You can probably think of many excellent American traditions. However, none hold quite the place of honor that a summer road trip does. If you take your family with you on your next excursion, that’s even better.

In this article, we’ll talk about the summer road trip. It’s something every family should try at least once.

A Few Words of Caution

Before we start extolling the American summer road trip’s virtues, some words of caution. Make sure you get a trustworthy mechanic to give your vehicle a look before you get out on the road. A mechanical issue that comes up when you’re hundreds or thousands of miles from home means you and your family won’t enjoy yourselves nearly as much.

When you know you’ve got your vehicle in the best condition, you can avoid accidents while heading to a fun vacation state like Florida or California. Florida sees 3,454 fatal car wrecks yearly, and you can keep from becoming a statistic by getting that all-important tune-up before starting your adventure.

You Can Spend Quality Time Away from Your Smartphones

Now, on to some reasons why the summer road trip remains such a hallowed tradition for American families. For one thing, families in the modern era may live together, but often, they don’t spend as much time together as they should.

If you have a spouse or a significant other with whom you live, maybe you both work outside the home. You may get to a point where you’re like ships passing in the night. Reconnecting becomes difficult when you have so many responsibilities, and you stay so busy.

It’s the same with your kids. Once they become at least a bit self-reliant, they’re often at school or at an extracurricular event like baseball, or a band recital, or swimming lessons. If not, maybe they’re spending time with friends. Even when you’re all together, perhaps you’re all on your smartphones playing the latest popular game like Candy Crush or Pokémon Go.

If you all take a road trip together, you can reconnect. For the sake of the trip, maybe you’ll ban all smartphone use. Instead, you can really enjoy each other’s company and talk. You can catch each other up on your lives. At home, you might never get this chance.

You Can See Parts of the Country and Meet Individuals You’ve Never Visited Before

You can also spend time seeing parts of the country that you have never visited before. These days, it sometimes seems like there is more division in America than ever. That’s hard to overcome when you don’t know the many different kinds of people and the natural wonders that this land has to offer.

If you take a road trip, you can check out different cities and states you know very little about. That’s even more true if you take a trip that encompasses several states and takes you far from home.

You can see different people living their lives in ways that don’t closely resemble yours. You can hear their different accents, see them wearing clothing representing other sports teams, and talk to them about unfamiliar subjects.

That might seem alienating at first, but you’ll also learn that you’re all Americans, and you’ll always have that in common. That one unifying factor might let you see this country differently and change your mind about whether we can all get along and live harmoniously.

You Can Let Everyone Get a Chance to Do Something They Like

When you take the great American road trip, you can also circle things on a map that you’d like to do. Everyone in the family can do that. Assuming you have kids old enough to have their own feelings about what’s fun, you can let them each pick an activity. You can take turns figuring out what stops you’d like to make on the way to your destination.

If one of you likes fried chicken and another likes sushi, you can switch up picking restaurants where you’ll eat. If one of you likes museums and another likes nature walks, you can target places where you can enjoy those activities.

You can do the same thing once you get to your destination. When each person has a say in what you’ll see and experience, everyone should enjoy the trip more. That’s a way you can get your kids started on the path to adulthood. Becoming an adult means picking what you want to do, and it’s never too early to implant that idea in a child’s head.

You Can Spend Time at Fun and Silly Roadside Attractions

You might also take some time to do fun, silly things that you can’t do at home. Attractions like museums or national parks will always entice a certain crowd, but what about the roadside oddities and tourist traps that you’ll find in remote parts of the country? They’re ridiculous, but you probably can’t think of better places to take some pictures and make some memories.

Whether you’re spending some time at a miniature golf course with a dinosaur theme or you’re visiting the world’s largest ball of yarn, you and your family will probably get the giggles when you pose among the props and hear the stories behind them. Americana might seem cheesy, but it’s also enjoyable. Why not live it up while you still have younger kids who can appreciate it?

In short, the American road trip gives you and the whole family a chance to check in with each other to see how everyone’s doing. You can bond in ways that you might neglect while you’re at home and pressures from school or work dominate your daily lives.

When you look back years later and smile at the many pictures and videos you took, you’ll realize you had a lot of fun on these trips. They’re your chance to enjoy your time as a family before the kids leave the nest.