Posts from ‘Road Trip’
Cars of Cuba: A Gallery
Cuba is something of a paradise for old-car spotters. This 1951 Chevrolet four-door sedan is just one of thousands of vintage automobiles still in faithful use as daily-driver transportation.
My wife Kristin and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year, and we decided that we needed to take an out-of-the-country vacation as part of that celebration. We were looking for somewhere reasonably close, to minimize flight time and the jetlag that usually goes along with it. Kristin is fond of Latin American countries, bird watching, and rugged-outdoors adventuring, and she speaks enough Spanish to get around quite well. Me? I really love old cars. Cuba checks all those boxes, so it was a natural choice.
The Consumer Guide staff picks their favorite music for long nighttime drives.
The Florida spring-break road trip is cliché these days, but it was the thing to do when my college friends and I hit the interstate back in 1984. The trip from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale is roughly 1400 miles, and our goal, alternating drivers, was to cover that distance in under 24 hours. As I recall, we arrived at our destination in about 27 hours, but made the return trip in under 24.
2017 Nissan Titan XD SV 4WD King Cab in Deep Blue Pearl
2017 Nissan Titan XD SV 4WD King Cab
Class: Large Pickup Truck
Miles driven: 1058
Fuel used: 56.0 gallons
While intimately familiar with fishing (that’s a public fish-cleaning station in the background), the good people of Port Washington, Wisconsin, seemed far less familiar with Italian exotics — at least if the stares and figure-pointing the 4C endured was any indication.
Although hardly a sensible car, if you accept the Alfa Romeo 4C as a bargain-priced exotic, its limitations become a lot easier to overlook.
The 2017 Chrysler Pacifica proved to be an excellent vehicle for my family’s first-ever serious road trip.
It was the summer of 1974. Having spent the day at the amusement park then known as Six Flags over Middle America, my family and I hit the swimming pool at the Safari Camp Ground at which we were staying for the week.
It was during a rather spirited session of Marco Polo involving several families that someone’s mother—not mine—interrupted the aquatic merriment. She had brought a radio poolside, and yelled for everyone to shut up and listen.
Rick’s ride to Michigan was this Chrysler 300 Glacier
Compared to most people, I do quite a lot of highway driving. Unlike most people, I usually do it in silence. That would probably bore most folks on the bi-weekly, two-hour trek down to my weekend farmette, but for me, it’s a welcome chance to clear my head and think about things that matter … like how I’d spend the vacation time I rarely take.
But for longer drives, I have a different strategy. Before I even leave the garage, I plug in my stone-aged MP3 player that contains a collection of favorite road tunes and crank up the volume.
A Road Trip Through Horse Country
My wife and kid and I are vegetarians, which can complicate road-trip dining. For non-vegan meatless meals, let me recommend the Country Sampler at Cracker Barrel. It’s just a plateful of not-especially-healthy side dishes, but they’re really good side dishes, and hey, we were on vacation.
My kid has been horse crazy for most of her 13 years. As a parent who is more or less responsive to the wants and needs of my child, I donated a precious week of vacation time to a spring-break, horse-country road trip.
As luck would have it, Consumer Guide’s long-term Nissan Pathfinder arrived right around the time I was setting up my out-of-office voicemail greeting. Our handsome red test vehicle came well equipped, though not quite loaded. (Getting lost in St. Louis is still pretty much my fault—what was life like before navigation systems?)
Is “Sultans of Swing” the greatest road song?
Ask five car guys, and you’ll likely get five different answers. Still, we asked. Here are best road songs per the members of the Consumer Guide review staff. If your favorite road tune isn’t on this list, be sure and tell us what it is. Also tell us if you still own a copy of that song on cassette or 8-Track–which would be pretty cool.
How to Pack a Car Like a Boss
Believe it or not, the 2011 Kia Optima’s trunk had no problem holding all this camping gear.
For decades, SUVs have been promoted as the essential vehicles for camping and any other rigorous outdoor sport. The marketers would have you believe that a normal sedan at Yosemite would be about as welcome as a Hummer at an Earth Day rally. I’ve driven SUVs and sedans on camping trips, and sedans are better.
