road book road trip

17 Books to Inspire Your Next American Road Trip

With most international borders closed to Americans for 2020, there is no time like the present to plan a Great American Road Trip!

The options of beautiful places to visit on a Great American Road Trip are endless but what is the most scenic drive in the United States?

Well, that depends on what you’re looking for — mountains, ocean, desert, lakes, or farmland.

From East Coast to West Coast to Cross-Country Road Trips, here are 17 American Road Trip Books filled with ideas to inspire your next adventure!

Table of Contents

List of American Road Trip Books

1. 50 states 500 state parks: an essential guide to america’s best places to visit.

By Publications International Ltd.

National Parks seem to dominate bucket lists these days but did you know there are over 500 State Parks across all 50 states ? From beaches to mountains, wildlife reserves to historic sites, this book will give you some American road trip ideas for planning your next domestic adventure.

2. 50 States, 5,000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to See, What to Do

By Joe Yogerst , National Geographic

The travel experts at National Geographic have put together a comprehensive, illustrated book filled with 5,000 ideas on places to visit in all 50 states , plus every province in Canada. From well-known famous sights to relatively undiscovered hidden gems, there is bound to be something for every type of traveler on this list.

3. 100 Drives, 5,000 Ideas: Where to Go, When to Go, What to Do, What to See

By Joe Yogerst, National Geographic

Another great read from National Geographic, this sequel to 50 States, 5,000 Ideas gives readers inspiration for 5,000 places to visit on 100 different drives from Alaska to Hawaii and the 48 contiguous states, plus 10 Canadian provinces!

4. 1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die

By Patricia Schultz

You’ve probably heard of the famous 1,000 Places To See Before You Die book, but why not start off your quest with these regional 1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die ? The title is a bit morbid but the suggestions in the book are anything but.

5. Lonely Planet USA’s Best Trips

By Simon Richmond, Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet has taken the hassle out of planning road trips with their book about the 51 best road trips in the USA ! This beautifully-photographed tome also includes planning advice, itineraries from 2 days to 2 weeks, detailed maps and directions, and other essential information to make your road trip dreams a reality.

6. National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways: The 300 Best Drives in the U.S.

By National Geographic

The folks at National Geographic have compiled practical planning tips and information on 300 of the best drives in the good ‘ole U S of A, from day trips to multiple week-long adventures in all 4 corners of the United States and everywhere in between.

7. NYT. 36 Hours. USA & Canada.

By Barbara Ireland

This is the perfect book for the full-time working wanderluster. The New York Times has compiled entries from its 20-years-old “36 Hours” column to bring us weekend itineraries spanning, you guessed it, 36 hours in 150 destinations across the USA and Canada.

8. Off the Beaten Path: A Travel Guide to More Than 1000 Scenic and Interesting Places Still Uncrowded and Inviting

By Reader’s Digest

A book after my own heart! I’m a lover of hidden gems and relatively undiscovered places so Reader’s Digest’s compilation of 1,000 off the beaten path places is right up my alley! Sure, the Empire State Building and Golden Gate Bridge are obviously worth visiting but have you ever thought about following the dinosaur trails through Colorado?

9. Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways

By Jamie Jensen

This author traversed nearly 400,000 of two-lane highways in order to narrow down a collection of 35,000 miles of the best stretches of pavement for would-be road trippers. The book includes hundreds of possible itinerary combinations and over 125 detailed driving maps to make your next road trip a breeze.

10. Roadfood: An Eater’s Guide to More Than 1,000 of the Best Local Hot Spots and Hidden Gems Across America

By Jane Stern

The best part of traveling is the food, amiright? The Roadfood eater’s guide provides over 1,000 unique options for travelers who are tired of repetitive roadside chain restaurants. The legendary chef James Beard said that “this is a book that you should carry with you, no matter where you are going in these United States.” SOLD.

1 1. Route 66: The Mother Road 75th Anniversary Edition

By Michael Wallis

Can you even call it a Great American Road Trip if you don’t traverse “America’s Main Street,” Route 66? The 75th Anniversary Edition of Route 66: The Mother Road pays homage to the people and places along this iconic stretch of pavement that has been traveled by road warriors over the past eight decades.

12. Secret Route 66: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

By Jim Ross & Shellee Graham

For road trippers who have “been there, done that” and seen the main sights of America’s Main Street or who gravitate towards hidden gems in their travels, Secret Route 66 is the perfect remedy. This tribute to the Mother Road highlights 90 places along Route 66 that, as the name implies, are weird, wonderful, and obscure.

13. The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips

By Editors of Reader’s Digest

This recently revised and updated book is the perfect coffee table book for anyone who enjoys landscape eye-candy. The editors at Reader’s Digest have put together 120 of the most scenic drives in America and is great for active road trippers and armchair travelers alike.

14. The Open Road: 50 Best Road Trips in the USA

By Jessica Dunham

Part of the notable Moon travel guides family, The Open Road is a collection of 50 of the best road trips in these great united states. Whether you’re looking to travel coast-to-coast or just get away for the weekend, there is bound to be an itinerary that fits the bill.

15. The Ultimate Pet-Friendly Road Trip

By Amy Burkert

Just because you’re going on a road trip doesn’t mean you need to leave Fido behind. In fact, I’d argue road trips are the best type of travel for pet owners. This book offers up the ultimate pet-friendly road trip bucket list of 49 attractions across the country so you don’t need to leave your furry companion at home when you hit the road.

16. Unique America – Strange, Unusual, and Just Plain Fun: A Trip Through America

Are you the type of traveler that looks to the Atlas Obscura website first for ideas for your next trip? If so, then Unique America is for you. Get ready to see the world’s largest ball of twine, a floating bridge, or a ginormous artichoke the size of your car.

17. Where To Go When the Americas

By DK Eyewitness

DK Eyewitness Travel Guides are my go-to choice when I have an upcoming trip. I love the balance between visual representation and easy-to-digest information about the places they cover. Where To Go When is only last on this list because it’s in alphabetical order, haha. But if you’re looking for seasonal inspiration for your next American road trip, look no further.

Have any of these American Road Trip books inspired your next adventure?!?!

More Wanderlust-Filled Book Recommendations

• 17 Books That Will Inspire You To Visit America’s National Parks

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About Laura

Laura is an avid traveler who aspires to live a life filled with adventure and a dash of luxury and hopes to inspire others to do the same. She seems to consistently be drawn to lesser-traveled hidden "pearls" and loves to give these under-the-radar places the credit they are due. Laura can often be found on the ski slopes in the winter and is obsessed with all activities involving water...and mac and cheese...and Golden Retrievers.

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Eight Books to Take With You on a Road Trip

In these titles, the open highway sparks a reaction between a character and the unknown.

On a long, meandering road trip—especially one with no particular destination or strict timeline for arrival—something hypnotic happens. You become attuned to the voices on the radio, the strange grammar of the signs, and the variations in the unfamiliar landscape in ways you never do during more conventional travel. I’d posit that it has something to do with being in constant motion and freed of immediate obligation. The mode of transport is important too: Airplanes move too fast and fly too high, and travel on foot is too slow and too low to the ground. Cars, trains, and buses make the topography change at a speed the mind comprehends.

I’ve personally driven more than 10,000 miles around the United States in a pickup truck that was also my temporary house, and I’ve always loved stories set on the highway. But I didn’t understand why until I wrote my forthcoming novel, Housemates , about two queer women trying to find themselves as artists and driving across Pennsylvania to receive a dubious inheritance. A moving vehicle pressurizes every thought, feeling, and interaction, prompting unique confessions and realizations. The eight books below show that road-trip stories are fundamentally about those unstable, generative, surprising reactions that arise as an ordinary character drives into the unknown.

The Price of Salt , by Patricia Highsmith

People tend to think of Highsmith’s classic as a lesbian romance rather than a road novel, but it’s both: The second half of the book takes place in a car, as the protagonist, Therese, decides to go with her crush, Carol, on a trip west during those peculiar, formless weeks around Christmas and New Year’s. Sharing motel rooms with two twin beds in anonymous small towns, the women can finally act on their mutual attraction. Therese discovers that she likes being Carol’s passenger, as it allows her to train her gaze, and her camera, on Carol and the American vistas, seeking a new kind of understanding. Carol, freed from the imprisonment of her suburban town and her husband, is finally able to lean into her sexual power, turning her probing curiosity to Therese. Only in this remote, liberated setting can the pair see each other clearly enough to recognize that they are in love—and yet they’re being followed by a mysterious car and an overly friendly man. Their romance pushes the novel to its difficult, but surprisingly sweet, conclusion.

Nevada , by Imogen Binnie

When Maria’s girlfriend, Steph, drops shocking news about their relationship over brunch, Maria’s dull reaction is to line up five beans in a row on her fork and eat them. She’s a literary-minded trans woman who works at a New York City bookstore and is tired of teaching people about being trans; she’s also deeply dissociated from her body. The breakup is the catalyst for Maria to change her life, which she kicks off by stealing Steph’s car and heading west. She ends up in Nevada, where she meets and becomes intensely fixated on a stoner Walmart employee named James, who she believes is a closeted trans person needing to be taken under her wing. A predictable story about a stuck character would end with that character reaching a state of un-stuck-ness, but that isn’t what Binnie chooses here. Maria is not exceptional, and her role isn’t to be a perfect trans role model; instead, she remains real and confused and continually searching, like all heroines.

Read: The cult classic that captures the grind of dead-end jobs

Eat Only When You’re Hungry , by Lindsay Hunter

This funny, devastating novel begins when middle-aged dad Greg rents an RV in West Virginia and drives it along the southeastern coast to find his son, GJ, now missing but last seen in Florida. Hunter’s prose pays much attention to Greg’s aging, fat body as he drives; the reader learns that he was intensely shamed for his size and his hunger in his youth. But repressing every appetite turns out to be painful for Greg and impossible for GJ, an addict whose own desires have eaten him alive. The fruitless search for GJ takes Greg through the forgotten fringes of America—parking lots, gas stations, motels, highways—and offers intense images and interactions that prompt Greg to examine his memories of his childhood, and his actions as a husband and father. The RV’s journey along this lush and troubled southern scenery mirrors Greg’s journey to recognizing his complicity in GJ’s addiction; each mile reinforces that he has only inflicted on his son the harm that was done to him.

Love Is an Ex-country , by Randa Jarrar

In this fragmented memoir that stitches together Jarrar’s many excursions through America and beyond in her 30s, the writer doesn’t so much drive as saunter across the country—sashay, roll, meander, and play around in it. She describes such moments as the dangerous airport detention she faced when denied entrance to her family’s native Palestine and the time she schooled a racist long-haul trucker in a rest-stop bathroom; in each retelling, she puts her body and her electric mind, with all its insight gleaned from her many identities—queer, Muslim, Palestinian American, fat, femme—in the driver’s seat. Her travels prompt her to examine how people of color are excluded in cultural emblems like kitschy road signs, or how dolls serve as the earliest receptacles of little girls’ rage. The book deploys discrete paragraphs, set off by double-spaced breaks, that defy chronology and evade cause and effect in a deadpan, deceptively simple tone that asks the reader to think about the land itself—whose we are on, and why and how our nation came to be.

Lost Children Archive , by Valeria Luiselli

This novel is about the Great American Road Trip story more than it neatly fits into the genre. A husband and wife, who are both audio documentarians, and their children, a boy and a girl, set off on a cross-country car trip to Arizona. Instead of buying souvenirs and seeing the Grand Canyon, however, the four come across a landscape full of pain and dispossession—“fields sectioned into quadrangular grids, gang-raped by heavy machinery, bloated with modified seeds and injected with pesticides,” Luiselli writes. The story brims with allusions to canonical American road-trip texts such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and the poetry of Walt Whitman , and Luiselli breaks up the prose with Polaroids, reports on migrant fatalities, and the reproduced text of a fictional book from within the story, posing the question of whether facts or expressive art forms are the better tool against the violence and forced displacement the characters witness. Nothing is solved, and the travel itself seems to break the foursome apart more than unify them, but much is revealed about what it means to make a family—and a nation—along the way.

Read: The death of the pioneer myth

The Sunset Route , by Carrot Quinn

Quinn’s road is not highways but train lines. Raised in poverty in Alaska by a mother with schizophrenia, the author writes with precision about leaving home at 14 and ending up in Portland, Oregon. There, Quinn dumpster dives for food, finds chosen family among queer punks and straight-edge anarchist communities, learns about gender outside the binary, and discovers that semi-legally riding on freight trains is a means of pleasure, movement, and escape. The Sunset Route alternates between timelines: In one, Quinn is a queer adult train-hopping and, later, long-distance hiking in the Pacific Northwest, where they meet people who are also living on the fringes of America without a safety net. In the other, they recall memories of their childhood, characterized by abuse and anorexia. Ultimately, their writing offers a precise accounting of how their awe for the natural world became their most honest and reliable method to heal.

Cruddy , by Lynda Barry

This title is not for the faint of heart; both its central father-daughter relationship and the road trip on which the pair embark radiate a deep horror. The narrator, Roberta, who refers to her parent only as “the father” throughout, opens her story with a chilling summary: “According to the newspaper version of the story, the father stole me, kidnapped me, snatched me up in the middle of the night,” Barry writes. “The father drove through the darkness. He drove and he drove.” Where Roberta and the father go on their terrifying journey or how long they are gone are never clear—the reader knows only that they’re both subject to his whims. Roberta loves and fears the violent, mentally ill man at the wheel, and the farther they drive, the clearer it becomes that in order to survive the expedition, she must love herself more than she wants to save him from his demons. Their voyage begets isolation and vulnerability, and Barry uses it to explore what happens when the person who is supposed to protect you turns out to be the biggest threat of all.

Read: My God, this is a magical country

Brother & Sister Enter the Forest , by Richard Mirabella

The pivotal car travel takes up a paltry section here, but it is impossible to look away from. Brother & Sister Enter the Forest follows two siblings as they try to find their way through a haze of trauma and estrangement. Justin is unhoused, dealing with PTSD and the physical effects of a traumatic brain injury; Willa is a nurse who makes dioramas of her and Justin’s childhood. When Justin shows up at Willa’s door asking to move in, the narration turns its gaze backwards to the events that broke them apart—a road trip that Justin took with a violent ex-boyfriend in the aftermath of a terrible crime. The trek is the book’s dark, truthful center, casting a shadow of gay shame and survivor’s guilt that takes Justin and his sister decades to see clearly. Still, even outside of those few crucial pages, the plot is infused with driving, aimless and otherwise. “I love this idea,” the siblings’ mother says to Justin. “Taking someone out in a car. You’re trapped. So we can really have a good talk without you running away like you always do.”

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13 Best Books About Road Trips to Satisfy Your Summer Wanderlust

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The classic American road trip book has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the years, from On the Road by Jack Kerouac to Cheryl Strayed's Wild . At this point, there's a road trip-themed pick for everyone, including YA romps about couples on the run ( I Wanna Be Where You Are ) and family-friendly audiobook options ( Walk Two Moons ) . Only the bold of heart should try out a road trip thriller , however.

For many who've had their vacation plans break down this summer, now might also be a perfect time to get on the open road to explore all the weird nooks and crannies this country has to offer. If you're planning to drive to a far-off destination, try listening to these road trip books on tape —between belting these classic car songs , of course.

Or, you know, you could just read one of these quintessential road trip novels from the comfort of your own home. Either way, the following 13 books—including a couple of comical romps, a pair of 1950s classics, a semi-surreal comic book, and more—will inspire you to put on your sunglasses, or your reading glasses, and leave your old world behind.

The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky

Tautly told and drolly smart, Dermansky's third novel centers on a woman in Queens locked in a loveless marriage . The key to her freedom, and to unlatching her sense of self, is the titular red car, bequeathed to her when her beloved mentor passes away. If you want an entire novel that captures the gleeful, devil-may-care liberation of Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff (and believe us, you really, really do) then this one's for you. 

I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest

Here's something you should know about Chloe Pierce: She's an excellent ballerina, and a terrible driver. Still, in an effort to get into the school of her dreams, Chloe breaks her mom's rule (whoops) and steals the car (double whoops) to drive to an audition in D.C. Her irritating neighbor, Eli, insists on hitching a ride. Kristina Forest's heart-warming YA debut captures a girl on the cusp of adulthood, pushing the limits of her independence—and dealing with the consequences. 

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

In her review for O , acclaimed author Carmen Maria Machado said of Luisell's inventive novel: "Not since  Lolita  has a road trip so brilliantly captured the dark underbelly of the American dream, the gulf between its promise and reality." This story of a family traveling southwest in search of answers to our nation's troubling past and present was one of our favorite books of 2019 . 

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Beware—once you meet Charlie Manx, the immortal villain of  NOS4A2 , you'll forever fear seeing his haunted car drive by you on a quiet road. By then, it'll be too late.  NOS4A2 is a road trip novel, made sinister: Characters travel on roads that don't exist on any map.  Manx transports children in his car to "Christmasland," a place far more sinister than it sounds. On her magic bike, Vic McQueen is able to travel to Christmaslands and other realms, and is the one person who can stop him.  NOS4A2  comes with horror pedigree: Joe Hill, the author, is Stephen King's (very talented) son.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Highsmith's 1952 novel—originally published under a pseudonym—is perhaps most famously the basis for the film Carol , a queer modern classic starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. But saying that it's just a book that was turned into a movie would take away from the quietly revolutionary sumptuousness of the text itself. Highsmith's wintry tale of two women in mid-century America who drive across the country together to escape society's expectations is a must-read. 

We All Loved Cowboys by Carol Bensimon (translated by Beth Fowler)

More forbidden love on the run! Translated from Portuguese, this exquisite and wistful novel by Bensimon—named one of Granta's Best Young Brazilian novelists—follows former friends Julia and Cora on a car trip through Brazil as they attempt to mend their once-solid relationship. Complications arise when the pair realize they might not just be gal pals. 

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Soon to be a miniseries on HBO co-produced by Jordan Peele, Ruff's chilling thriller is set during the Jim Crow era and stars an army veteran whose father has disappeared. He drives from Chicago to New England alongside his uncle, the publisher of a guide on how to travel while Black. Much more Get Out than Green Book , the tale takes a turn toward terror when they arrive at a mansion owned by a family of former slave-holders. Also: ghosts. 

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Maybe you read this in high school, maybe you dated a boy like Jess from Gilmore Girls who referenced this book nonstop (guilty and guilty), but there's no denying: reading Kerouac's Beat Generation classic of aimless American wanderlust is basically a rite of passage. 

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

Speaking of On the Road , the Super Sad True Love Story author delivers a hilariously scathing romp through America starring a boorish hedge funder who, after a fight with his wife, hops on a Greyhound for an inspired journey into the country's heart—and his own. 

Find Me by Laura van den Berg

Short fiction scribe Laura van den Berg taps into her singular eeriness for her first novel, about a directionless young woman who discovers she's immune to the sudden sickness spreading across the country. Her epic yet intimate journey takes her from Kansas, where she's admitted as a hospital patient and subjected to myriad tests, to Florida, where she believes her birth mother might be. 

Flaming Iguanas by Erika Lopez

Erika Lopez's "all-girl road novel thing" is a fierce amalgamation of words and images chronicling biker babe Tomato Rodriquez's wild cross-country motorcycle ride. It's as fun and freeing as having the wind blow through your hair. 

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden

Want more illustrated cool-girl goodness? Combining dreamily gorgeous artwork and lyrical, sophisticated storytelling, Eisner award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden has emerged as a master of her craft. Here, she channels Murakami with a magical realist road trip starring two women and a mysterious cat. 

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

If you're seeking a family-friendly audiobook to listen to in the car, look no further than Sharon Creech's Newberry Award-winning classic. Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle journeys across the country with her grandparents. All the while, she entertains them with stories of a girl who's quite like herself—a girl who wants to be reunited with her mother.  Walk Two Moons  is a strange, funny book that will speak to children of all ages.

Michelle Hart is the Assistant Books Editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Other writing of hers has appeared on the Millions, the Rumpus, and the New Yorker . Her fiction has appeared in Joyland and Electric Literature. She has been awarded a fiction fellowship by the New York State Writers Institute and was once profiled in her hometown newspaper for being in the process of writing a novel--a novel she is still in the process of writing.

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The Ultimate List of Epic Road Trip Books

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A great book has the power to not just take you along for the ride with the author but to instill in you the burning desire to hit the road yourself. This list of the best road trip books is sure to keep you busy for a while and will make you want to hand your boss your two-week notice and start packing your bags.

I put this list together as I get ready to launch my own road trip book, The Road Always Leads West , another one you should check out! 🙂 

While this is mostly for inspiration or entertainment, be sure to check out my road trip planning guide if you need more comprehensive and practical information about logistics and organization.

5 Best Road Trip Books

On the road by jack kerouac.

We might as well get this one out of the way first, it’s easily the most well-known road trip book ever written, a book which has inspired generations and countless imitations.

Kerouac’s classic book On the Road that details his travels with his friends as they travel across America. The book was heavily steeped in the jazz and poetry culture and is considered the defining work of the Beat Generation, which so influenced the counter culture movement of the 60s.

The book is available as it was first published or you can get the Original Scroll version which was released as written by Jack Kerouac on a continuous sheet of paper 120’ long and which features the real names of his friends, not pseudonyms.

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

Heat-Moon set out to put the past behind him by setting out on the open road. The premise of the book is his travels along the smaller roads, marked blue on the map, and discover small-town America.

His travels to small-town America show a country on the verge of change with the increasing homogenization through fast-food culture and strip malls.

Heat-Moon does a great job featuring the lives of the people he meets along the way, a curious cast of characters who live in “those little towns that get on the map—if they get on at all—only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill.”

Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck

In September of 1960 John Steinbeck, already a successful author, set out to rediscover an America that he worried he had lost touch with. According to Steinbeck’s son, the real reason for his journey was that he knew he was dying and he wanted to see the country one last time.

Steinbeck set out on a giant cross country journey from New York, up to Maine, across to the west coast, down to California then across the southern half of the states back east, before venturing back up the East Coast. Essentially completing a massive circular journey through America.

He had his French poodle Charley in tow throughout his journey through a “New America” that was on the cusp of some great upheaval.

Steinbeck was 58 when he set out on this journey alone (well, with a dog), which just goes to show that isn’t just for young, aimless, 20-somethings.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Part philosophical treatise and part motorcycle road trip across the northern stretch of the United States and then down to California.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tells the story of a father and son motorcycle trip with a pair of friends but also delves into fundamental questions about how to live life and tries to reconcile science, religion and more.

A powerful read that will not only inspire you to hit the road but inspire you to examine your own perspectives on some of these central themes of life.

The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America by Mike McIntyre

Not a traditional road trip book where the driver is behind the wheel on the open road, but rather Mike decided to hitchhike across the country from San Francisco to Cape Fear, North Carolina, which would be challenging in and of itself. But Mike decided to do it without so much as a penny.

He would have to rely on the goodwill and help of complete strangers on the open road in order to find rides, eat, and have a place to sleep.

It’s an incredible journey and an even more incredible story which highlights the stories and generosity of the folks that he meets along the way.

Five books aren’t enough for you? Well, I’ve got another 10 awesome road trip books below and then a number of reader suggestions.

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10 More Great Books About Road Trips

The new american road trip mixtape by brendan leonard.

Brendan Leonard has become one of the leading modern voices for road trips and the transformative nature of nature and the great outdoors.

Post-breakup Brendan set out by himself to explore the American West as he lived in the back of his station wagon. This book tackles the American Dream and the call of the open road in Brendan’s humorous and unique style.

His most recent book, Sixty Meters to Anywhere , is another incredible read about overcoming alcoholism and finding himself through climbing.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Krakauer’s book is not strictly a road trip book, nor is it a first-person book about a road trip, but rather traces the incredible story of Chris McCandless and his nomadic wanderings.

After graduating college back east, Chris donated what remained of his college fund and drove west, eventually abandoning his car and hitchhiking across the west for a number of years. His travels led him to a Walden’s Pond type existence in the Alaskan bush where he was found dead.

The book has a sad end, but the story of his travels and Krakauer’s incredible writing will inspire you to hit the road in Chris’ footsteps undoubtedly. I know it did for me. This is one of my favorite books ever written.

The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is one of the best travel writers out there, able to turn the simplest or seemingly boring concepts into insightful, interesting, and often humorous reads.

After living abroad in the United Kingdom for many years, Bryson sets out to rediscover America by visiting its small towns.

Bryson’s book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods , is still one of my favorites.

Drive Nacho Drive by Brad Van Orden

Drive Nacho Drive tells the story of Brad and his wife Sheena quitting their jobs, giving up the American Dream and driving south in their old beat-up Volkswagon Van named Nacho.

The road takes them through all of Central America, past the Darien Gap to South America and finally to the “end of the earth” in Patagonia where the Pan-American Highway finally ends.

A pretty incredible read that might just inspire you to think about taking your road trip internationally ( like we did ).

The Cruise of the Rolling Junk by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Another of America’s finest authors sets out on the open road, this time F. Scott Fitzgerald of Great Gatsby fame, who sets out with his wife Zelda on a drive from Connecticut to Alabama.

These serialized articles compiled into a book of their journey in a dilapidated car (the rolling junk) and tell the story of a younger America.

Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman set out on a road trip exploring the deaths of famous musicians across America.

He covered nearly 7,000 miles as he visited the place where Buddy Holly’s plane crashed, where Kurt Cobain committed suicide, or Jeff Buckley drowned in a river.

An interesting basis for a road trip book, for sure, especially if you love music.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

A wild and drug-fueled road trip to Las Vegas by the one and only Hunter S. Thompson.

The book, beyond the manic drug-addled scenery, paints a different picture of Las Vegas, one that had not yet been taken over by the larger than life hotels and commercialization of the Strip.

Side Note: While Vegas isn’t necessarily my favorite place it is a great place to base yourself for some epic road trips from Las Vegas .

American Nomads by Richard Grant

Richard Grant spent more than 15 years wandering the American West alongside the hobos, truckers, retirees, and hippies, documenting the lives of those who wander the American West.

Grant examines the myths and realities of the often romanticized open road, while also examining the sedentary nature of the American Dream.

He contrasts the stories of modern wanderers with the historical characters, the frontiersmen and conquistadors, who set loose upon this same landscape centuries ago.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Neal Cassady, who also is featured prominently in Kerouac’s On the Road, set out to drive Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ bus across America in a psychedelic LSD-fueled mission that takes road “trip” to a whole new level.

The book offers a look into the hippy, counter-culture movement of the 1960s.

Jupiter’s Travels by Ted Simon

Ted Simon spent an astonishing four years driving around the world on the back of a motorcycle in the late 70s. I actually had the chance to meet Ted at the Overland Expo .

He set out from London for more than 63,000 miles through 45 countries in Africa, South America, Australia, Asia, before arriving back home.

An incredible journey in the days before cell phones and the internet, and all done solo with no support team or social media updates.

7 More Reader Suggestions for Best Road Trip Books

I reached out to friends, followers, and readers of this blog for a few of their favorite road trip books. Here’s what they recommended.

Traveling Music by Neil Peart

The drummer for Rush explores the inextricable link between road trips and music, how music is the soundtrack to our lives, by telling autobiographical stories based on music from a solo road trip.

Road Scholar by Andrew Codrescu

The Romanian-born writer sets out in the shadows of Kerouac as he discovers America behind the wheel.

One for the Road by Tony Horowitz

Tony set off on a 7,000-mile adventure through the Australian Outback.

Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways by Larry McMurtry

Larry has written an homage to the road itself, where the route is the destination and not just a means.

Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

A journey by bicycle through Mexico, Japan and on to Vietnam as Andrew (born in Vietnam but raised in California) travels he also confronts issues of cultural identity, immigration, and more.

Ghost Rider by Neil Peart

Another book by the drummer from Rush, this time Neil hits the road soon after losing his wife and daughter within a year of one another.

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

More than 25 years ago Peter set out to walk from New York to New Orleans in the company of his trusty dog, not quite a traditional road trip, but definitely in the same spirit.

What road trip books would you add to this list? Sound off in the comments below.

The Road Always Leads West

Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention that you check out my book The Road Always Leads West if you love a good road trip story… 🙂  

More Book Recommendations

• 26 Books to Inspire Your Next Epic Summer Road Trip from Buzzfeed
• The Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature’s Most Epic Road Trips
• Books to Inspire the Ultimate American Road Trip
• The 9 Best Road Trip Books from Adventure Journal
• Road Trip! 10 Books About Cross-Country Adventures
• 10 Must-Read Travel Books from Desk to Dirtbag

Tips to Book Your Trip Now & Save Money

Book Your Flight Book a cheap flight with Momondo , they’re my favorite search engine. Or better yet, start travel hacking so you can fly for free. Another great search engine is Skyscanner .

Book Your Accommodation Book cheap accommodation in advance. For hostels I recommend HostelWorld , for hotels I use Booking.com or Hotels.com , and for apartments or longer stays, I use Airbnb . I like to check reviews on TripAdvisor prior to reserving.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance This is easy to overlook but SO important. It will help protect yourself from illness, injury, and theft while traveling. VERY important. And be sure to read my article about international travel insurance for more details

• SafetyWing (best for digital nomads)
• World Nomads (most comprehensive)

Looking for the Best Companies to Save Money With? Check out my budget travel resources page for the best companies to use when traveling. I list all the ones I use and recommend to save money when I’m on the road.

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Hilarious story and travelogue about fulfilling a foolish bar bet – Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks

Great list. Could suggest a fictional road trip list: The Road – McCullers Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck Cold Mountain – can’t remember

I am sure you have more. Steve

Wow. All books written by white men. Would love to see more diverse voices.

Please feel free to contribute any non-white men voices, I’m always looking for cool new road trip reads!

Like Nomadland by Jessica Bruder.

Oh yeah, Nomadland has been on my list to check out… Thanks for the reminder.

William Least Heat-Moon is native American. I would also add River-Horse by him as well.

The road narrative has historically been a white male thing. There aren’t a ton of other voices. I would recommend Valeria Luiselli, The Lost Children Archive. She does an admirable job Paying homage to previous road works. I loved it.

Thanks for the list. I read a lot while travelling. It’s very meditative and relaxing for me. A few of these I have read, but I plan on adding to my list with a few of these books. I always use my kindle too, as it’s much lighter and holds thousands of books.

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10 Thought-Provoking Road Trip Books

Anne Mai Yee Jansen

Anne Mai Yee Jansen is a literature and ethnic studies professor and a lifelong story lover. She exists on a steady diet of books, hot chocolate, and dragon boating. After spending over a decade in the Midwest and the Appalachians, she returned to the sun and sandstone of California’s central coast where she currently resides with her partner, offspring, and feline companions. Find her on Instagram @dreaminginstories

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The road novel is often described as a quintessentially U.S. American genre. In an interview about the road trip narrative , historian Allen Pietrobon traces it as far back as wagon trains and even George Washington. From Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley: In Search of America , white male authors have been writing road novels since the advent of the highway. But what about writers of color, women, and LGBTQ+ writers?

As Pietrobon points out, before the Civil Rights Act, road-tripping for people of color was perilous. I would argue that the hazards persist to this day. For instance, in Gretchen Soren’s Driving While Black : African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights and Candacy Taylor’s Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America , the authors take a critical look at the dangers of the road for Black Americans.

With this in mind, there are a ton of road novels that depart from the tradition of writers like Kerouac and Steinbeck. These contemporary road novels consider the ways a person’s body influences how they are able to move across the roadways. They also encourage readers to think differently about the road novel as an American genre.

It’s summertime, and the road beckons. The U.S. is tentatively opening back up, but there is still a lot of fear around flying with COVID-19 out there. Because of this, a lot of people are considering going on road trips. Before you hit the road, take a look at these books that engage the road novel genre (even while some of them are memoirs and others are genre mash-ups). They’ll challenge you take a detour from Route 66 fantasies and think deeply about the asphalt arteries that link this country’s vital points to one another.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

As a family of four drives from New York to Arizona, their journey across the USA becomes intertwined with everything from a growing rift in the family to international immigration politics. The novel interweaves various ephemera — such as snapshots and song lyrics — with the story itself. Numerous reviewers have described Lost Children Archive as a great American novel, some even acknowledging it as a road narrative. Luiselli’s masterful tale of family and nation is a fascinating and important road trip novel for our times.

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Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones’ coming-of-age novel follows a family of werewolves as they traverse the southern United States. The unnamed protagonist learns everything from werewolf etiquette to the importance of not wearing spandex during a transformation, picking up bits of family history as he travels the highways with his aunt and uncle. Typical of Jones’s work, Mongrels could be classified as a bildungsroman, horror, or even a dark comedy — and, of course, it is also a road novel. Regardless of how you shelve it, the book is unexpectedly tender in its treatment of adolescent insecurities and family loyalty.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Ward’s National Book Award–winning novel is a haunted by racism. Sure, there are ghosts: two African American boys who were killed during their adolescent years — one murdered in a “hunting accident” and the other mercy-killed after a failed prison escape. But as the teenage protagonist, Jojo, and his troubled mother make the dangerous drive to pick up Jojo’s father from prison, the perils of the road feature prominently. As the family attempts to navigate their way home, Ward’s novel explores systemic racism while engaging the nefarious undercurrents of racism so often set aside in the conventional road novel.

The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang

“Charles Wang was mad at America. Actually, Charles Wang was mad at history.” So begins Chang’s humorous exploration of family, finances, and failure. The Wangs vs. the World follows the Wang family as they drive their one remaining car (the only one that wasn’t repossessed) from Los Angeles to New York in the wake of the financial crisis. The novel’s first sentence hints at the wry humor to follow; its second sentence belies the novel’s interest in the larger context of global capitalism and immigration. It’s a thought-provoking book masquerading as a light summer read, and it’s worth every page.

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

What better genre mash-up than road novel and YA post-apocalyptic fantasy? While there has been some controversy surrounding Roanhorse’s (Ohkay Owinge Pueblo) use of Diné mythologies, Trail of Lightning is a suspenseful page-turner of a novel. The world has been rocked by natural disaster, and 16-year-old Maggie Hoskie’s latent powers reveal themselves after her grandmother’s murder. As she travels the roads of the crumbling U.S. hunting for the monsters (literally) that killed her grandmother, Maggie’s journey becomes far more than a simple revenge tale. Fair warning: this is the first book in a series that hasn’t yet been completed.

America for Beginners by Leah Franqui

When Pival Sengupta leaves Kolkata to embark upon a cross-country road trip from New York City to California, she is motivated by more than a thirst for travel. Instead, she is searching for her son, who came out to his parents a year before he disappeared. Pival’s husband told her their son was dead, but her trip is borne of her refusal to believe he is truly dead and her desire to understand. As her road trip grants her a deeper understanding of the United States, Pival also gains insights into herself and her son. This moving novel is told with a combination of humor and beauty.

The Last Great Road Bum: A Novel by Héctor Tobar

Héctor Tobar’s novel blurs the lines between fact and fiction. He takes real-life writer Joe Sanderson’s papers documenting his journeys across the USA — and, more broadly, the world — as the foundation for a novel about Sanderson’s travels. Interestingly, at the heart of the novel lies an investigation of the privilege that has historically been so central to the beat generation and to “classic” U.S. American literature more broadly. Tobar, who is an award-winning novelist and journalist, sifted through Sanderson’s personal papers for over a decade in order to write this novel. It’s a freewheeling travelogue on the one hand, and a thoughtful exploration of masculinity, race, and the literary world on the other.

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with leukemia in her early 20s and spend nearly four years surviving an array of treatment options. Between Two Kingdoms chronicles what happened after those years as Jaouad took to the roads in search of the life she’d been forced to put on hold. This memoir follows her as she seeks out people who corresponded with her during her treatments, tracing her journeys on the road alongside her journey toward coming alive again.

Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar

Randa Jarrar is a queer Arab American Muslim woman who is also a performer and comedienne. This collection of essays is told in a poetic and irreverent style. Taking the body as the lens through which to explore a host of issues ranging from joy to race to sexuality, Love is an Ex-Country is a flat-out good read. It is about a literal road trip across U.S. America, but it’s about so much more. Not only does Jarrar write with a fearless honesty, but there’s also an urgency and timeliness to this book that makes it incredibly compelling.

Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity by Paola Ramos

Paola Ramos’s book on contemporary Latinx identity is organized by region (Southwest, South, Midwest and Northeast). Finding Latinx integrates detailed descriptions of place with interviews and striking photographs in its exploration of the various factors comprising “Latinx” identity. Unconventional, for sure, where the road narrative is concerned, but this book is a testament to the richness of individual experience and its integral role in cultural identity formation.

There’s one more book I have to mention, even though it’s specifically not a road novel. Mia Bay’s Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance is a powerful collection of essays exploring what it means to travel globally as a Black woman.

If you’re craving more books about the road, here are some suggestions that should get you rolling on your readerly journey.

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Blog – Posted on Friday, Jul 26

45+ best audiobooks for road trips in 2024.

So, you’re going on a road trip! What fun — that is, until it’s hour nine and you’re bored out of your mind at the wheel, unable to keep your eyes open to the pounding beat of tedium. 

If this sounds familiar to you, we have an eleventh-hour Good Samaritan for you: the audiobook. Criminally underrated, good audiobooks will captivate you on the edge of your seat, weave whole worlds in the confines of your car, and keep you so vitally engaged that you’ll be trying to find excuses to lengthen your road trip.  

However, as you might know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and monotone narrators. So we’ve taken care to gather the absolute 45+ best audiobooks for road trips in this post to make your own road trip a little more fun. Since each audiobook adds a different flavor to your journey, we’ve organized them below by genre. Feel free to jump to the one that fuels your fancy!

Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, narrated by Nick Offerman

One of the funniest American authors in history (Mark Twain) is narrated by one of the funniest American actors alive right now (Nick Offerman, of Parks and Recreation fame ). Need we say more to convince you that this audiobook will make your trip worthwhile? If so, we’ll let Doug, an Audible editor, have the final word:

“I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best things I have ever listened to. Nor would it be dishonest to say that this recording made me fall in love with Twain's classic ode to adolescence all over again. But perhaps the strangest thing, as I keep telling all my friends, is that I completely forgot how truly laugh-out-loud funny this book is. I have the narration to thank for that. Parks and Recreation 's Nick Offerman is known for playing the quintessential gruff male, but he thoroughly astonishes here, bending his baritone effortlessly to give Twain's characters life.”

Perfect for your road trip if: you’ve always wanted Ron Swanson as a driving buddy. Time duration: 7 hours and 52 min.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens, narrated by Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher

Always wanted to read Dickens , but could never find the time or energy to do so? Then this audiobook may be the answer to all of your road trip prayers, for you can let Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher read Dickens to you. Far from distracting, their magnificent dual narration enhances the melodrama that Dickens deftly builds. It’s not easy to do justice to such a sprawling masterpiece, but this audiobook more than rises up to the task.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re ready to get fired up over the ridiculous bureaucracy of the chancery court system. Time duration: 35 hours and 14 min. 

Beloved by Toni Morrison, narrated by Toni Morrison

If you haven’t read this remarkable 1988 Pulitzer winner, there’s no time like a road trip to dip your toe in! Admittedly, you’re more likely to be dunked headfirst into the deep end by Morrison, as this fantastically frightening tale of a slave woman haunted by her murdered daughter is going to keep you awake and alert at the wheel. 

Made all the more unforgettable by Morrison’s narration, Beloved conjures vivid images of slavery in America and compels the listener to ponder horrors both historical and imaginary. (Needless to say, if you’re going down a long, dark road at night, you might want to save this one for later.)

Perfect for your road trip if: you want to take a terrifying magical realist trip of the mind in addition to your vehicular journey. Time duration: 12 hours and 3 min. 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal

Whether you want to take a trip down memory lane or read The Great Gatsby for the first time, Jake Gyllenhaal’s (!) narration is sure to liven up your travels. From the sparkling descriptions of Gatsby’s famous parties to the incisive drama of the Tom-Daisy-Gatsby love triangle, you’ll feel the long stretches of road start to melt away in favor of a Jazz Age paradise. Just don’t pull a big yellow Rolls-Royce out there — if you know what we mean 😉

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re looking to bone up on one of the “Great American Novel” contenders. Time duration: 4 hours and 49 min. 

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Elisabeth Moss

For fans of the phenomenal Hulu adaptation and dystopian stories in general, we have The Handmaid’s Tale , as told by the dramatically gifted Moss (who also stars in the TV show). Though it’s not exactly light and easy fare, this mesmerizing tale of a single-minded woman trapped in a mega-patriarchy will have you thinking very differently about the world we live in. Narrative-wise, you’ll also be holding your breath right up to the final word. And if you still have reservations, know that Moss's conviction and urgency turns this already excellent tale into a vital one.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’ve had your “Songs to Smash the Patriarchy To” Spotify playlist on repeat the whole time. Time duration: 12 hours and 6 min.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac, narrated by Will Patton

A classic take on a classic tale. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road , which centers around Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty’s manic travels through the United States, may be the quintessential book of the wild Beat generation of the 1960s. Needless to say, Will Patton’s pitch-perfect interpretation gets its spirit down pat. His melodious voice is a flawless match for the free-flowing groove of Kerouac’s prose — and it will surely make a fine companion for your own road trip as you meet the same open road that beckoned Sal and Dean across the breadth of the country!

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re on the road (especially to New York or San Francisco). Time duration: 11 hours and 8 min. 

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, narrated by Thandie Newton

You can’t miss the audiobook of this Victorian-era classic, read by Thandie Newton of Westworld fame. (Fun fact: she also played the titular character in the film version of Beloved. ) Newton’s crisp yet impassioned narration will breathe life into Jane Eyre like you’ve never known before, carrying you swiftly and enjoyably through Jane’s difficult childhood and education at Lowood, her stint as a governess at Thornfield, and her iconic love affair with Mr. Rochester. Alas, our one criticism is that Newton stays faithful to the text and doesn’t quip, “Listener, I married him” — but wouldn’t it be great if she did?

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re always happy to be lost in a romantic (and Gothic) haze. Time duration: 19 hours and 10 min.

World War Z by Max Brooks, narrated by Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, etc.

The Zombie War is finally over, but what of the people remaining in its wake? This book is their story: the narrator traveled across America to interview the survivors, recording their testimonies in a documentary-style format.

Such a setup pretty much makes this story tailor-made for an audiobook, as the interviews translate seamlessly into the aural medium. If that’s not enough, it may boast one of the best multiple-cast members ever (think Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, Brian Tee, Nathan Fillion, Kal Penn, René Auberjonois, and more). Spectacular stuff — not to mention the five additional hours of previously unrecorded content on this particular audiobook.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re down for a serious undertaking (with zombies). Time duration: 12 hours and 9 min.  

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, narrated by Dominic Hoffman

This is the perfect choice if you want to be transported into another country — specifically, within Africa. A gripping tale about two sisters who are born into different villages in Ghana in the 18th-century (and the wildly different trajectories that they and their descendants take over the next 300 years), Homegoing is a modern triumph. Experience it through its audiobook, which is read beautifully by Dominic Hoffman.

Perfect for your road trip if: you love getting swept up in rich historical fiction. Time duration: 13 hours and 11 min. 

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, narrated by Allan Corduner

Famously narrated by Death, The Book Thief isn’t exactly a cheery read. It’s a story about a girl in 1939 Nazi Germany who steals books and is by turn beautiful, tear-jerking, and enduring. 

Which is why this audiobook may be perfect for a lonesome trip out across the country. Not everyone can claim to give voice to Death itself, but Allan Corduner does it fabulously in this reading of The Book Thief , adding amazing dimension and poignancy to the written words. (Just a bit of friendly warning: bring tissues with you on this road trip, unless you want to be blinded by tears during the final thirty minutes of the audiobook!)

Perfect for your road trip if: you don’t mind a good cry on the highway. Time duration: 13 hours and 56 min. 

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, narrated by Jeff Woodman

Built upon the timeless short story of the same name, Flowers for Algernon is the moving tale of a mentally slow cleaner who engages in an experiment to become a genius — with unexpected results. The entire novel is presented through a series of journal entries, or “progress reports,” that are written by Charlie. ("I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me. All my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb.”) Heartbreakingly rendered by narrator Jeff Woodman, who switches between regular Charlie and genius Charlie with magnificent ease, this audiobook is set to become just as much of a classic as its novel. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you want to hear a relatively short but very powerful story. Time duration: 8 hours and 58 min. 

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, narrated by Kathleen Gati

Prepare to be swept off of your feet (or, off of the gas pedals) with this spectacular rendition of The Bear and the Nightingale . Katherine Arden’s lush retelling of Russian folklore was critically acclaimed when it was first published in 2017, introducing readers to a young Russian girl named Vasilisa who must step up to protect her loved ones from a threat that was supposed to have only existed in fairy tales. And Kathleen Gati’s velvety, hypnotic voice will turn your car into a cozy living room — complete with a crackling fire — as a nurse tells you stories from long ago.   

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re driving through snowy, Russia-like terrain and want to feel warm and comforted. Time duration: 11 hours and 48 min. 

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, narrated by Humphrey Bower

Though it sounds like a self-motivational handbook , The Power of One is actually a profoundly moving novel about a young boy named Peekay who’s raised in pre-apartheid South Africa. Peekay is bullied by his peers and constantly strives to escape their torment — a quest helped by his relationship with a medicine man, who reshapes his entire worldview. But as Peekay grows older, greater troubles than school bullies rear their ugly heads: the outbreak of World War II, the loss of his mentors, and worse. 

Humphrey Bower miraculously brings every single character, with all their accents and mannerisms, to life in the audiobook… which serves as an important window into a time and place that’s oft forgotten.

Perfect for your road trip if: you want a spiritual philosophy to guide you on your journey. Time duration: 21 hours and 33 min. 

MYSTERY AND THRILLER

The dead zone by stephen king, narrated by james franco.

This famous 1979 King novel concerns a man, Johnny Smith (not to be confused with the explorer), who acquires psychic abilities after an accident in his youth creates a “dead zone” in his brain. From then on, young Johnny can tell people things that they don’t even know about themselves — or, more eerily, things that haven’t even transpired yet. Yet, despite his abilities, all Johnny wants is a normal life. But when he’s approached by a sheriff hoping to solve a series of murders, he agrees to help... with no idea what clairvoyant floodgates he’s opening. 

As with all King stories , this one depends on the gradual build of atmospheric tension, which James Franco does with great aplomb in the audiobook. Consequently, it’s another one we wouldn’t recommend for a dark, lonely drive.

Perfect for your road trip if: you wish you could know exactly how long it’ll take to get through each long stretch of traffic. Time duration: 16 hours and 12 min. 

The Sherlock Holmes collection by Arthur Conan Doyle, narrated by Stephen Fry

It doesn’t get better than one British icon narrating another British icon’s adventures. Neither probably need an introduction, but just in case you don’t know them already: Sherlock Holmes is the world’s most famous fictional detective and Stephen Fry is an acclaimed actor, screenwriter, author, and comedian.

More than that, Fry is a profound devotee of Sherlock Holmes. He narrates with the skill of a celebrated performer and the enthusiasm of a fan, which alone makes this audiobook worth the money and time. Note that this isn’t the complete edition — it’s missing around 12 of Sherlock Holmes’ short stories. If you don’t mind that, this might just be the audiobook for you!

Perfect for your road trip if: you enjoy solving mysteries as you drive. Time duration: 62 hours and 52 min. 

Bird Box by Josh Malerman, narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Not a great pick for nervous drivers, to say the least — this post-apocalyptic thriller will have you gripping the steering wheel in anticipation of seeing “The Problem” on the side of the road. But don’t let that put you off, because Malerman’s masterful suspense-building combined with Campbell’s taut narration makes for an unforgettable audiobook experience. It’ll also inspire gratitude that your journey isn’t quite as harrowing as Mallorie’s with her two young children! 

And, of course, when you finally reach your destination, you’ll be perfectly primed to watch the Netflix film starring Sandra Bullock.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re not easily unnerved (or prone to tunnel vision). Time duration: 9 hours and 8 min. 

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, narrated by Caroline Lee

Another blockbusting bestseller that inspired not only an audiobook, but an HBO show, Big Little Lies is a juicy domestic thriller that follows three women and their children in suburban Sydney. Madeline is the seemingly flawless mother who’s still reeling from her divorce; Celeste is a busy caretaker to twins who conceals the marks left by her abusive husband; and Jane is a young mom to the eccentric Ziggy, hiding the darkest secret of all. All are united through their children’s kindergarten class, and a scandal that erupts when Ziggy starts bullying a fellow classmate… or does he? Big AND little lies are layered like pastry, and just as delectably exposed, in this audiobook narrated by Australian-born Caroline Lee.

Perfect for your road trip if: you like your stories as twisty as your backroad shortcuts . Time duration: 15 hours and 55 min.

Duma Key by Stephen King, narrated by John Slattery

When construction worker Edgar Freemantle relocates to Florida for some much-needed R&R, he never considers that what he finds there could be worse than the accident he’s just survived. But a combination of his brain injury, his rekindled obsession with artwork, and the strange supernatural properties of the land soon causes Freemantle to gain unimaginable powers… which he must use to stop a malevolent force arising in Duma Key. 

This recent Stephen King bestseller is narrated by John Slattery of Mad Men fame, who builds the lore of Freemantle’s psychic abilities and Duma Key’s disturbing history in an extremely tantalizing way.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re headed anywhere but Florida. Time duration: 21 hours. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, narrated by Davina Porter

Let’s take a turn for the steamy. If you have a penchant for romance and you’re driving alone (or with friends around whom you feel very comfortable), this audiobook may be perfect for you. Read by Audie Award winner Davina Porter, this version of Outlander paints a particularly, shall we say, evocative picture of eighteenth-century Scotland… and the strapping young men who live there. After nurse Claire Randall is transported two centuries back in time, she finds herself falling for (and falling into bed with) one such man, Jamie Fraser. But their romance is tested by more than time, as violence befalls Jamie’s clan and threatens Claire’s survival.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re driving through the rolling hills of Scotland (or perhaps have a paramour in the passenger seat). Time duration: 32 hours and 38 min. 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, narrated by Kate Rudd

This 2011 smash hit, penned by YA superstar John Green, is sure to bring tears to your eyes and new sense of perspective. Presented by Kate Rudd, who does a commendable job of capturing the sardonic narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster, The Fault in Our Stars follows Hazel (who has thyroid cancer) as she falls in irrevocable love with fellow teen cancer sufferer Augustus Waters (who has osteosarcoma). 

You can probably see where this one is going. Even so, don’t let the prospect of tragedy keep you from Green’s unique and honest story of first love under unusual circumstances, which Rudd renders with great sensitivity and care.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re in the mood to bawl at the unfairness of the world (and Green’s lovely prose). Time duration: 7 hours and 14 min. 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Continuing in a candid, coming-of-age vein, we have Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe , read by the inimitable Lin-Manuel Miranda. It traces the lives of two Mexican-American teenagers, Dante and Aristotle, whose easy alliance based on their names deepens into a bond that surprises both of them — transcending both geographical boundaries and society’s expectations. 

Miranda’s invested narration makes the eighties setting feel like present-day, and he switches seamlessly from infectious energy during light moments to weighty solemnity during serious ones, making the dramatic finale of Aristotle and Dante feel more than earned.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re tired of the Hamilton soundtrack, but still want to listen to Lin-Manuel Miranda weave a beautiful story for you. Time duration: 7 hours and 29 min. 

Heartburn by Nora Ephron, narrated by Meryl Streep

And if you adore the nuanced observational style of Woody Allen, but not so much the man himself, this is the audiobook for you. Largely ignored by critics when it was first released, Heartburn — an autobiographical novel about the real-life affair Ephron’s husband had during her second pregnancy — has become a sleeper hit for its sharp depiction of upper-middle class life, coupled with the raw, genuine emotion of heartbreak. Deftly narrated by Meryl Streep (who played Ephron’s character in the 1986 adaptation), this audiobook is a classic in the making, and will have you yelling righteously at Ephron’s husband for a good portion of your drive.

Perfect for your road trip if: you want to bask in misandry AND the unquestionable brilliance of Ephron and Streep. Time duration: 5 hours and 30 min. 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, narrated by Rebecca Lowman and Maxwell Caulfield

Another exceptional addition to the YA canon , Fangirl revolves around a Harry Potter -esque series called Simon Snow — and an obsessive devotee to the series called Cath. Our heroine has just started college and isn’t quite sure how to “adapt” from fangirl life to real life all on her own, especially in the wake of her mother’s death and the absence of her twin sister. Will she be able to escape the realm of the fictional and strike out on her own — while not forgetting who she truly is? This much-loved novel about the overpowering love of novels will resonate with fangirls and fanboys everywhere, and the sublimely balanced narration of Lowman and Maxwell elevates it to superfan-worthy status.

Perfect for your road trip if: you want a cute, fun story to carry you through to your destination. Time duration: 12 hours and 49 min.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by douglas adams, narrated by stephen fry.

Sure, your road trip probably isn’t going to take you outside of the galaxy (or, indeed, outside of the country), but wouldn’t it be nice to think so? Narrator extraordinaire Stephen Fry takes on Douglas Adams’ eclectic and eccentric cast of characters, from poor everyman Arthur Dent to depressed robot Marvin, with wicked glee in this adaptation. Just a quick warning: this audiobook might be too much fun for a mere road trip. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re always up for a totally unexpected futuristic adventure . Time duration: 5 hours and 51 min. 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton

In a select few cases, an audiobook can compete with the movie adaptation — and come out on top. This is the case with Ready Player One , which has an excellent premise (a boy named Wade Watts must venture through a virtual reality game in search for fortune in the year 2044) and brilliant execution. Wil Wheaton’s performance is also pretty extraordinary — not least because he’s a piece of eighties trivia in the novel himself. Don’t look elsewhere if you’re up for a dose of nostalgia mixed in with fun. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you already have an eighties playlist chock-full of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Madonna ready to go. Time duration: 15 hours and 40 min. 

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, narrated by Jennifer Wiltsie

Neal Stephenson might be more known for Snow Crash , but The Diamond Age is the one that makes this cut thanks to Jennifer Wiltsie’s brilliant narration. With stellar dramatic timing and an ear for the characters’ voices, Wiltsie does a fantastic job rendering a challenging book that would trip up a lesser narrator. In The Diamond Age , a young poor girl named Nell comes across a dangerously influential document in the future: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer , an interactive book that can teach a girl to think of herself. And thus begins Nell’s bildungsroman journey — one that will intertwine with the creator of the Primer himself.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re a fan of steampunk or rebellious young women — we personally enjoy both. Time duration: 18 hours and 32 min. 

The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien, narrated by Rob Inglis

Perfect for a short jaunt to the beach. Just kidding! The total audiobook series clocks in at a whopping 117 hours and 27 minutes , which is enough to occupy you if you were driving coast-to-coast across America — twice. 

Nevertheless, Rob Inglis’ narration is more than equal to the task of keeping you awake the entire time. He does justice to the sheer epic-ness of the main trilogy and plunges into The Hobbit with warmth. (Pro-tip: just remember to turn up all of your windows when Inglis vaults into the folksy songs of Lord of the Rings with gusto, or else you might find that you’ve got some explaining to do to your neighboring car-driver.)  

Perfect for your road trip if: you’ll be in the car for days on end (and said car is full of Tolkien fans — otherwise you’ll have a mutiny on your hands). Time duration: 117 hours and 27 min.  

The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercombie, narrated by Steven Pacey

If you’re impatient waiting for the next Game of Thrones book to come out (as are we), consider giving Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy a shot. Bloody, uncompromising, and undeniably epic, this audiobook series promises you 70+ hours of relentless action. Stephen Pacey’s narration adds another dimension to the writing: his many voices and accents bring out Abercrombie’s colorful characterizations, enhancing each different culture, background, and personality. Best of all is that the trilogy is miraculously complete — so there’s no need to wait nine years for the next installment!

Perfect for your road trip if: you wish you could watch Game of Thrones while driving. Time duration: 71 hours and 58 min. 

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, narrated by Philip Pullman

Sometimes marketed as Harry Potter for adults , His Dark Materials can actually be read (or listened to) by people of all ages. The story centers around one orphaned girl named Lyra Belacqua, who becomes caught in the middle of a vast political conspiracy involving “dust,” disappearing children, and great armored bears. 

So rest assured that the audiobook — narrated by a full cast, including Philip Pullman himself — will tease and test the limits of your imagination! And if you find that it tickles your fancy (and if your road trip takes longer than expected), there are two more books in the series for you to devour. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you’ve got a boring drive ahead of you and want to lose yourself in a completely different world. Time duration: 10 hours and 45 min. 

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, narrated by Neil Gaiman

It’s quite a unique experience listening to a creator narrating his own story, exactly how he had imagined it — and nobody does it better than the ever-visionary Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book features a young boy named Bod Owens whose family is killed. Naturally, he’s raised by ghosts in a graveyard: a precarious situation that will eventually make living and dead collide as Bod must fight to preserve those that he loves when he grows up. Gaiman digs into the narration with delicious fun, making the experience a delight to listen to. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re on a family jaunt, as adults and children alike will be entranced by Gaiman’s magical narration. Time duration: 8 hours and 24 min.

The Harry Potter series, narrated by Jim Dale or Stephen Fry

No list is complete without the most universally beloved fantasy series of all time . J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter , which is about a boy wizard and his battles against evil as he grows up at an English wizarding school, has cemented itself in readers’ hearts for more than two decades now — and you can bet that it’ll be magical company for you on your road trip, whether you’re re-visiting Harry or dropping in on him for the first time.

As for the audiobook, there’s a great war brewing between which narration is the more definitive — Jim Dale’s or Stephen Fry’s. Some stake that Jim Dale perfectly compliments Rowling’s whimsy, while others declare that Stephen Fry is the Ron to Rowling’s Harry. Suffice to say that both are masterful and that we’ll let you decide for yourself which narrator you prefer.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re due for a re-read, or want an utterly fantastical story to guide you on your journey (ideally to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park). Time duration: 118 hours and 57 min. 

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, narrated by Martin Jarvis

If you’ve been wondering what’s all the fuss behind Amazon Prime television adaptation of Good Omens , but just can’t find the time to sit down and devote yourself to a good binge session, this audiobook might be the answer to your prayers. In Good Omens , a mild-mannered angel and a brassy demon must retrieve the Antichrist, who’s conveniently disappeared, before the end of the world might actually becomes reality. Martin Jarvis’ reading is inspired, giving full voice to the bewitching combination of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Trust us, Armageddon's never been this fun before. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you love Biblical fanfiction and/or hilariously odd couples. Time duration: 12 hours and 32 min. 

Becoming by Michelle Obama, narrated by Michelle Obama

For a turn into the supremely inspirational, we have Michelle Obama’s bestselling memoir, Becoming . The book is divided into three sections: Becoming Me, Becoming Us, and Becoming More, all of which detail different periods of the author’s life. The first encompasses her Chicago upbringing, Ivy League education, and career beginnings as a lawyer; the second relays her relationship with Barack; and the third reveals all about their family’s life in the White House. Beautifully crafted and breathtakingly intimate, Becoming becomes even more wonderful with Obama’s own voice narrating the audiobook. In other words: Becoming lives up to the hype.

Perfect for your road trip if: motivational podcasts are your typical fare, and you want to up the ante even more. Time duration: 19 hours and 3 min. 

Educated by Tara Westover, narrated by Julia Whelan

The ultimate tale of overcoming adversity, Tara Westover’s memoir Educated also begins with her childhood — which was unconventional, to say the least. Westover’s father was a paranoid survivalist who wouldn’t allow his family to visit doctors, receive federal assistance, or attend school… meaning that Westover (now a world-renowned author) only had access to a handful of books growing up. But she studied independently and managed to get into BYU, then Cambridge, finally securing a fellowship at Harvard and a doctorate from Trinity College. Her odds-defying journey is charted with remarkable fluency in this audiobook, narrated by Julia Whelan — a TV star and fellow across-the-pond academic (having been a student at Oxford around the same time Westover was at Cambridge).

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re embarking on an ambitious college tour. Time duration: 12 hours and 10 min. 

Carsick by John Waters, narrated by John Waters

So, you’re a trailblazing filmmaker who rose to prominence in the eighties with cult classics like Cry-Baby , Hairspray , and Pink Flamingos . What are you going to do next? Go hitchhiking across the United States, obviously — but before you do that, come up with the wildest possible scenarios, both extraordinarily fortuitous and treacherously bad, to include in the record of your travels. 

The result of this undertaking, John Waters’ Carsick , is a gloriously madcap collection that’s two parts fiction, one part unbelievable fact. With an audiobook narrated by the man, the myth, the legend himself, you’ll learn more about Waters and how his mind works than you will from watching any of his idiosyncratic films (and that’s saying something).

Perfect for your road trip if: you want to share the road with a famous screenwriter who understands your plight better than most. Time duration: 8 hours and 8 min.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, narrated by David Sedaris

One of Sedaris’ funniest essay collections, Me Talk Pretty One Day covers Sedaris’ experiences from elementary school to an infamous move to France. You can read the most popular piece in the collection (“Me Talk Pretty One Day”) here , but do yourself a favor and get the audiobook, because — spoiler alert! — it’s even better. (As it turns out, David Sedaris the narrator is a fine match for David Sedaris the author.) His own narration picks up nuances in the text that you wouldn’t notice, doubling the laughter quotient and confirming once again Sedaris’ status as a master of comedy.

Perfect for your road trip if: you want to cringe-laugh all the way to your destination. Time duration: 5 hours and 51 min.  

Yes Please by Amy Poehler, narrated by Amy Poehler

On the female comic side of things, there’s Amy Poehler’s enthusiastically titled memoir — and as one might expect from its uproarious author, the contents of her book follow suit. Yes Please recounts everything in Poehler’s life up to 2014, from her days at SNL to her experimentation with drugs to the aftermath of her divorce with Will Arnett. (Yes, please, we’re still sad about that one.) Throughout it all, Poehler retains her signature upbeat wit, never dwelling on the past or wallowing in what went wrong — but perpetually projecting gratitude, happiness, and hope for what comes next.

Perfect for your road trip if: you ever need a Leslie Knope-flavored pick-me-up. Time duration: 7 hours and 31 min. 

Bossypants by Tina Fey, narrated by Tina Fey

Bringing up the other half of our favorite modern comedy duo, meet Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants . Her writerly prowess, honed through years as SNL’s head writer and subsequently on 30 Rock , shines through clearly here: Fey is acerbic and unflinchingly honest about the not-so-glamorous aspects of her life. Highlights of Bossypants include chapters on her early improv experiences, the impossible standards for women in show business, and how horrible it is to lose weight — but all delivered with sharp, scintillating humor.

If that weren’t enough, her comedic timing in the audiobook is (obviously) second to none, netting her an Audie Award for Best Audiobook of the Year and a legit Grammy nomination. (Want to sample the magic? Here’s a clip of Fey narrating a bit about her childhood.)

Perfect for your road trip if: you’d like hours of LOLs at the hands (and voice) of one of the best writers and entertainers of the twenty-first century. Time duration: 5 hours and 30 min.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, narrated by Trevor Noah

Here’s another famous comedian who wants to spend time with you in your car. Host of The Daily Show , Trevor Noah published a memoir to universal acclaim in 2016. His story is extraordinary and primarily focuses on Noah’s formative years, growing up in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. And, lest we forget that Noah is today a world-famous comedian, this audiobook reminds us in spades! A born impersonator, Noah can mimic pretty much every single accent and voice in the world — making Born a Crime ’s reading that much more buoyant and enjoyable during a road trip. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re intrigued by Noah’s verbally chameleonic abilities and his personal history. Time duration: 8 hours and 44 min. 

NON-FICTION

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, narrated by Richard Matthews

Written by international treasure Bill Bryson, author of A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island , A Short History of Nearly Everything is the ultimate book for history buffs. A self-professed non-expert, Bryson consults with the world’s top authorities, from archaeologists to mathematicians, to put together a definitive manual on science for us laymen.

The audiobook is similarly engrossing, as you might expect. Richard Matthews takes on the conversational, friendly tone of the book, so that the audiobook’s feel is that of a friend wittily explaining the world to you. If you’re casting around for an audiobook that will turn your journey into A Short Road Trip With Not Nearly Enough Time To Finish This Nonfiction Book, this is it. 

Perfect for your road trip if: your goal is to become an interesting dinner companion by the end of the trip. Time duration: 18 hours and 13 min. 

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman, narrated by Raymond Todd

From the mind of Nobel Prize-winning physicist comes this collection of unexpectedly colorful anecdotes — not just about science, but about everything that intrigued the titular Mr. Feynman throughout his life. These topics include, but are not limited to: Feynman’s safe-cracking “hobby,” his love of samba music and Brazilian culture as a whole, and his slight case of nerves before presenting the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in front of, you know, Albert Einstein. The audiobook, thanks to Raymond Todd’s evocative narration, paints a picture of a man who was so much more than his career — and impacted countless lives in myriad ways.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’re tickled by the idea of a physicist making you laugh. Time duration: 11 hours and 31 min.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, narrated by by Aziz Ansari

Nonfiction audiobooks comprise a tricky territory, as it’s easy for them to end up being dry events: straightforward recitals of the words on the page. Luckily, that’s far from the case Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance , which is a deep dive into the state of (you guessed it) modern romance, from dating apps to emojis in Tokyo. What’s more, it contains Ansari’s reliable humor, so that you can laugh while you learn and listen. Unsurprisingly, Ansari is a gifted performer — keeping the text lively and adding just the right hint of self-awareness to his narration. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you’d like to reel off interesting facts about 21st-century romance on your next date.  Time duration: 6 hours and 14 min. 

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe, narrated by Wil Wheaton

Randall Munroe of xkcd fame and Wil Wheaton of, well, being-an-eighties-icon fame team up for this marvelously ponderous audiobook that answers all the questions you ever had (or never even thought of) re: science, the universe, and everything. For instance: what would happen to us in the event of a robot apocalypse? If cows could photosynthesize, how much food would they need? And the question on everyone’s mind: could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person’s blood? Equal parts silly and scientific, this audiobook is sure to be a hit with erstwhile fans of Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. 

Perfect for your road trip if: you want some random hypotheticals with which to entertain your Airbnb hosts. Time duration: 6 hours and 35 min.

Devil in the White City: a Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larsson, narrated by Scott Brick

Living up to the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Devil in the White City recounts the astounding true story of an architect and a murderer in Chicago in the 1890s. Our architect, Daniel H. Burnham, is the man who needed to construct a world-famous exposition in the space of 18 months. In every other chapter, we meet the murderer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes — America’s first serial killer who built an actual torture palace just miles away.

Suffice to say that the audiobook is just as gripping, as the ever-gifted Scott Brick walks you through this creepy but undeniably fascinating part of the past. Needless to say, it’ll keep you on the edge of your driver’s seat — especially if you’re road-tripping through the Windy City.  

Perfect for your road trip if: you loved Chicago , but wanted more murder. Time duration: 14 hours and 58 min. 

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, narrated by James Clear

Now we’re getting into the actual motivational stuff — and what excellent stuff it is! In this book and self-narrated audiobook, James Clear draws on various fields of science and psychology to determine exactly why old habits die hard, and what practical steps we can take to rewrite them. This is no cobbled-together collection of clickbaity tips, but thoroughly researched, scientifically sound, detailed information on how to change your life for the better. And with Clear’s confident yet not overtly self-promotional voice guiding you through it, you’ll feel like you really can build some of his suggested atomic habits… as soon as you get out of the car.

Perfect for your road trip if: you’ve just hit traffic and want to take back control of your life! Time duration: 5 hours and 35 min.

The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, narrated by Mel Robbins

This fantastically inspiring audiobook from Mel Robbins (no relation to Tony) will have you itching to put her counsel to good use. Robbins will show you how, in just five seconds, you can push yourself to reach potential you never thought possible… and improve your mental health, personal relationships, professional standing, and more! Author and narrator uses her own experiences to bolster her advice, which comes in sharp snippets that are so easy to absorb, this guide really will go by in (what feels like) a mere five seconds.

Perfect for your road trip if: being able to accomplish something (like drive across multiple states) in five seconds or less sounds like a dream right about now. Time duration: 7 hours and 35 min.

Want even more audiobooks? Check out our posts on the best fantasy audiobooks and best sci-fi audiobooks . Or learn how to find free audiobooks in our guide the the 20 Best Places to Find Free Books online (check out the last three!)

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10 Best Road Books

Mary Miller's wonderful debut novel The Last Days of California is a Rapture-inspired cross-country road trip from the eyes of a teenager. If you're driving anywhere this summer, make sure to bring a copy along.

This is what I like most about road books: people on the run. While many of these books involve narrators who are having an existential crisis (usually involving the disaffection with a 40-hour workweek and/or a romantic relationship), my favorite are those of a more serious nature—e.g. ‘I just killed my lover and need to get out of town ASAP.’ So, a warning: most of these books are on the darker side. And I’m sorry that there are only two women on this list. In my defense, women who write about the road don’t seem to do it as often in book form. My very favorite road trip stories—Amy Hempel’s “Jesus Is Waiting,” “The Ugliest Pilgrim” by Doris Betts, and O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”—are short stories and can’t be included here, but please seek them out and read them. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

1. 501 Minutes to Christ by Poe Ballantine

I had difficulty choosing between this one and Things I Like about America , which is equally excellent. Both are collections of essays about Ballantine’s experiences as he moves around the country in search of the ideal American town, a place where he can write and stay sober and meet the dark-haired, book-loving girl of his dreams. Not surprisingly, the towns he arbitrarily selects are full of threadbare rooms and people who love nothing more than their television sets. Suitcases fall on his head from the overhead bins of buses; he eats packaged food and tries to avoid prostitutes. Ballantine does his best to live an authentic life—the fact that he comes up short, every time, does nothing to make his search any less affecting.

2. The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin

I love all of Vlautin’s novels and this slim one is my favorite. The Motel Life (greatest title ever?) begins with a hit-and-run accident that keeps brothers Frank and Jerry Lee on the move—staying in cheap motels, drinking themselves halfway to death. I’ve read this novel three or four times and it makes for a great afternoon even though I’m disappointed in everyone at the end, every time.

3. Cruddy by Lynda Barry

A few days after getting busted for dropping two hits of acid found in a friend’s shoe, sixteen-year-old Robert Rohbeson begins to write her memoir: Once upon a cruddy time on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe… The cruddy girl named Roberta was writing the cruddy book of her cruddy life and the name of the book was called Cruddy. The story she ends up penning isn’t about her teenage escapades with her friends, though, it’s about the cross-country murder spree that she took with her father five years earlier. Cruddy is chockfull of sociopathic characters, but the writing undercuts the ugliness with its charm. And there are pictures, too, and a map with a key to indicate, among other things, Saggy Underwear Man’s House , Dead People We Left Behind, and All The Places Where We Got High .

4. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson isn’t thought of as a “serious writer,” whatever that means. I imagine it’s because he makes so much money. I grew up reading Stephen King, though, and literary snobbery was never my bag. I love this book (I’m also a fan of A Walk in the Woods , in which Bryson sort-of hikes the Appalachian Trail). I like seeing small-town America through Bryson’s eyes, and learning about history all over again.

5. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

It took me a long time to get through The Road , a post-apocalyptic journey of a father and son pushing a shopping cart south, through the deserted and charred landscape, to escape the cold. I love McCarthy’s sentences but can’t read too many of them at once. After a few pages, I simply stop understanding the meaning of words. I black out, basically. But on the sentence level—on the paragraph level—he really astounds me. This book is dark and enormously repetitive, but it’s also beautiful. An ex-boyfriend used to read this book to me at night before we went to sleep. I could follow along better when he read it, but he broke up with me around page 100 and I had to finish it on my own; it nearly broke me, which seemed exactly right.

6. Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Please indulge me here: I’m wild about L. Frank Baum. As far as I understand, Baum never intended to write fourteen books about Oz but he was broke and needed the money. After the sixth installment, “Emerald City of Oz,” he shut the land of Oz off completely and then had to find a way around the barrier he’d erected. They aren’t books I would have like as a child but I seek them out now when I’m in need of a happy ending. There’s comfort in knowing that the characters will escape unharmed: they’ll cross the deadly desert safely; when they’re hungry, trees full of ripe fruit will appear. In The Lost Princess of Oz , Ozma is stolen from her bedchamber and a search party sets out across the land to take on Ugu, an angry shoemaker-turned-magician.

7. The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield

This 1989 novel published by Knopf is currently out of print. I found a copy at a used bookstore and it may be my best blind purchase ever. The book begins with our narrator, a brilliant and psychopathic eight-year-old named Phillip, traveling in the backseat of his mother’s car: “No matter where we went we seemed to be where we had been before. We were more than a family, Mom and I. We were a quality of landscape. We were the map’s name rather than some encoded or strategic position on it. We were like an MX missile, always moving but always exactly where we were supposed to be.” Even when Phillip and his mother come to rest, they don’t stay that way for long.

8. Son of a Gun : A Memoir by Justin St. Germain

Nine days after the towers fall, twenty-year-old St. Germain is told that his mother has been shot and killed, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, Ray, who has taken the pickup and left town. Years later, having made a new life for himself in California but ultimately unable to move on, St. Germain journeys back to the scene of the crime—Tombstone, Arizona—where he confronts the people and places of his past.

9. Fay by Larry Brown

Brown, a Mississippi native and firefighter turned full-time writer, wrote about fishing, beer drinking, and dirt roads without falling prey to the Southern clichés I dislike so much (mama and cornbread and cotton fields as stand-ins for substantive character development). In this novel, a beautiful but naïve teenage girl leaves behind a family trauma in the hills of North Mississippi and hitchhikes south to the Gulf Coast. A state trooper named Sam picks her up and brings her home to his wife, where things go well, for a while.

10 . Nine Months by Paula Bomer

In this novel, Bomer explores the question of whether a woman can have it all (and angers many female readers in the process). Sonia, relieved to find that mothering was getting easier as her sons gained independence, planned to reclaim the artistic ambitions she’d held before they were born. But her dreams are shattered when she finds herself pregnant with a third child. Ruling out an abortion, Sonia attempts to reconcile the impending birth with her feelings of frustration, but the lure of escape proves too strong. Withdrawing the family’s savings, she sets out on a wild and very pregnant cross-country road trip. I read Nine Months on an airplane and it kept me thoroughly oblivious to the usual armrest struggles and the ceremonious unwrapping of smelly sandwiches, which is, of course, the height of praise.

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Things To Do | Book uses fictional road trip to discuss…

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Things To Do

Things to do | book uses fictional road trip to discuss michigan’s racial divide.

Miles and miles of miles and miles provide time and space to reflect, refresh and review, as well as opportunities to confront new experiences and new people.

For writers, road trips have long been a useful device.

From the westward Dust Bowl migration of “The Grapes of Wrath” to John Steinbeck rolling across America with his pet poodle in “Travels with Charley,” the road has beckoned storytellers.

Now comes Roger Mourad Jr., an Ann Arbor resident raised in Grosse Pointe. With a grown son in Chicago (and another in New York), he is fully familiar with the trek across I-94.

The ribbon of highway from Detroit’s East Side to the Windy City provides the setting for “two older dudes” and their emotional evolution in “Road Trip to the Future.” The novel tells an offbeat, often amusing, “on the road” story of two men who reconnect to search for a missing mutual friend.

En route, Mourad said, the men debate “racial politics and related social issues,” while experiencing “comedic, bizarre and colorful characters and mishaps.”

For Mourad, the Michigan backdrop, with mentions of Macomb County, taps childhood memories of racial disparities between Detroit and Grosse Pointe. From that starting point, he said, the novel “challenges assumptions about what it means to live in a just society.”

“As a kid, it seemed there was a binary divide,” with Alter Road separating the Pointes from Detroit, said Mourad.

“Nobody talked about it, except obliquely. We didn’t talk about it, but it was palpable.”

Still, growing up Catholic and attending the Star of the Sea Catholic School, Mourad said he learned much from a priest whose “from the heart” sermons addressed social conscience and discrimination.

A 1976 of Grosse Pointe North High School, Mourad’s familiarity with Detroit and Michigan is prominent in “Road Trip,” as his two characters make their way west in, fittingly, an old, “clunky” Pontiac LeMans that had been garage-kept.

“It’s meant to have a certain irony,” he said. “LeMans is an endurance race, after all.”

The book is Mourad’s first novel, but not his first published work. A lawyer with four degrees from the University of Michigan, he has been widely published internationally in professional journals from Great Britain and South Africa to Australia. Much of his written work flowed from his experience as director of Institutional Research for Washtenaw Community College and other schools.

And, he said, his novel was influenced by his education in philosophy, as well as his appreciation for French historian Michel Foucault, whose work examined liberty, knowledge, authority, racial prejudice and social structure.

In “Road Trip to the Future,” Mourad said, societal questions that surfaced in his youth are addressed.

“I carried that into my adulthood,” he said, adding that while the idea for the book percolated for years, he began working on it in 2011.

“I wrote it because I really felt compelled to write it.”

“Road Trip” is available in paperback for $14.99 from Amazon.

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8 Stops To Complete the Ultimate Colorado Road Trip Itinerary

Kenneth teape | 14 hours ago.

Colorado has a lot to offer adventures who plan out a trip to visit. A lot of people love winter activities available with mountains galore. 

But, there are plenty of things to enjoy during other seasons of the year. Here is the perfect eight-stop itinerary to see everything that Colorado has to offer, starting in Denver is ideal for a late summer or early fall trip.

This trip was suggested by Alex on thepicturesquepassport on Instagram .

Silverthorne

Silverthorne is home to just over 4,400 people and is the first stop to make on the trip because of the gorgeous view of the sunset that is offered off Highway 9. In the heart of Summit County, incredible outdoor adventure can be had here and there is ever-expanding arts and culture in the area.

Vail/Piney Lake

Piney River Ranch is the perfect spot for anyone who has an itch to get into the water. Canoeing, kayaking and fishing are all popular here in addition to the hiking trails that are offered. Gore Creek in Vail can provide the famished with a nice lunch to refuel.

Glenwood Springs/Hanging Lake

Hanging Lake requires permits to explore, so make sure you plan ahead for this portion of the trip. Hiking the entire Hanging Lake Trail will take over two hours, so certainly prepare accordingly.

If you cannot make it there, Glenwood Springs offers endless exploration opportunities.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

One must-see stop on this part of the trip is the Painted Wall, which is best at sunset. It is worth making this an overnight stay, as it is labeled a dark sky reserve, meaning you can see the stars clearly.

Crested Butte

Wildflower Trails are the most popular in this area. West Elk Loop Scenic and Historic Byway are a nice getaway and provide downhill skiing and mountain biking trails crisscross the Crested Butte Mountain Resort.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Anyone who owns a pet will love Great Sand Dunes National Park as it is one of the only pet-friendly parks in the United States. Medano Creek has great tundra wildlife and trout fishing to partake in as well.

Buena Vista/Salida

Whitewater rafting can be done by people who enjoy the water and a soak in the hot springs can help rejuvenate you after. Anyone looking for a hiking excursion can view some breathtaking peaks.

Garden of the Gods

A massive public park, over 1,340 acres in size is located in Colorado Springs. There are plenty of spots to grab a bite to eat before ending your trip and heading back home. 21 miles of trails are available for exploring.

The visitor and nature center provides a cafe and exhibits for anyone looking to recharge before hitting a trail.

KENNETH TEAPE

Kenneth Teape is an alumnus of SUNY Old Westbury and graduated in 2013 with an Honors Degree in Media Communications with a focus on print journalism. During his time at Old Westbury, he worked for the school newspaper and several online publications, such as Knicks Now, the official website of the New York Knicks, and a self-made website with fellow students, Gotham City Sports News. Kenneth has also been a site expert at Empire Writes Back, Musket Fire, and Lake Show Life within the FanSided Network. He was a contributor to HoopsHabit, with work featured on Bleacher Report and Yardbarker. In addition to his work here, he is a reporter for both NBA Analysis Network and NFL Analysis Network, as well as a writer and editor for Packers Coverage. You can follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @teapester725, or reach him via email at [email protected].

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Scenic Michigan route ranks among top 5 fall road trips in Midwest

If you're looking to get away and check out some natural wonders this fall, Michigan offers some great sights.

A new ranking from The Points Guy , a travel company, features five top destinations across the midwestern U.S. for fall road trips, and Michigan made it on the list. West Michigan's forested fall colors and sandy beaches provide a relaxing escape from the day-to-day routine, just a few hours outside metro Detroit.

Here's a look at some of the top scenic road trips to consider across the Midwest.

West Michigan shoreline

The scenic route along 1-196 and U.S. 31 runs along Lake Michigan. You can start at the St. Joseph Benton Harbor area and drive north to Mackinaw City, passing through several west Michigan beach towns.

Consider checking out top destinations along the way, from South Haven's 12 beaches to Saugatuck's bustling art and dining scene to Holland's tulips and Dutch windmills. Farther north, the Tunnel of Trees boasts around 20 miles of fall colors between Cross Village and Harbor Springs.

More: Here's when Michigan's fall colors are predicted to peak

Minnesota's Mississippi headwaters

Minnesota offers a variety of natural wonders to explore. In Itasca State Park, the state's oldest state park, lie the 18-foot-wide headwaters of the Mississippi River. The park includes walking paths and tubing along the river and for a higher view, you can climb the fire tower to enjoy the area's natural beauty.

Ohio's Hocking Hills

The Hocking Hills State Park's Hocking Hills Scenic Byway offers views of waterfalls, caves, foliage and bluffs in Ohio. Check out the scenic route with a weekend shuttle or, for the more adventurous, take a zipline tour over the area.

Iowa's Great River Road

From Lake Macbride State Park, this route will take you to Great River Road northward along the Mississippi River. Stopping at Eagle Point Park will give you a scenic view overlooking the river at its widest point from a stone lookout tower.

More: Michigan cider mill, apple orchard season begins: Find 1 near you on our list

Brown County, Indiana

A visit to Brown County State Park will take you through colorful forests, good for a day trip of weekend stay. For a bird's-eye view, head to Bean Blossom Overlook and Hesitation Point. For some city scenes, driving just over an hour south will take you to Nashville, Indiana, bustling with food, boutiques, concerts and movies.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: West Michigan ranks among top US spots for fall road trip

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10 myths about campervan travel debunked: the reality of road trips in New Zealand

Ever wondered what it’s like to book a campervan hire and hit the road to explore New Zealand? If you’ve never experienced campervan travel before, you might have a few concerns, and that's understandable. From worries about driving and parking to questions about comfort, there are plenty of myths that can make the idea of driving a campervan in New Zealand adventure seem daunting. Let’s dive in and debunk some of the most common misconceptions, so you can feel confident hitting the road in a camper or motorhome. 

Myth 1: Campervan travel is only for the young and adventurous

One common misconception is that campervan travel is only suited to the young or those with a thirst for adventure. People often picture it as roughing it, tackling difficult roads, and living minimally – ideal for backpackers or thrill-seekers. 

In reality, campervan travel in NZ is for everyone. Modern campervans and motorhomes cater to a wide range of travellers, from families with young children to couples and older adventurers. Apollo campervans come equipped with all the conveniences you need for a comfortable journey, including cosy sleeping areas, functional kitchens, and even spacious bathrooms in some models. It’s a flexible, comfortable way to explore at your own pace, without sacrificing the comforts of home, making it an ideal choice for all ages. 

Myth 2: Campervan hire is expensive

There’s a common belief that campervan hire is only for those with a big budget, but that’s not really the case. Sure, there’s the cost of renting the camper or motorhome, and you’ll need to factor in fuel and campsite fees – but when you break it down, it can actually be a very affordable way to travel. 

With a campervan, you combine your accommodation and transport in one, cutting out expensive hotels and rental cars. Plus, you can cook your own meals instead of constantly eating out, which saves a lot. Freedom camping also lets you stay in designated spots around the country without paying a cent. And here’s the best part: some of the most unforgettable moments you’ll have on a New Zealand road trip are completely free. There’s nothing quite like discovering hidden gems, waking up to a stunning sunrise, or simply enjoying the flexibility of exploring at your own pace.  

Apollo also offers great budget-friendly models and long-term hire specials , so if you’re planning a longer adventure, it’s even more cost-effective. When you add in the freedom to be spontaneous – staying longer in places you love or exploring off-the-beaten-path spots – campervan travel really gives you incredible value for money. 

Myth 3: Campervans are difficult to drive and park

Many first-time travellers often ask, ‘is it hard to drive a campervan in NZ ?’ The good news is, modern campervans are designed to be user-friendly and easy to drive. Most models drive just like a regular car, with automatic transmission, making it easy for anyone to get comfortable behind the wheel. Most of Apollo’s campervans also come equipped with reversing cameras and parking sensors, helping you park with confidence. While driving a campervan in New Zealand does take a bit of getting used to, with some practice and a little extra care in tight spaces, you’ll find that it’s far less intimidating than it sounds. 

Myth 4: Campervan travel is uncomfortable and inconvenient

Some people assume campervan travel means giving up comfort and convenience, thinking it involves cramped spaces, basic facilities, and rough conditions. 

The good news is, modern campervans and motorhomes are equipped with a wide range of amenities designed for comfort. Many models offer cosy beds, fully functional kitchen facilities, and even private bathrooms, allowing you to cook, sleep, and relax with ease. With a campervan hire, you get the unique advantage of staying in stunning, remote locations while still enjoying the convenience of your own space. Whether you're travelling with family or as a couple, you can experience the best of New Zealand without compromising on comfort. 

Myth 5: You have to stay in caravan parks

It’s a common misconception that campervan travel in NZ ties you to caravan parks. Many travellers think they’ll need to book into formal campsites every night, limiting their options. 

In truth, if you’re travelling in a self-contained campervan or motorhome, you have much more flexibility. New Zealand offers a range of overnight options, including scenic DOC campsites and freedom camping in designated spots. These allow you to stay in some of the country’s most beautiful and remote locations. Apollo’s motorhomes and campers are designed to make the most of this freedom, giving you the flexibility to enjoy everything from remote beaches to lakeside spots.  

READ MORE: Where can you park your campervan in New Zealand?  

Myth 6: Campervan travel is only for long trips

Some people assume campervan travel is only worth it for extended holidays, where travellers spend weeks or even months on the road. This may lead you to think that a campervan hire isn’t worth it for shorter trips. 

The truth is, campervan travel is incredibly flexible and works just as well for a weekend escape as it does for a longer adventure. Whether you’re planning a quick getaway or a full week on the road, hiring a camper gives you the freedom to explore at your own pace. To give you the chance to make the most of your time and really immerse yourself in your New Zealand road trip, Apollo’s campervan hires come with a minimum five-day rental period. But you’re free to book for shorter trips if you prefer – you’ll just pay for a minimum of five days.  

Myth 7: Campervans are bad for the environment

A common concern for travellers is that campervan travel may have a negative impact on the environment, from fuel emissions to waste disposal. 

In reality, eco-friendly options are becoming more accessible in campervan hire. Apollo offers smaller, fuel-efficient campervans, and electric models are starting to emerge as well. Travellers can also minimise their environmental footprint by staying at eco-conscious campsites that promote sustainable practices. Responsible travel plays a key role in reducing environmental impact, such as using designated waste disposal facilities and limiting resource use. We also encourage all travellers to embrace New Zealand’s Tiaki Promise , which promotes care for the environment, leaving it in good condition for future generations. 

Myth 8: Campervan travel is lonely and isolating

Some people worry that campervan travel means long stretches of isolation, with little opportunity to connect with others. The idea of spending days alone on the road can feel daunting to first-time travellers. 

In reality, campervan travel is far from lonely. Travellers often meet others at campsites, caravan parks, and popular stopovers. There’s a strong community of campervan enthusiasts in New Zealand, making it easy to strike up conversations and share experiences along the way. Whether you’re swapping travel tips, gathering around a campfire, or simply enjoying a chat at a rest stop, the road is full of opportunities to connect with like-minded people. Many travellers find that these shared moments are some of the best parts of their New Zealand road trip. 

Myth 9: Campervans are unsafe

There’s a common belief that campervans may be unsafe, whether it’s due to concerns about driving such a large vehicle or staying overnight in unfamiliar places. 

In reality, modern campervans are equipped with the latest safety features, including airbags, ABS brakes, and secure locking systems. These features help ensure a safe and smooth driving experience.  

For extra peace of mind, staying in holiday parks offers a safe and secure environment with other travellers around. To stay safe on the road, follow New Zealand road rules , choose well-lit and approved overnight spots, and always lock your camper when parked. With a little awareness, campervan travel is a safe and enjoyable experience. 

Myth 10: Campervan travel is limited to summer

Many believe that campervan travel is only enjoyable during the summer when the weather is warm and sunny. 

However, campervan travel can be enjoyed year-round in New Zealand. Apollo motorhomes are equipped for winter road trips, with cosy sleeping areas and optional extras like small fan heaters to keep you warm during the cooler months. Winter trips offer a different kind of magic – fewer crowds, incredible landscapes, and the freedom to explore with more flexibility. Whether you’re chasing snowy mountain views or simply enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of an off-season trip, a well-equipped campervan ensures comfort, no matter the weather. 

READ MORE: Tops tips for winter a campervan adventure in New Zealand  

Ready to explore New Zealand in a campervan?

There’s no better way to experience the beauty and freedom of a New Zealand road trip than by hitting the road in a comfortable, modern campervan. Whether you’re planning a quick getaway or an extended holiday, Apollo has the perfect campervan hire to suit your needs.  

With all the myths debunked, now’s the time to embrace the open road, explore the sights, and make unforgettable memories along the way. Book your Apollo camper today and discover the magic of a motorhome road trip! 

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The best things to see and do on a West Coast road trip

Cycle through history and nature on the West Coast Wilderness Trail while enjoying the best road trip stops along the way. Photo / Eleanor Hughes

The perfect spot for both a road trip and a bike ride , as long as you have some sort of wheels, the West Coast is an ideal summer getaway, writes Eleanor Hughes

A desire to cycle the West Coast Wilderness Trail and see never explored Karamea, morphed into a road trip from Auckland. With my mountain bike in the back of my Kia Rio and plans to hire an e-bike for my travelling, we crossed the Cook Strait at midday. Follow in our tracks as we make the most of a West Coast road trip.

READ MORE: Road trips in New Zealand through Gisborne and State Highway 35

Picton to St Arnaud – 128km, 1.5 hours

Stop over at the alpine village of St Arnaud where Lake Rotoiti, encircled by bush-covered mountains, is idyllic. Water taxi from Kerr Bay across its 7.5km length to Lakehead and return on the flat Lakehead Track. Black-trunked beech trees and verdant ferns provide shade with continuous lake views and shingle beaches to enjoy.

For panoramas over St Arnaud, Lake Rotoiti and forever green ranges, climb St Arnaud Range Track through beech forest to Parachute Rocks, at 1400m. A heart-pounding, steep, rocky trail to the 1650m range rewards with a scenic plateau dotted with small lakes and jutting, zigzagging ranges beyond.

St Arnaud to Ross – 350km, 4.5 hours

Heading for Ross, we detour to Hokitika Gorge . Viewed from a flat trail, flowing between narrow, greyish-white rock banks, Hokitika River’s turquoise hue is astonishing.

Tiny Ross began the West Coast’s gold-mining journey. Through bush and about town, the Water Race Walkway encompasses buildings and mining relics from the 1860s gold rush days.

West Coast Wilderness Trail – 4 days

Drive from Ross to Hokitika (29km, 22 minutes) and shuttle back with a cycling company to Treetop Walkway to begin the bike ride.

West Coast Wilderness grade 2/3 cycle trail takes riders from Ross to Greymouth through West Coast’s past. With Totara Rail Bridge’s recent closure, avoid cycling SH6 from Ross and begin a 115km journey from Treetop Walkway. Twenty metres above ground, amid giant rimu and miro treetops it overlooks fern canopies with Southern Alps and Lake Mahinapau peeks, accompanied by birdsong. Cycle historic, forested Mahinapau Tramway Walk, used by sawmilling bogeys with relics and an 1885 sawmilling site trailside.

Close to Hokitika, Scenic Waterways’ sunset cruise along canal-like Mahinapau Creek provides picturesque reflections of flax and kahikatea trees lining its blackish water. Spot kingfisher, heron, cormorant and swallows.

Explore Hokitika’s wide streets and heritage buildings of the gold-rush port around the river mouth. The hues of pounamu can be seen in stores and at Glowworm Dell, rock walls sparkle at night.

Back cycling, wooden Kaniere Waterway flowing with water and draped by verdant bush is delightful. Pounamu tinges Arahura River green; Kumara Reservoir’s shore, littered with barren tree trunks and stumps, is strangely beautiful.

Wander through the past in the late 1800′s gold mining town of Kumara, historic buildings on its main street dominated by the two-storeyed, 1876 Theatre Royal Hotel and cycle to Greymouth on the fourth day. Shuttle back to Hokitika and drive the car back to Greymouth, 37km, 28 minutes each way.

Greymouth to Brunner Mine – 13km, 13 minutes

Reaching Greymouth, drive to Brunner Mine, a Tohu Whenua (landmarks that tell our stories) site and where NZ’s worst industrial accident, an 1896 explosion that killed 65 coalminers. Brunner Walk is a moving experience, with historical information among the site’s remains.

Greymouth to Westport – 102km, 1.5 hours

Kawatiri Coastal Trail, currently links Westport to Virgin Flat Road, running alongside Buller River, Carters Beach, to Cape Foulwind Walkway and its lighthouse, and Cape Foulwind Seal Colony where seals camouflage on rocks. Riding horseshoe-shaped Tauranga Bay leads to Nine Mile Beach then farmland and stunning, verdant native bush overlooking tannin-stained, white sand-bottomed Ōkari River.

Denniston is another Tohu Whenua site. The plateau, where numerous coalmining settlements stood from 1878, can be toured independently; information panels relate history, family stories and daily life. But live it through Westport-based OutWest’s tour, from the steep, incline railway, wagons, workshops, mine shafts, coal seams, aerial ropeway, to settlement remains; hotels, homes, bathhouses, tennis courts, and swimming pool.

OutWest also tour working, open-cast Stockton Mine. See coal transported via aerial ropeway buckets for loading on to trains and the mine’s “nerve centre”, monitoring the 23km-squared site. Driving the pitted, stark landscape you’ll learn the history, coalmining process and witness the land’s rehabilitation.

Westport to Karamea – 95km, 1.5 hours

During the drive north, take in Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks and Blowholes or walk Charming Creek Walkway, near Seddonville to explore more mining relics.

Karamea offers jaw-dropping scenery. At SH67′s Nikau palm-lined northern end, 17km from Karamea, embark on a stunning, predominantly flat, return walk on the Heaphy Track to Katipo Shelter. Paralleling the rocky coastline, enjoy tannin-stained Kohaihai River, Scotts Beach and towering Nikau palms.

Six kilometres from Karamea, take a torch to access stalactite-laden Tunnel Cave, a thoroughfare on the Fenian Caves Loop in The Fenian. Icicle-like stalactites hang from Miners Cave mouth. Between caves, the trail traverses lush, damp, moss-draped forest. Continue on wide, moss-covered Fenian Track below towering beech, to grassy Adams Flat where a replica miner’s hut sports rusted tools and a deer skull.

Take a day trip to Ōparara Basin, 28km from Karamea and a 1.5hour drive. It’s the location of Honeycomb Hill Cave which is only accessible with a tour. The high-ceilinged cave littered with stalagmites and stalactites is the resting place of bush moa, deer and kiwi bones, giant Powelliphanta snail shells, and fossilised seashells. Water droplets glitter on cave walls; glow worms form a starry sky on rock walls.

Nearby, white limestone Moria Gate Arch, 46m wide and 8m high, crossing whisky-coloured Ōparara River can be seen from a viewpoint but it’s more spectacular standing below the arch. More expansive, Ōparara Arch, among bush, resembles a stone bridge, but the river’s hues are the highlight; hokey pokey, blazing orange, dark rum.

Karamea to Reefton – 174km, 2.5 hours

Reefton, a goldmining town from 1870 to 1950, is movie set-like with 24 late-1800s buildings, its main street lined with tall, black streetlamps and historic wooden stores, hotels and banks. Pan for gold at the replica-1860s miner’s hut, where bearded “miners” share gold-mining stories. Walks and mountain bike tracks of varying grades incorporate mining relics within Victoria Forest Park.

Reefton to Ōtira – 135km, 1hr 45m

Leave the West Coast via Arthur’s Pass, SH73. Drop in, or stay, at the 1865-built Ōtira Stagecoach Hotel crammed with antiques, curios and historical photos. Rooms are delightfully furnished with period pieces including porcelain painted toilets and handbasins.

Ōtira to Arthur’s Pass Village – 13km, 14 minutes

Ōtira Viaduct will astound and before Arthur’s Pass Village, walk Dobson Nature Walk. Alpine vegetation blooms over summer, among majestic mountain ranges.

From the village, rocky Arthur’s Pass Walking Track undulates through beech forest, with some steep stairs. Bridal Veil Falls, viewing the village nestled at the base of mountains and historic Jack’s Hut are highlights. Branch off to cross Bealey River thundering down narrow Bealey Chasm and continue on Bealey Valley Track. Boardwalk crosses orange-tinged tussock, with stunning mountain vistas, to reach Bealey River backdropped by a snow-splattered ridge. Stairs challenge on Devil’s Punchbowl Falls Walk but reward with views of whitewater veiling icicle-like waterfalls behind.

Wander the quaint village of historic cottages, lodges and stores.

Arthur’s Pass Village, central Christchurch bound – 149km, 2hr 20m

Cutting between steep, bush-covered ranges or scree-covered in hues of grey, pink, red, and green, panoramas encompass Bealey and Waimakariri Rivers and Lake Pearson. Breathtaking.

westcoast.co.nz

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The Ultimate Packing Guide for a Road Trip to Orlando

admin September 23, 2024 Guides & Tips , Orlando

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What to Pack on an Orlando Road Trip & Why it Matters

Planning a family road trip to Orlando? You're in for quite a treat! Before you hit the road, let's talk about what to pack for an Orlando road trip to make the most of your vacation. Sure, you'll pack the usual stuff - clothes, toiletries, and everyday essentials. But, Central Florida has its own quirks, and being unprepared could put a damper on your fun.

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After you've booked from these exceptional discount vacation packages , you'll then want to explore some tips to help you make the most of your visit. The area has its own unique peculiarities, and being prepared can turn a good trip into a great one. Let's make sure your family has the car packed with everything they need to enjoy every moment in this beautiful part of Florida.

• Refillable water bottles. Many theme parks and other public spaces around Orlando provide free water stations. Stay hydrated and save money by having refillable water bottles for the whole family.
• Portable phone chargers. Nobody enjoys having a dead cell phone, but the predicament is made all the more frustrating when you need it to navigate directions, your digital wallet, or locate your park admission at one of Orlando's theme parks. Keep a portable phone charger on hand to ensure a smoother trip altogether.
• Waterproof phone cases. Whether you're riding a water ride at Magic Kingdom or cooling off in the hotel pool, your family is sure to spend a portion of your Orlando vacation around water. Be prepared with waterproof phone cases for each member of the family.
• Cooling towels. Florida heat can be intense, especially in mid-June to mid-September when the heat index regularly rises above 100 degrees. Cooling towels are inexpensive and can provide quick relief from the heat and humidity.
• Compact rain ponchos. It may be the Sunshine State, but Florida is notorious for its predictable afternoon showers. Be prepared with lightweight ponchos for everyone, and avoid paying unnecessarily high prices at a theme park gift shop.

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Additional Items

You'll survive in Orlando with the basics listed above. But, you're not planning an epic family vacation to "the happiest place on earth" to merely survive. You want to thrive! So, plan on bringing some extra not-quite essentials to make your family's road trip even more epic.

• Small travel fan. Few places on the planet know humidity like Florida. And no one likes being miserably hot all day, especially while waiting in long lines at the theme parks. Beat the heat with a small travel fan or portable fan.
• Reusable straws. Many local spaces (including several spots at the Disney World resorts) provide paper straws only, so if anyone in your family is averse to that experience, you'll want to have reusable straws on hand. These are inexpensive and easy to pack, so you may consider them an "extra" with packing.
• Sand toys. If you plan to visit beaches near Orlando like Cocoa Beach or New Smyrna Beach, packing a few inexpensive sand toys can turn a beach visit into hours of entertainment (for your kids) and relaxation (for you) without having to purchase expensive beach accessories after you arrive.
• Binoculars. You know about Florida's land and sea beauty, but look up, and you'll see even more beauty in her sky. The state is home to more than 500 bird species, has regular space launches from the Kennedy Space Center on Florida's east coast, and is the lightning capital of the world. Take full advantage of all of that by having a pair of binoculars your family can share while you're there.
• Autograph book and pens. Your kids are sure to want a souvenir from their family vacation in Orlando . What better way for them to get that than through interactions with the beloved characters at the iconic Disney World theme parks? By spending less than you would on most gift shop items, you can give your children a fun, personalized keepsake they'll treasure for years.

The Ultimate Packing Guide

Extra Clothes (you'll sweat a lot!)

Portable Phone Chargers

iPads or Tablets and Chargers

Wallet (include driver's license, cash, and credit cards)

Gift Cards (almost every restaurant chain can be found in Orlando)

Personal Care Items

Headphones or Earbuds

Books for the Drive

Swimsuits and Towels

Snacks for the Whole Family

Flip-Flops or Sandals

Walkable Shoes

Light Jackets (if visiting during cooler months)

Stroller or Baby Carrier (if applicable)

Water Toys and Goggles

Insect Repellant

Hand Sanitizer

Cooling Towels

Compact Rain Ponchos

Refillable Water Bottles

Autograph Books and Pens

Small Travel Fan

Reusable Straws

With this comprehensive road trip packing checklist, your family is all set for an unforgettable Orlando adventure. From essential gear to beat the Florida heat to fun extras that'll make your trip truly special, you're now prepared for whatever the Sunshine State throws your way. Remember, a well-planned trip is the first step to creating lasting family memories.

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Frequently Asked Questions

The best times to visit Orlando are during the spring (March-May) and fall (September-November) seasons. Sure, your kids may have to miss a few days of school, but they won't mind! Besides, these times offer milder weather, fewer crowds, and better prices on accommodations, making it both easier and more affordable for your family to enjoy their vacation.

A weeklong stay can be ideal for families who want to experience the many things to do in Orlando . This timeframe will enable your family to explore the major theme parks, enjoy local attractions, and even take a day trip to one of Florida's world-famous beaches without feeling rushed. If visiting for a shorter time, decide as a family the one theme park, destination, or experience you are most eager to experience and plan your trip accordingly.

The Orlando area offers a wide variety of clean, safe, and affordable accommodations for your family. For those seeking convenience and a more immersive experience, consider staying at one of the beautiful Westgate Resorts in Orlando that offer close proximity to the major attractions and a plentiful amount of amenities and activities.

As an alternative to high prices and long lines, consider visiting the Orlando Science Center or exploring the nature trails at Wekiwa Springs State Park. Both options provide fun and educational experiences for the family at a fraction of the cost of theme parks. You will also be exposed to Florida's natural beauty in ways not as easily found in the high-tourism hot spots. Realistically, there is endless things to do in Orlando besides theme parks and the major attractions.

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