I spent the night in the cab and around 2 AM two cars drove in and parked not to many spaces from me. I was parked so I could see the Restrooms and four people got out from the cars, 2 from each, looked like two men and two women and went up to the building where an argument began. One guy handed something to one of the women and she threw it back in his face. They left soon after and I walked up where they had been and there was $100 in $20 bills lying on the ground! DO NOT know what that was about BUT I was $100 richer the next day!
Many , many decades ago when hauling my horse half way cross country ( US ) , I stopped at a rest stop in the middle of the night to stretch my legs & unloaded the mare to let her walk a bit too . I was surprised how many people were using the rest stop at that ungodly hour & they were happily surprised to see a horse there which resulted in some fun conversations .
Grqb a couple lot lizards and its a party
We drove from California to Pennsylvania and slept in the truck at truck rest stops. We just covered the windows, reclined the seats and napped.
Growing up in Ca we had
slug-bug(hit your siblings when you see an original VW beatle,
black California (hit your siblings when you see a black Californian license plate),
Out of state, (hit your sibling’s when you see an out of state plate)
Honk (hit your sibling whenever you could get a semi to blow its horn)
Seeing all of this it was just see whatever to hit your siblings.
Our local cousins called it Slug-A-Bug. Our out of state cousins called it Punch-Buggy.
I played slug bug when I was little. A yellow beetle got two slugs. (The yellow were fairly rare in the mid-west when I was young.)
You never had woody wagon or cruiser bruiser?
@@VespasianJudea The games my family played on road trips had no names--and were invented on the spot, solely to keep us kids from getting too out of control.
@@larrydlam I think a black beetle with a yellow California plate got 4 hits for us.
That also happened to be the neighbors car.
American married to a brit and we’ve lived in both - biggest differences not mentioned are - road trip snacks. Husband cannot get on board with junk food purchased en route as ‘road tripping food’; the miles markers used in usa and general road signage in the uk (The North being a real example…like just go ‘north’??) and my husband’s family is so cute but oh dear lord….leaving at 6.30 am; tea first. stop by 8 for a coffee and bun; stop at 10 for leg stretch and apple; stop around 12 for lunch; again around 3 for tea and something probably packed; and if still driving at 5 it’s time to consider supper stop - no wonder it takes 8 hours to go from hampshire to france!….my family? load up car, loo, doors lock and you stop when petrol runs out….but the singing thing is funny - never considered it but spot on! love your content :)
oh yes, the signage. the American system is superior by far. it's unhelpful to me and my husband that when looking for a destination in the UK the sign merely points to the next village. we don't know where that is in relation to our destination. and several times we couldn't find our exit off the Peachtree Roundabout and circled many times.
I grew up in the grand era of the station wagon. The night before our road trip began, our parents would put my sister and me to bed in sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon so they could get an early start in the morning. We could sing for hours without repeating the same song - mostly folk songs and cowboy songs. We kept a look-out for a nice roadside picnic table when it got to be lunchtime. These were very common back then. Often, though, we would eat on the move, passing around sandwiches from a cooler on the front floor board. We used gas station rest rooms but would also step behind the roadside bushes when we were out in the country. “Rest areas” were just beginning to be “a thing “ and there were very few of them. My family toured from camp ground to camp ground - we never stayed in motels.
I'm still sad they don't make station wagons anymore! That backwards facing seat was the best!
You sang because radios were not standard equipment. Even they were, it was AM radio and usually signed off at midnight
@@ruthf6035 No. We did not like to sing popular music, neither at home nor in the car. We all played musical instruments and had a large collection of records of old folk songs, classical music, and opera. The music we liked was not on the radio and we preferred to make our own music most of the time. Only the TV signed off at midnight. At night I could get am stations several states away. There was one local station that had classical music and jazz programming, both am and fm, way into the wee hours. You are not a psychic.
Brings back memories….
In 1972 when I was 6, my family of 6 (4 kids from 6 to 13) went on an epic cross country trip in a small RV. 30 days, coast to coast, about 23 states, many national parks, campgrounds, Disneyland, breakdowns, meltdowns, ... It was the defining moment of our family.
that does sound awesome 👍
We did the same trip, 1976 in a brand new station wagon. My father special ordered it, with no AC or power steering bc that was just showing off. It's very very hot in AZ, in July.
@@shereeschumacher8849 Lol, the Griswolds!
@@russb24 Yes, so many stories. We went to Disneyland, no hotel reserved. Ended up in an hourly rate establishment, my brother and I refused to sleep between the sheets. Lol
My brother got so agitated on a road trip he clawed my arm so badly I still have the scars more than 20 years later.
Fun fact: the difference between a hotel and a motel is room door access. Motels open straight to the outdoors and hotels have hallways to access the rooms
I would also think that a motel is singular 's story and a hotel is multiple ? Could be wrong...
@@flamingpieherman9822 Nope. Plenty of motels have multiple stories. Mostly 2 to 3 in the ones I've stayed in. With outdoor stairs. And they usually reserve the upper floors for people with ridiculous amounts of luggage. Some even have ramps for wheelchairs!
What do you call one that has both? I stayed in one like that that had an outside door and an inside door to the hallway. I think they called it a motor inn.
@@johncooper4637
I think that is unusual but a motor inn is still a motel.
"Motel" means "motor hotel." So, as long as it provides access to your vehicle (allegedly, parked right in front of the door but that depends on the parking of others) it is a motel.
@@chrisbrown7362 O.K. but in all my years (too many) I have never come across a motel with a back door before that one. Out of curiosity I checked their website to see if they had an elevator. If they did it was not mentioned but their website did call it a hotel. It does have three stories.
Having done road trips in both the UK and the US I've found that the US is less stressful, once you get out of the cities the roads are usually fairly empty and you're not fighting traffic all the time. I regularly drive from St Louis, Mo to Trenton, SC, that 750 miles each way, whilst I have done the trip in one go these days we always stop overnight in Nashville, Tennessee, I'm getting old these days!
Another useful thing is on the interstates is before every exit there are signs telling you what gas stations, hotels and food places and attractions there are, and on the off ramp they tell you which way and how far down the road they are.
Rest stops are often located in places with great views overlooking lakes and the like, they tend to be basic favilities wise but usually have picnic areas, benches and tables and dog walking areas
That's a good point, in the UK as soon as you leave the motorway newtwork you are going to be slowing/stopping every few miles to get past the next town, that doesn't happen as much in the US as the towns are so much further apart (and have proper wide roads through them mostly).
I grew up in Los Angeles, and our favorite car game was “spot the out of state license plates”, and there were lots of them, because it was the 1960’s, gas was dirt cheap, and Disney World didn’t exist yet. Thousands of families would take road trips to Southern California to visit Disneyland and other tourist attractions like Hollywood Boulevard. Route 66 as it used to exist was also still around in the 1960’s, so that brought road trippers from all over to Los Angeles as well.
In my case, that's just driving across town. It's the intersection of 2 major interstates here, so if I don't see (and try to avoid, they're awful drivers) at least half a dozen Florida plates it's a weird day. It's a few thousand miles to California, those aren't uncommon here.
I live in Oregon. When I was little, it was odd to see any license plate that wasn't Oregon, California, or Washington, and the very occasional Idaho. Now, I see out of state license plates every time I drive somewhere.
@@amyfisher6380 gas as you call it in America is STILL dirt cheap.
@@sandersson2813 Yes it is but people on the political right blast the price of gas and fuel as they drive by in a 5000 lb jacked up pickup going 85 mph with one person in it down the interstate.
Been a subscriber since long before the pandemic, you weren’t full-time UA-cam creator yet, we were still trying to get you to stop calling yourself negative adjectives, reminding you that you were smart, brilliant, creative and that we wanted to hear what you had to say to us. Lawrence thank you for listening to us. You are a treasure and we love you. You and your sweet family, wife, cat and dog…did I miss anyone deserve wonderful wonderful things…yes, I told you this before. Be safe and carry on. Your first million subscribers will happen sooner than any of you…including Uncle Toby can ever know. Thank you for being you!
Tomorrow I am driving 743 miles from Raleigh, NC to Port Charlotte, FL. ~11hrs driving time. Returning from evacuating for Hurricane Milton. With my mother and two cats. Lucky me... Thankfully, no damage to either of our homes. Also thankfully, my Mercedes wagon is very, very comfortable even on an endless day on the road.
I’m happy for you that you had no damage to your homes ❤
Travel with cats is a whole other level of road trip!
I'm so glad you're all safe and I'm glad your homes weren't damaged!
Put the car on cruise control, and all you have to do is steer. With more recent models that have lane assist and adaptive cruise control, you have to do barely anything at all.
Wow, I've just checked & I live in the northernmost city in England & we're 560.5 miles from the centre of Paris (10hrs30mins, course that involves queuing up to drive our car onto the Eurostar train in Kent)
We also played the alphabet game where you looked for each letter of the alphabet (in order) on signs and license plates. Some letters were easy and others were quite hard.
Depending on the length of the trip, we might leave out certain letters that were really hard to find like J or Q.
So did we... Then we moved to Hawai'i 😂😂😂😂
@@suzannegogranogo9464 My dad would take his Quaker State Road Atlas and hold it out the window for a second as one of us yelled, “Q!”
My sisters and I would look out for Dairy Queen's for Q.
Our house rules (or car rules, I guess) sometimes allowed us to find hard letters out of strict alphabetical order.
Went from Kalispell Montana to Fargo North Dakota, almost 1000 miles (1600 km) in one day, 15 hours. How many states was I in. Only two!
WE did 2500 miles in a week and never left Texas
Montana is huge, and absolutely beautiful!!
When living in Italy we took a train from Milan to Sicily - which is an island. Everyone kept asking me how we were getting to Sicily on train. All I Could tell them was "I don't know, but the ticket says we're going straight to Sicily." It turned out when we got to the coast, the train cars were loaded onto a FERRY. We couldn't get out of our train car, but could look out the window and see were inside the ship. No scenic beauty of ocean or sea. Years later I discovered this was something we actually did in the USA around the Great Lakes.
I experienced train-on-the-ferry en route to Copenhagen from Hamburg. Except they would not let us stay on the train in transit. (Your way would be problematic in an evacuation!) But, I, too, hadn't realized that was a thing. Years later, in New Zealand, the ferry between south Island and North Island also carried trains and cars.
Before the Øresund Bridge was built, there used to be a train ferry running between Malmo, Sweden and Copenhagen. I rode it once as a kid. Unfortunately, it was late at night, and we stayed on board the train, so we couldn't really see anything.
@@johnmaster3748 We did that trip when I was in high school.
European trains are so, so much better than Amtrak. People who try to shame Americans for not taking the train do not understand how much.
I've done road trips in the U.S. all my life. And almost all of them involved a basket of snacks and a cooler for drinks, sandwich makings, and other snacks.
We were in West Virginia on a road trip last week. We drive an Recreational Vehicle called a Motor Home, similar to a big camper van. One aspect of rest stops that you didn't mention was that many of them allow overnight parking so as long as you don't set out camping equipment, you can sleep in your RV for free. You can also do this at truck stops (some chains cater to RV travelers) where you can pay for a shower as well. And, many National Forests and some other public lands also allow parking for free known as boondocking. Of course, there are also countless campgrounds and RV parks that offer electric, water, and sewer hookups as well as bath houses (showers and toilets) and usually other amenities. I grew up with RV travel, but it has had a big resurgence since COVID.
Don't most rest stops also have facilities for you to dump portable toilets? on RVs? I've never had an RV, but I recall seeing signs for that at a lot of rest areas. I usually stop at truck stops nowadays (which aren't exclusively for trucks and RVs) because since the 80s they suddenly became very clean and pleasant places with excellent coffee, and usually your choice of good restaurant food or (my choice) really bad-for-you road food!
@@beenaplumber8379 Some do, but sadly, there are fewer than in the past because of vandalism or misuse. Truck stops are putting in more of them, charging a small fee.
I think the next time you're in West Virginia, especially in October - The spooky season itself - You should talk about one of its numerous cryptids or ghost stories. For example, did you know that West Virginia is the site of the only murder trial where a ghost was entered into evidence? And of course, there's always the famous Mothman and Flatwoods monster. It would just be funny to watch you talk about them as opposed to say, Spring Heeled Jack, or a famous British ghost story.
And in Sutton WV (near Flatwoods) is the Bigfoot museum and the yearly Bigfoot Festival.
Don't forget the Grafton Monster, and if you travel a little further north you might catch a glimpse of the Pennsylvania Squonk.
Whatever happened to , "I spy with my little eye"? Nobody old enough to remember that game?
I played it with my daughters and granddaughter.
Yep. We usually got in fights as to whether the spy saw what they said they saw. Cemetery was a favorite. The person who saw a white horse got all the cemeteries.
Played it today in Grafton IL. waiting for the Ferry to cross over the Missisippi
@@shirleyadams6159 We also played that game growing up. We've crossed the Mississippi using the Grafton Ferry many times. Love driving through Calhoun County. We spend hours just driving around and exploring once or twice a month. Not quite a road trip, but we probably put as many miles on the car as if we did!
Teapot! A.K.A. animal, vegetable, or mineral.
We did a road trip in the UK in May of this year. We did the short drive from Heathrow to the Cotswolds where we stayed for a week and then drove to Northern Wales. One very significant difference that I noticed was on the major motorways the view across the countryside was almost always obstructed by trees and greenery. Someone told us it was to combat the exhaust pollution and possibly to dampen the road noise. But being from the Pacific Northwest it really threw me because watching the view is so much a part of the enjoyment of a road trip.
All the beautiful waterfalls in the PNW! Being from Chicago, I loved seeing those as we were driving! Beats the flat corn and soy fields we have in the Midwest.
Memphis, Tennessee has their interstates constructed this way. It was the first time I noticed it in the States. I've been there twice and it was really frustrating, because if you're not familiar with the area, you have no idea what to expect once you leave the highway. They also construct every single entrance to any freaking establishment, I swear, with this 3-4 inch squared-off curb and sharp incline to where it's damn near impossible not to scrape the bottom of your front end! It was awful.
To see "prettier" roads you'd just have to go off the motorway. It boils down to distance again. Motorways are supposed to be the fastest way to connect areas by car but if you're on holiday, you could take a longer route to incorporate better scenery (because you're not travelling as far as in US)
There are plenty of trees in the Pacific Northwest but there are also MOUNTAINS to look at. When we came out of the trees on the road from Dufur, Oregon to Hwy 35 there was Mt. Hood right in front of us. The other side of the PNW are the Channeled Scablands where there are very few trees but miles and miles of basaltic lava with neat places like Dry Falls, Washington.
@@StellaMayfair7 Oh my, the flatlands of central and northern IL are a tedious part of any road trip. But then there's NE and the Dakotas. I swear, in those states, if your car's steering is aligned well, you could take a nap and wake up an hour later without missing a curve. I prefer to do those drives in the dark, when I can't see the vast stretches of nothing. A good audiobook on the stereo also helps.
One of the most breathtaking drives I've done is Knoxville, TN to Charleston, SC. The mountain vistas in NC are unbelievable!
Pub cricket!
Divide into two teams, take turns, spot pub signs. Count the legs in the sign, eg fox and goose = 4+2=6; you just scored 6 runs. If the pub has no legs eg The Crown, you have been bowled out and hand over to the other team. Develop your own house rules about what counts as a pub and what is just a hotel or restaurant, do derelict pubs count, does a leg have to be paired on the sign to count it do you go by the name. Eg The Queen... She had two legs but do they show in the picture? Etc. the arguments are as fun as the game.
I enjoy imagining Lawrence lodging at Fawlty Towers in Torquay. 😂
Don't mention the war
I'm sorry Lawrence, we're just out of Waldorfs. 😂
"This is typical. Absolutely typical... of the kind of... ARSE I have to put up with from you people! You ponce in here, expecting to be handwaited on hand and foot while I'm trying to run a hotel here!" 😂
My husband, two sons, and I took a 30-day road trip in England. We stayed in as many historic hotels as we could find. Charming.
Many delightful villages, towns, and cities. We had the luxury of time, so we could stay several days in a particularly interesting place. Folks in pubs (oh, slept in a lot of those) asked how long…, what seen…, etc. Almost all said we had seen more of England than they or anyone they knew. (We intended to do more than a couple hours in Wales, but time was growing short. We did buy a Tudor era clock to have shipped home. Best antique shops in the world.)One of the best trips of my life, and I’m now a widely traveled octogenarian.
Love your podcast! 0:06
5:41 never heard headlight out, we did slug bug... First to see a Volkswagen Bug gets to slug the sibling next to them.
I wonder if it's a regional thing... He's in IL and in IN we definitely play pediddle!
I remember playing paddle in 1958 at 5 yr. old. My parents said the looser had to kiss the one who said "padidle" first. They were in their twenties.😊
You must call out what color it is or it doesn’t count.
I learned the single headlight was a padoodle
A friend from Ohio introduced me to pediddle.
I have had road trips in both the UK and US. You touched on many of the items. I would add that due to the length of the US road trip there's often several side trips for interesting things yes, but also the nonsensical items as well. Things such as the largest ball of twine or a building that looks like a giant basket. These places cover the usual gas refill and toilet break but also are stops for the mind which might otherwise need a brief distraction from the work of driving.
Back in 1982, we left college in Illinois and drove to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. 13 hours each way. Best trip ever. 🍺
I’m Australian and recently retired. In the last 2 years I visited the UK and drove about 7000 km over 3 weeks visiting Dover, Land’s End, Lowestoft and John O’Groats among other locations. I’ve also had two 30 day trips to the USA driving a total of about 22000km and passed through 48 states. Both were completely brilliant and the petrol costs were roughly similar.
I'm Canadian. We used to travel down to Maine - about 8 hours. I loved the good quality of the interstate highway we travelled on. Lots of lovely views as we made our way through Vermont, New Hampshire and finally a short way up the coast of Maine.
My parents and I made a road trip from Florida to Maine, then Quebec to Toronto.
We drove from Montreal to Portland two weeks ago!!!! Fantastic drive! Loved the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire... and the views when you turn from Burlington towards Montpellier. The roads from there on were in great condition and we ate it up
When I was 7 years old, my family (of 5) took a road trip from our home in Beaumont, California (approximately 60 miles east of Los Angeles) to Detroit Michigan ( a distance of about 2300 miles) in a '79 Ford Mustang, which is a rather small car. It took us about 3 days each way. My parents sold their '73 Mercury Grand Marquis just before this trip because gas prices were very high (for 1980, anyway) and it had a 7.5 Liter V8. The Mustang had a 2.3 Liter 4-cylinder. This was when there was a national speed limit of 55 MPH. The Marquis would have been MUCH more comfortable for a trip of that distance. Most interesting thing about the trip was when we were driving through Wyoming, there was a thunderstorm in which a bolt of lightning went horizontally across the road right in front of the car.
as a teenager, back in the early 70s, me and my 870 pump (which i hid in the used tire rack) worked at a "last chance" gas station in the sonoran desert where the "camino del diablo" and the old dixie overland road intersect. i sold over priced gas, frozen sandwiches and hot soda pop while fixing overheating cars, flat tires and panicked people on their last dime and hope....one hot summer day (yes, you can cook an egg on the road along with bacon as well) a german family stopped. they were extremely hot and not prepared for this journey as they were going to phoenix from san diego (a distance of 350 miles ) in a small rental car through the one harshest deserts in the world.. as it was still mid morning and the temperature was still getting hotter, i stopped them from continuing their journey at least until the sun went down and took them in to rest in the shade through the afternoon., they were totally miserable from the heat. many people don't understand the extreme climates of the u.s.... anyway, i remember them fondly, as the two daughters were fairly close to my age and to keep themselves cooled down they wetted each other with my water hose...
Great story! I looked for that intersection for a half hour online and couldn't find it. Thought I might see where that gas station was.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER it's tacna, az... the old gas station was destroyed in a desert storm many many years ago and a new corporate mini mart was built.. and actually the little town has grown some ... phoenix has grown from 150,000 people to almost 5 million people (which is good right?)... if you are interested in the "old wild west" , that's the area
@@superman9772 Thank you. That means it's probably where the Chevron is now, since US 80 is the Dixie Overland Road. So South Ave 40E is probably the Camino Del Diablo, even though it's not labeled as such anymore. I see an intersection south of there in the desert with a faint "road" that goes off a different direction in the desert. One of my little hobbies is looking up places I don't know anything about when someone makes an interesting comment. It's like a puzzle to try to figure out. I've been through there many times years ago. It's super hot, not a place for people from cool weather countries.
@@DUCKDUCKGOISMUCHBETTER the camino del diablo was used by Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 to secure a spanish land route from mexico to california... today, it's used as a smuggler's route ( i don't advise exploring south of the highway ... don't want to discuss the reason for that advise on here)... 40E is the closest highway intersection to the route but "in olden times" the route ended at a place called fulibuster camp (that was the starting point of the infamous filibuster Henry Crabb and his "army" which was massacred in 1857 in sonora, mexico.... some places of interest close by is the cantina where the last of the vasquez gang was captured (the real life zorro in my opinion) oatman massacre, the "westernmost american civil war battle site, the infamous glanton gang massacre (the subject matter of the famous novel, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthey, the author of "No Country for Old Men" another massacre was the Cocoph massacre by the Quechen just after the Yuma War... and with all those events and the harsh environment is the reasons for that route's name... oh yeah, and the ufos every now and again...
@@superman9772 Thank you for the comprehensive reply. I enjoyed reading that. 😊👍
Truck stops are not used only by large trucks. They literally are just large gas stations with showers and a large parking lot for semi trucks to park and drivers to sleep. They usually have at least a fast food restaurant or 2, and sometimes have a full restaurant.
The trucks usually either fuel up at a side or back for semitrucks and the non-bus passenger vehicles fuel and park in the front.
Yes! Last road trip MO to FL and back we planned stops between Pilot truck stops. Some even have dog parks!
Road trips were a must in college? Chicago sounds fun! Mt. Vernon, IA, to Chicago, IL. Only 6 hours. Let’s go! And we did…
@@cheriestl Oh heck yeah! We’d make spur-of-the-moment road trips from Missoula, MT, to Spokane, WA, and other various points when I was in college. Such fun. Sigh….
The college ' road trip ' in the movie " Animal House " !! 😂
When me and my cousins would go on a road trip to go camping we'd pump imaginary big truck air horns out the window and truckers passing by (if they were game) would honk at us.
Don't forget holding your breath through a tunnel! Not knowing how long the tunnel is adds a little extra excitement as well
Or over a bridge. And be sure to pick your feet up if you're driving over a railroad track.
@@eywine.7762For us it was duck under a railroad overpass, and pick up your feet over a bridge.
@@sophierobinson2738 Either way - good times!
Add honking the horn going through a tunnel.
Hardest one I ever did was the Eisenhower Tunnel. It is long and 11000 feet above sea level.
We used to and now again (with Elana) play “Eye Spy” ❤
I Spy was a favorite game my brother and I played in the car growing up, but we had a different name for it. We called it “Maritha, Maritha, Marie.” As in “Maritha, Maritha Marie, I see something that you don’t see and it’s…blue (or whatever color you choose ).” I don’t know why we said that little phrase instead of “I Spy”-I guess that’s the way my mom taught us to play. But it’s more fun to say, “Maritha, Maritha, Marie” anyway, lol.
Eye Spy is popular in the USA. We also have car songs. Do you guys sing?
I'm a retired truck driver. Did it for 30 years and drove from New Jersey to California on a regular basis. Now that's a road trip. LOL!! Cheers from Tennessee
I used to know a guy who had been a truck driver. He told me that on 9/11, he was headed to NYC. When the events of the day began unfolding, his dispatcher radioed him and told him to go to Memphis instead--as if that was just a minor detour!
@@JRBWare1942 Kinda is. My ex-wife always said I had a problem with distance and time. To me a short ride is anything under 2-3 hours. When we lived in Florida I took her to Marjorie Kinnen Rawlings homestead as a surprise. It was about 2 hours from where we lived at in Leesburg. After about 15 minutes she got antsy wanting to know how much further, I told her it was just up the road. When we got to Cross Creek, she was happy to see her favorite authors house but she was bent outta shape with me. Saying that wasn't a short drive, but in my world it was. Depends on your point of view I reckon. LOL! Cheers
That's just a growing up thing, lol! Time absolutely goes 10× faster as an adult. One minute, to a small child, is literally 10 minutes in kid time 😂
When I was a kid we would drive from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Calgary, Alberta (1770 miles each way) to see my paternal grandparents. My dad only got two weeks vacation so one week for each set of grandparents. That meant no overnight stops on the way to or from Canada. My dad even made a custom padded riser the same height as the seat (to go over the hump in the floor) so my brother and I would have a level surface to sleep on in the back seat.
A very warm trip in the summer with no A/C. Not so bad in winter.
My mother was an English teacher (US based teacher that taught American English, not a UK based teacher, that well, was just English) and so we had two versions of the license plate game. The easy version was to come up with an acronym using the letters on the plate. 123 GZB could be “Good Zebra Buyers”. The harder version was to come up with a word containing the letters in the same order as the plate. The same plate could be “gazebo”. Winners could be who was first, but were often voted on if multiple answers were given.
Variation in states that have 3 letters on their plates: letters do not have to be consecutive. So AKE can be used for BAKE but also for bAsKEt. Proper nouns and common two word phrases are acceptable. Words in other languages only acceptable if all players know that language.
We sometimes play that as adults. When we are a little giddy from a long trip, it’s especially fun to require that it be a descriptive phrase that could apply to a person, and then afterward, try to get a look at the driver to see if it might apply to them. Surprisingly hilarious!
Thumbs up for showing the cool Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino.
We did a road trip from Massachusetts to The Great Smoky Mountains, and we managed all 50 states at licence plate bingo. There was a Hawaii plate parked at one of the park visitor centers, and we saw an Alaska plate at a Dunkin Donuts 15 miles from home. We've never managed all 50 again in our travels.
I always wondered how the Hawaii cars got here.
@@sandratuttle Probably a military person who was stationed in Hawaii with most likely a expensive sports car they refused to sell before being stationed back to the mainland USA... I doubt if that car was a old used clunker...
I am retired military and live in a military town. We have several Alaska and Hawaii tagged cars in town.
Hehe, driving to the next “major” town in Montana can be a two or three hour drive. Or 120 to 200 miles.
absolutely, I'm in central Montana and I tell folks it's basically 2 hours to anywhere.... There's a few places where I've driven for 3 hours without seeing a single other car.... It's lovely, haha
We did a 23 day, 19 state, 6,000 mile road trip this year. Yellowstone was on the itinerary. And our dog was a good traveler too.
Chicago is like an island. To go anywhere interesting is a major road trip. When I was a kid, we would drive 18 hours in a station wagon to the NH coast, staying in 1 hotel room overnight on the way. It was great! Of course, back then we didn't have to wear seatbelts and nobody sat in carseats.)
My all-time favourite road trip I've ever taken was with my aunt in the UK when I was a kid. We drove all around Wales and England one summer visiting tons of different castles, while living off Scotch eggs, pickled onions, and cheese and pickle butties. It was great!
That sounds like something I would enjoy! What a great memory!
When I was a kid in Southern Oregon, we would occasionally take a trip to Disneyland. We would take off at about 9pm and drive all night. The trip to LA took about 12 hours. It was a good way to go....missed most of the traffic and us kids would sleep all the way there. My folks would switch up on driving and we would roll into Anahiem at about 9:30 the following morning.
We used to visit our relatives in Michigan and would leave Pennsylvania in the early evening and stop somewhere for supper and then the kids would sleep the rest of the way. 9:54
I’m from WV! Hope you enjoyed the visit.
In the US, my roadtrips are segmented by camping overnight. I plan it that way.
In the UK, my single road trip years ago was marked by pubs; countryside pubs with names like The White Lion or the Dribbling Hedgehog, whose outdoor seating was a nice lawn with picnic tables strewn about.
Imagine my delight that pints were twenty ounces and not merely sixteen. You can further imagine my delight that after seeing what seemed like hundreds of episodes of All Creatures Great And Small, I finally got to drink Yorkshire bitter. The dude abides.
Now, for anyone reading this, close one eye for just a moment.
Padiddle!
😂 I just got to the last line and realized I'd already read the whole comment with one eye closed. I do that sometimes.
A thing I remember from the servivce station is the little annex full of arcade machines, because in the UK unlike the US you didnt have a local arcade, they are largely exclusive to seaside holiday destinations. So if you were heading anywhere, a stopoff for a meal usually meant an opportunity to play something interesting.
The nice thing about motels in the US is that they leave the light on for you.
Cheaper than installing a switch 🙂
@@garyb6219love motel6
@@garyb6219 I think the first Motel 6 I saw was in Indiana, sometime in the ‘70s. The price was $6.99.
I spent a month in Britain and a couple of nights in Ireland. Hired a car and drove everywhere, all corners of Britain and everything in between. That was a road trip. Loved it. Met a lot of good people. Enjoyed the food. Reveled in the atmosphere.
Yes, it was much different than road trips in the US. I’m retired US military and have driven all over America. Thoroughly enjoyed driving on the other side of the road. Definitely a learning experience, but once I set boundaries, such as stay away from city centres and stick to the M, A and some larger B roads, I was fine. (That first 24 hrs, though…. Woof…) The roundabouts were…fun. I prefer roundabouts to intersections with lights, but doing it on the other side of the road, in the opposite direction, in a manual/stick transmission car* was…an experience. Eventually I got the hang of all of it, but managed to stay away from London’s centre by one whole street. Ended up in Shepard’s Bush. Found a car park and refused to go any further. All done without GPS/SatNav and smart phones. Road atlas, baby!
I can never and will never complain about US gas/petrol prices again. After doing the measurement and currency conversions, their fuel prices are downright scary! I only see that type of price at gas stations near airports. And that was in 2008!
* The shifting pattern was opposite of US shift pattern. THAT was a learning curve.
The games we always played were:
- the alphabet game: each player works their way through the alphabet by spotting the the letters on license plates or signs.
- slug bug: first person to spot a VW bug yells "slug bug " and hits someone on there upper arm. Mom usuallly makes you stop playing when the crying starts
- 20 question: we reserved this for the stretches of road in the west where you could travel 30 miles without seeing anything more than fence posts so the other two games didn't work.
My favorite way to travel is with a buddy who can swap driving with me. Travel at night when traffic is less, and there are fewer semi trucks out. Travel straight through, one driving while the other sleeps, then swap. Sometimes we pack a cooler with food to save money. This way, you get to your destination faster and only need to buy fuel. Of course if you want to see the scenery and stop at various places along the way, this method may not be as ideal. I’m just very happy to travel and have fun❤❤❤
I have plenty of fond memories of road trips here in the US with my family. My dad bought a Ren and Stimpy cassette tape with several songs from the show, and there were several times, that my mom, dad, sister, and myself all broke into song singing the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen anthem. There were a few other songs we'd break into song with, but that was the funniest one.
As for road trips in the UK... I went on a day trip via train from London to Cambridge. So my impression was it was more practical to just take a train than go by car.
LOL, that's great. All my siblings and me love Neil Diamond because my dad played him constantly when on the road. Either learned to love it, or jump out of the car at 55 mph.
@@leo.girardi I would definitely be one of the latter! 😂
Toilets at USA Rest Areas are free. I took a bus tour around the EU and most, if not all, toilets cost.
That is complete nonsense.
Toilets do not cost money in UK or Europe in service stations at all.
@@sandersson2813they do not cost in the UK (at service stations but they do in so train stations and other places) but I've been to rest areas in Europe that charge.
I can't remember the last time I paid to use a public toilet. All shops, service areas, restaurants have free amenities.
In UK you are charged by weight of your stool. The toilet role is free.
We recently visited Switzerland and the highway rest stops there had pay toilets.
My wife and I are from Texas, and we spent 3 weeks roadtripping around Great Britain this summer. We started in South Hampton, after arriving on the Queen Mary 2. I got a rental car from Avis at the airport, and we basically drove in a big clockwise route with stops in Salisbury, Bath, Cardiff, Snowdonia, Glasgow, Islay, Oban, Falkirk, Northumberland, Newcastle, York, Cambridge and finally London. We spent about half our nights in hotels, but the other half in rooms let by pubs.
The biggest challenge was driving in the UK (wheel on the wrong side of the car and car on the wrong side of the road), but I was able to find several UA-cam sources to learn the rules, road markings, signage, etc. So basically all was well.
Our biggest challenges were finding laundries, the insatiable British appetite for parking fees, and the narrowness of rural roads; especially in Wales.
The best thing was easily the people. It’s often said that us yanks ands you Brits are two peoples separated by a common language, but everyone we spoke with seemed kindred to us. Overall, the shorter distances allowed us to see almost all of Great Britain in only three weeks, and meet many of our British cousins.
I watched many of your videos before our trip to see what I could learn about the cultural differences I could expect. You did a great job of training me!
As Americans, we were surprised when visiting and driving in the UK, that the speed limits on the road signs are in MILES per hour, and the distances to the next town are shown in MILES, not kilometers. Even "yards" was used, such as, "No shoulder next 400 yards." I always thought the UK used the metric system entirely, (since they used to be in the EU) because they measure weights in grams/kilograms and temperature in Celsius. When we first saw the speed limit signs on the big highways as "70" we thought, "Wait, 70 km/hour is only about 44 miles per hour, and these cars are going WAY faster than that!!!! Then our son told us it was MILES per hour!
So many roundabouts in the UK, and it seemed so odd to go around them clockwise (from the left lane) instead of counter-clockwise (or "anti-clockwise" as said in the UK) from the right lane as we do in the US. And yes, the rural roads are extremely narrow! If you meet another car going opposite, it's quite a squeeze!
We meet several very friendly people on our recent road trip in the UK (from Glasgow to Stonehenge).
@@INOD-2 the worst thing about other side of the road driving is the roundabouts.
That's a great road trip!! It's "Southampton" btw.... our next road trip includes Texas! We are doing Texas to New Orleans via OH, Branson and Memphis :)
@@lonesomewonderersband Driving on the opposite side of the road to what you're used to is easy
We were an Air Force family stationed in New Mexico and would road trip to South Carolina for Christmas and summer holidays. I was 7 and vividly remember the thrill of choosing a motel around 4pm each travel day usually a Howard Johnson because they had a restaurant and swimming pool. I was completely agog at one -they brought breakfast to your room!! Such fun🎉
I can't tell you the number of times I've done a long road trip and instead of getting a hotel or motel room, we would just pool over in a large parkinglot and sleep in our car.
My brothers and i counted trucks. The first person to identify the make of a truck correctly coming toward us got the point.
My husband and I drove 13 hours straight from Maryland to Missouri and then back last year. That was a wild experience. I'm not sure I would be willing to do that again without stopping.
We drive that long to visit relatives in Canada from Western PA.
Instead of yellow cars we used to spot for VW Beetles!
We've recently had the absolute pleasure of doing the whole length of the Blue River Parkway! As far as I know nowhere outside the US does this concept exist. Basically a Parkway is a stretch of scenic road where trucks/commercial vehicles are banned, and the speed limit is set at quite a low level (45 mph, in this case). What an experience - 476 miles of endless scenic beauty from horizon to horizon! Oh yes and there are things called "overlooks" - what we in UK would call lookout points (not that there are many). It's debatable whether it is even possible to actually see the horizon from most UK roads! I highly recommend doing this trip and be sure to allocate 4-5 days for it, and stop at the many little towns just off the beaten track along the way. They are delightful.
Cheers, mate!
My first trip to Britain was in 1978 to visit a school friend who was in the US Air Force, stationed at Mildenhall in East Anglia. My friend had a car, and we did quite a road trip. Trying to see the entire British Isles in 3 weeks... well, okay, we were young. 😁
Road tripping around the UK sounds like a fun experience. Especially 50ish years ago.
My husband and I had a couple of unique games on our road trips. In one, we had to come up with amusing alternate names for car models. For example, we changed GrandAm to GrandMa, and Explorer to Exploder. Or we would sings songs with the voice of cartoon character Elmer Fudd. My husband was expert at singing Noel Coward songs like Elmer Fudd. Lots of fun! Well, we enjoyed it.
Grew up with roadtrips in the States. Lots of singing, talking, staring out the window, wouldn't trade it for the world. Lived in England a couple of years and while planning a trip home, suggests a trip to Florida. My then husband asked how long a trip it was, I shrugged and said about 12 hours, to which he replied, "12 hours??, we could be in Poland in 12 hours!" My reply,"Then why aren't we?"😅 Definitely not a Roadtripper!
@3:07, looking out of the window of my south east London maisonette on a bronze Ford Ranger. My builder also has one. The difference between us Brits and the Americans, is that these trucks are workhorses and not for sitting in a downtown office car park for most of the day. I like playing the numberplate game where you spot one containing a whole word. Neither parents drove and long journeys were made on the train. I don't like driving and would sooner hop on the train rather be faced with endless hours of terror inducing driving.
My brothers-in-law said they played "PUNCH BUGGY." When they saw a VW Bug, they'd punch the other person. Yeah. Punch. And they punched hard. Even the driver!
You need to drive in California, from LA to Yosemite area, for example. Or LA to Vegas. Long drives. Not much around for a lot of it.
Years ago, we'd do the LA-Vegas drive in about 3 hours at best. More recently, when we've gone Fresno-Vegas, it's about 6 hours. What was interesting was driving in the winter, because you're going through the High Desert and by a very strange forest (Joshua Tree). It's called the High Desert because it's high elevation--as opposed to the Low Desert, like Death Valley. High elevation means it's possible to have snow. In the desert. On Joshua Trees. That was a sight!
We called it Slug-a-Bug.
Padiddle is a classic midwest (many Great Lakes region) game. Most Americans probably don’t know of it. But as a midwesterner I was excited hearing Lawrence bring it up
I'm American, but I've spent time in UK and Germany. The only road trip I can recall in Germany was once taking my family from Nierstein am Rhein in the Rheinland to Bergtesgaden in Bavaria. Not bad, kind of like going from Portland, Oregon to Boise, Idaho. I recall one rest stop along the way -- nothing interesting, just an imbiss (roadside food stand) with restrooms.
In the UK, though, I was living in Wrexham in North Wales. In the brief time I was there, my girlfriend and I went to Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Leicester, and we did a day trip to and near Salisbury Plain. The biggest difference to me was the Motorway Service Areas. They were like mini-malls with a food court, and tourist shops. I was really impressed with the comfort of having to pull over to go to the bathroom, and always left after some fast food, and carrying food and snacks for the next leg of the journey. Many of them also had petrol stations, so sort of one stop and you're off again.
My family went on quite a few long vacations in the 70’s and early 80’s, mom made a back of the front seat entertainment sleeve. Road trip bingo was included, as well as books, coloring books, puzzles etc. We also had a tape line through the middle of the back seat that my brother and I were not allowed to cross, and all it took was “the look” to stay on our own side. Punch Bug was not allowed! Blanket and pillows were also provided. I will never forget those trips 🙂
"paddiddle." Haha, where I grew up we called that "Popeye."
And whatever you called the one about the yellow car from your home country, we had something similar to that. It was called "punch buggy." You see, I'm in my mid '50s. When I was a kid Volkswagen beetles were still everywhere.
So when someone saw if a VW bug, He shouted "punch buggy" followed by the color. The last one to spot it and shout it got punched by everybody else.
What I noticed driving from Liverpool to Edinburg was the absence of billboards. Only safety, information, and service signs were on the motorway. It was nice.
I am happy I was not raised in a Slug Bug family. I grew up liking the Disney "Herby the Love Bug" VW movies, and my oldest brother owned one.
My wife and I used to drive from Toronto Ontario every march break and play the licence plate game. Saw one from Hawaii once. Im still the champion.
My brother lives 1200 miles away. When I was younger I would drive it straight but now I'm older I usually take 2 or 3 days to get there.
Parents a thousand miles away. Yep...2 or 3 days to get there these days.
We've just got back from 3 weeks in the US and Canada. We did a road trip from our friends' house in Indiana to Jackson & Memphis in Tennessee. We stopped at Buc-ees on the I65 between Louisville and Nashville, WOW! It was the size of a large supermarket and had over 100 gas pumps. It was fantastic.
We loved road tripping in the States ❤❤ so different to the U.K. ! BLY x
Way old school - calling out “woodchuck” when we saw the wood-sided station wagons. Also perdiddle (as we said it), slug bug, alphabet game, and sing “Country Roads” during the 7-hour trip to Grandma’s house.
Growing up in New Jersey we always called the game Punch Buggy! Same as slug bug, you yell PUNCH BUGGY and the color of the car while you punch your sibling in the arm!
New England does that too!
In the US, you can take a nap in the front right hand seat during your journey. My one trip to UK, the day we landed I took a nap in the front left hand seat and woke up in terror when I suddenly thought I was in the drivers seat and on the wrong side of the road!
The first ever "motel" was right by the highway in San Luis Obispo, California. It was first called the Milestone Mo-Tel and later renamed the Motel Inn. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1991. The highway I mentioned is US 101, one of the two major north-south routes in the state, the other being Interstate 5. San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is home to a university. It is also home to a quite famous (or infamous) establishment called the Madonna Inn.
0:11 That is the New River Gorge bridge in WV. Bridge Day was yesterday, people was repelling and catapulting off the bridge.
While a road trip in the UK can be fun, it differs from one in the United States. However, if you are visiting the UK for the first time, I'm sure it will be very exciting as everything will look different to a tourist. However, the United States is at the next level compared to the UK.
In the U.S., you get winding, twisting roads and long stretches where there are no people other than yourself. You get colossal mountain ranges and massive cities with towering skyscrapers. You get huge valleys and coastal highways stretching for miles and miles on end. You get vast deserts, wide open plains, and massive forested areas. The U.S. is built in a way that lends itself to the drive. Not to mention, the driving experience will last much longer and offer many more opportunities for exploration compared to the UK. 🚗
Our family road trips were rich sources of inside jokes. On a trip to Wyoming, we started pointing out any time we saw an antelope. After a couple of hours, this evolved into "canteloupe". So now the family refers to them as canteloupe.
And after an all-day trip to Colorado, we discovered that the motel had messed up our reservation and didn't have our room ready until the following day. All they had available was a room with a queen size bed. My sister and I had each brought a friend along, so there were six of us. So four of us slept on the floor. That became known as the infamous "six people, one bed" trip.
A prius is as large internally as a toyota tacoma pickup. Not exactly tiny. You can put a full size mattress in it and sleep there. On your road trip.
And where do you put the mattress while you're driving?
I have fond memories of UK road trips in the mid to late 1980s. Hob Nob crumbs all over the car and frequent stops at Little Chef or Happy Eater restaurants.
Spot "See Rock City" barn signs
We looked for Mail Pouch painted barns and Burma Shave signs
@@sandratuttle We had the Burma Shave signs in Missouri as well, plus the Meramec Caverns ("Jesse James' hideout") painted barn signs.
We road-tripped through Europe and the medieval towns with their red roofs and cathedral was such a treat. Also, stopping at a rest area in rural Austria and having to pay for toilet paper was a fun memory. My favorite thing about road trips in America are setting out as sun rises, and listening to all the classic Americana travel songs.
The difference between the US & UK is this - In the UK, 100 miles is a long way. In the US, 100 years is a long time.
Well said.
Showing my age, I miss Little Chef from our UK road trips as a kid.
British road trip: “Ah, we’re here”!
American road trip: “Are we there yet”? “Not even close”!