I need ideas, please. What are some things that can happen on a road trip, good or bad? I have the usual flat tire, car trouble, great restaurant experience, no room at the inn. Thanks in advance!
That depends on the direction you are taking the story. Roadside attractions are great for material. Certain rest stops are random gay sex meet-up sites. We stopped once to put a fire out on the side of the road.
Once on a road trip I got run off the road by a pickup full of what seemed to be mutant hillbilly cannibals in Georgia.
someone has an "accident" and it stinks up the car a wild animal causes chaos for the people in the car someone throws up someone forgets something at the previous stop and they have to drive all the way back a traffic jam the next gas station has a quirky staff working there and the effect the trip in some (not necessarily positive) Way argument over the food in the car the map is hard to fold up there is no rest stop for X more miles and a character just polished off a big Gulp. car games to distract the kids from saying "Are we there yet?" Electronic devices run out of power, so the passengers are forced to interact, they discover this on this family road trip that they are quite ignorant of what's going on in the family argument over radio station inclement weather
Who's going on the road trip? A family? 5 twenty-somethings going to a socialist convention? That will impact what sort of things might happen to them.
A young woman and her grandmother. They are traveling the U.S. so the grandmother can put flowers on the graves of famous leading men.
My advice is to go on a road trip with a few friends, a couple of weeks through the back roads of Nevada or down the Baja. You'll have lots to write about.
You can encounter people of any conceivable kind. You can witness a massive variety of human behaviour, legal, illegal, sexual, aggressive, generous, appalling, magnificent, embarrassing, shameful, religious, shocking, admirable.
Detours, detours everywhere. Last summer when I was back in the States, my mom, sister, my sister's two girls, and I went on a camping trip. My younger niece really likes dinosaurs and we heard about this small state park about an hour's drive from our campsite that was supposed to have some cool fossil beds, so we packed up the minivan and thought we would head out there. It was already fairly out in the middle of nowhere, but that part of the state had had torrential rains the week before which had washed out a bridge and several roads. We had already come a long way though, so we decided to go ahead and follow the detour signs they had put up. Another hour later, we were bouncing around along a muddy gravel road that probably hadn't been resurfaced since before I was born, then we got directed to a dirt (mud) track through a cow pasture (the girls were happy about getting to see the calves close up,) and after that we had a fun half hour slip-sliding through gumbo while my older niece wailed in the back seat about how we were all going to die, before finally making it back to the highway about two hours and 3 miles from where we first turned off. It's a good thing my mom grew up in that kind of country and knew how to handle those roads, because I don't know how we made it through without 4-wheel drive. It reminded me of a silly song I used to love as a kid, Black Bear Road, by C.W. McCall. If anyone is curious -
The button falls off the radio forcing them to listen to some religious evangelist. They wind up getting indoctrinated one by one as they all try to resist.
I was on a road trip to Yellowstone when we came up an overpass and found that an entire box of railroad spikes had fallen off a truck and was strewn over both lanes. So we spent twenty minutes picking railroad spikes off the road, gradually being joined by other travelers who didn't want to blow all four tires in one go. That same trip a tire came leaping of a truck bed heading the opposite direction and bounced down the road, side swiping my car. The semi took off before I could do anything.
We have rescued/returned pets to owners On the phone with the state troopers while following a drunk driver until he was pulled over and arrested Gotten lost in the middle of nowhere at night, no cell reception, turned around in a driveway and were then followed by a car from that house for about 15 or 20 mins. Raced other vehicles, including cops Passed a bunch of horrible wrecks and car fires Not really on a road trip but we witnessed a guy snatch a girl's purse and followed him several blocks until the cops caught up to him
one of the passengers pets runs into the bushes when stopped for a "bio" break. of course you could then stumble upon an "abandoned" cabin while looking for the pet...
I have family out in Australia. A few years ago I went to visit and we went on a roadtrip from Perth to Exmouth to Kalgoorlie. As it's Western Australia, you have lots of creepy little insects that can kill you within five minutes. The following things happened while on the road: We nearly hit a kangaroo We stopped for supplies in a shop that ripped us off My father, while stopping for a piss in the Australia outback walked into a massive spider's web (it's a shame he wasn't bitten) I was chased by a Emu that was nearly killed (it got chased into oncoming traffic) Nearly got bitten by a spider that was lurking in a public toilet. Fed a joey cheese. It then fought an Emu over the cheese. Air conditioning in car wouldn't work properly (only heated front seats) I assume though that your roadtrip story is set in the US though, but you can use the shop being a rip-off and the air conditioning thing in any country.
