<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nA great number of retirees have go-to destinations, and they travel there year after year without fail. When it comes to winter road trips, we haven’t quite established that kind of routine yet. Although I am aware that there are some benefits to returning to the same location year after year, the way in which the road instills its allure in my mindset is not the same way that it does for other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We do make return visits to certain locations, but even on those trips, we change our itineraries so that we can experience something new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about it in this way. How many distinct ways are there to travel a distance of one thousand miles to get to your destination when you go there on a regular basis? A more complex application of that straightforward concept is possible. From any point along that journey, you can make a turn of ninety degrees in any direction, and by simply increasing the distance by a few hundred miles, you can visit hundreds of locations that are new to you. Take a look at the various options on a map of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We aren’t particularly concerned about the weather when we travel to Pennsylvania. We make every effort to prevent getting caught in a winter blizzard, but since we have family in that area, we don’t want to go more than a year without seeing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we go back, we will choose a location that is south of the Mason-Dixon line, and we will try to take as many side trips as we can, provided that we have enough time and money to do so. These so-called “side-trips” typically add no more than three hundred or four hundred miles to your total driving distance. If we had traveled to our destination using the most direct route possible, it would have taken us a total of 2,000 miles to reach our destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you give the method described above a shot, you’ll be able to travel to places that, under normal circumstances, would require you to log significantly more miles and spend significantly more time on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is how we handled things quite a few years ago. We went to Indianapolis, Indiana, for the Southern Baptist Convention, which was held there. We made a U-turn to the west and drove to St. Louis, Missouri, rather than taking the most direct route home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After spending a few days in St. Louis, we headed west across the state of Missouri and then turned south as we approached the Ozark Mountains in the state of Arkansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might not think that these are very exciting options; however, if you look at the towns that are located along the route, you will find that approximately every 100 miles there is some interesting feature that you can experience. It could be a zoo, a museum, or even a memorial to a well-known figure; alternatively, it could be the town square in Mountain Home, Arkansas, where bluegrass musicians seem to magically appear and perform free concerts almost every day when the weather is nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n