Why Don't Americans Road Trip Anymore?

Howdy, it's Kyle. Talking about road tripping and specifically why it isn't as popular of an activity as it used to be for Americans. Hopping in your car and driving across the country is an American time-honored tradition that people used to do with much greater frequency. And in the past 10-15 years or so of me road tripping, I've seen fewer and fewer people on the road doing this. Fewer and fewer families and just fewer people talking about wanting to go on a road trip. So here I want to talk about why that might be. And road tripping is why I've learned so much about the country. I gained a lot of info from the ivory tower in geography at college but I learned so much more from traveling and road tripping and visiting some of these places that I wouldn't have seen if I flew over it or just you know just didn't visit at all. So let's talk about road tripping in the U.S. and why it's something I always encourage people to do. All of the images I'll be showing here are ones I took myself while on road trips. I want to talk about the two reasons most people cite when talking about why people don't do much road tripping anymore. High gas prices and the economy. But I'll debunk those pretty easily. One, gas prices were actually higher between 2005 and 2014 if you adjust for inflation. And even back in the 90s when absolute gas prices were low, adjusted for inflation, they were still about what they are today. But people did a lot more road tripping back then. And in terms of overall economic situation, tourism is up, theme park attendance is up, hotel stays are up, Airbnb stays are up, international travel is up. And because road tripping isn't necessarily more expensive than those other types of vacations, I can't see the economy as being why road tripping is less popular now than it used to be. And even though the title of this video is going to be something like why don't people road trip anymore, I don't really know the answer. I think it has more to do with just people don't think about it or really are as interested in it. And even though I had studied the U.S. and read maps all through my growing up as a kid, it wasn't until I went on my first big cross-country road trip in 1998 that I really learned a lot about the country. For me to have seen so many photos of these places and seen videos of some of these national parks and cities to finally get there and walk around and see it for myself, it was such a wonderful experience and it continues to be that way to this day. I was just on a road trip last month and I saw things I had never seen before in my previous 25-30 road trips or so. But it isn't just about seeing the most highly visited spots, the national parks, the biggest cities, the tourist traps, but also some of the off-the-beaten-path areas off some of the side roads that most people don't ever get to see. And when you get to some of these small towns or some of these areas that are off the beaten path, you can see how these places might be without outside influences of tourists. And you can often see some of the same gorgeous scenery at state parks without the huge crowds at some of the national parks. And it's just great to go into some of these off-the-beaten-path areas, walk into some local mom and pop diner or cafe and just try the local food. And if you want to see a lot of beautiful scenery but you're not much of a walker, there are plenty of places in the U.S. where you don't have to go very far or you can park your car and walk far less than a mile and still see plenty of beautiful scenery. Or you think about some of the more mundane type experiences that where you live you take for granted but might be something really foreign to people that are not from that part of the country. So for me, one of the first big shocks was just feeling high humidity for the first time. Or if you're from the eastern half of the U.S., I'm sure your first time in the western half of the U.S. in the desert probably felt a lot different when it actually got kind of chilly at night even during the summer. I'll never forget my first severe thunderstorm. We were in Oklahoma and it was pretty crazy. It was scary. We didn't have those out west. And I think one of the greatest shocks for people from either the west coast or the east coast is to feel the ocean temperature of the other one. If you're from one of the coasts, I'm sure you've heard a bunch of times that the other ocean is much warmer or much colder than the one you're used to. And yet it still doesn't change the shock when you first touch that water. And for me it was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So it's just the warm water and the humidity and all the accents. It was just such a very different place and such a really cool thing to see as a Californian being on the opposite end of the country. And I would like to think it'd be the same for people from the east going to the west and seeing these huge mountains and these canyons and deserts. If you're from the west and you go back east, you see all the lush greenery, some swamps and wetlands. But say you're from a big city or a small town and seeing the exact opposite can also be a mind opener. Or even something like our first trip to Detroit. We drove around all throughout the city including some of the most burned out parts of town. Some of the things you always heard about but just never got to see because we don't really have that on the west coast. You don't have that rust belt type of abandonment in the west. So seeing it in person was shocking. But it wasn't just all culture shock. It was also going to other parts of the country and seeing that maybe other than the climate and the accent it's pretty similar to where we're from. But we were able to feel like we were almost at home in places like Abilene, Texas, Lawton, Oklahoma and Grand Island, Nebraska. And with this country being so divided by the media, by politics, I think it's really important now more than ever to see more parts of the country and see what other areas are like that might not be just like yours. A good example is a YouTube channel. I'm not going to call out specifically but you might know it. But it started several years ago. They would travel around the U.S. and it was very political. It was just about saying all the problems are because of Mitch Pelosi blah blah blah. But through the years they've traveled way more outside their region and have seen much more of the country and shocking surprise the channel is much less political now. They see things for how they are not because of red and blue and Donald Biden kind of stuff. And I think it would be great if every American could visit a place that they love that voted for the other guy and see a place that they hate that voted for the same guy they voted for. One thing I've noticed as fewer and fewer people road trip and see as much of the country as they can, more and more people have really strong opinions about those places they haven't seen. And I really do think road tripping and seeing a lot more of the country is a good cure for this hyper partisanship. So now I want to ask you guys, Americans and Canadians specifically, is road tripping across the country something you're interested in doing? Because again with tourism as a whole being up, theme park attendance being up, and road tripping going down, people are still wanting to travel but people are wanting less and less to do it by road Now I know not everybody has a car and has the ability to go on a road trip but that was the case 20-30 years ago as well. And also I want to hear from people that haven't gone road tripping that want to, what are some of the things you would like to see the most? So I want to end by saying I encourage people to go on a road trip to see as much of the country as you can. Just hopping in a car and just driving far in one direction from your house you'll see all kinds of things you haven't seen before. And maybe you'll be like me you'll go on one road trip and then catch the bug and you can't wait to go back out on another one. If you enjoyed this video please give me a thumbs up to let me know you approve and subscribe to this channel if you're interested in learning more about geography from a nerd. But yeah, thanks for watching. Geography King signing out. I want to give a special thanks to my superior patrons for their support. If you're interested in supporting the channel you can check out my Patreon page. The link is in the description. And as always, thank you very much.