The answer to today’s question feels obvious: car 🚗
Not because flying doesn’t have advantages. It absolutely does. If the goal is to maximize time at the destination, planes win every time. You leave in the morning and, if all goes well, you’re eating lunch somewhere far from home before your suitcase has fully cooled down.
But a cross-country trip feels different. If the journey matters at all, the car wins because the trip itself becomes part of the experience.
A train sounds romantic until reality shows up. Years ago, my stepdad generously offered to pay for my former wife and me to take the train from Atlanta to West Palm Beach for his mother’s funeral. It sounded thoughtful and elegant until we looked at the schedule. The train would have gotten us there roughly half an hour after the funeral ended. Then we’d have practically turned around, boarded again, and spent days reversing the process back to Atlanta — all while paying an amount of money that made no earthly sense. So much for the charm of rail travel.
A bus is technically more practical, but only in the same way a waiting room is technically a vacation destination. It’s cheaper, yes, but you’re in a confined space for hours with people who are every bit as tired, cramped, and unhappy as you are. Nobody boards a long-distance bus looking like they’re headed toward joy.
And then there’s bike. We should probably clarify terms here. If we mean motorcycle, I’m out. I’ve never had much desire to trust my life to two wheels and traffic moving seventy miles an hour. If we mean bicycle, that sounds wonderfully noble until you remember that just riding from Jacksonville to Tallahassee takes around eighteen hours before you even stop for food, water, or the kind of regret that would set in around hour six.
So yes, planes are excellent if the destination is the priority.
But if the trip itself matters, give me a car.
A car lets you stop when something catches your eye. A roadside diner. A weird little antique store. A scenic overlook. A town you’ve never heard of with one excellent restaurant and a gas station that still looks like 1974.
Some of my favorite trips in life weren’t defined by where I ended up, but by what happened along the way — the conversations, the detours, the little discoveries you never would have planned.
A plane gets you there.
A car lets you find things between here and there.
And sometimes, those are the parts you remember most.
Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
