We used to go for drives in the country. As a little kid what I enjoyed was when Dad took us fast over the top of a hill, and you got that rollercoaster light feeling. Good times.
I threw up nearly every trip and they never left me at home. Mom just made sure she had a good supply of plastic bags in the car.
Despite that I kind of enjoyed the trips some of the time. Put me off blueberry pancakes for years though.
We didn’t go to church, but Dad liked to pile us in the car for a drive on weekends. I fucking hated it. He always went driving in the desert east of San Diego, and I saw little to love about scrub and rocks. Also, as the youngest child, I had to sit in the middle of the back seat between my brothers and endure their “humor.” I still hate the desert, and I still hate driving.
Dad always used to take my sister and me for a “Sunday treat,” which was a trip to the local Dairy Queen (before they got all franchised and corporate) for a 25¢ ice cream cone. Or if we were feeling adventurous, we could opt for a 25¢ “pig in a poke” – a grab bag with some candy and trinkets in it.
Then we’d go for a drive to look at…stuff. It was aimless and very enjoyable.
I remember Sunday drives very fondly. We would often go over the hills to Littleton harbour and see the big cargo ships. There was often ice cream involved too.
Even today, I still enjoy just ‘going for a drive’ and my husband and I do it from time to time. We have some of our best conversations during those drives. 
I was born in Baltimore in 1954, and my family took Sunday drives. After church we would stop at Woodlea Bakery for dinner rolls and a few loaves of fresh bread. Then we’d go home for breakfast before heading out for our Sunday drive.
Our drives usually involved two-lane country roads through horse farms to the north of Baltimore. A favorite stop was Berg’s Dairy, where we could see cows up close, watch them being milked if our timing was right, and have some ice cream or a milk shake.
After church and lunch on Sundays the folks would pile all five of us kids in the car and go for a drive and/or to visit relatives that lived in exotic places such as Roanoke, Rock Mills and/or Standing Rock, Alabama (often we did the Roanoke/Rock Mills/Standing Rock Trifecta!) or Franklin, Georgia. Sometimes we even went to visit cousins in Goodwater, Alabama. The Goodwater trip involved a picnic because it was a longer drive. Best of all was a stop at the DQ for dipped ice cream cones when we got back to town.
I remember once we were going for a Sunday drive and ended up at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee/Georgia. Mom had packed suitcases and put them in the trunk unbeknownst to us kids. That was my first visit to Rock City. I’d always seen barns with “See Rock City” painted on the roofs and finally I was given the chance to behold the splendor. 
We got to go to the Newsstand shop at the other end of town. Dad would get the Sunday NYT & the Ledger and if we were really good, we could split a pack of twizzlers.
But Og Help You if you Ever said you wanted to try getting some gum. 
My Dad had been stationed in Hawaii during the war. Back home in Indiana, we’d go for rides on Sundays which ended up with us sitting in front of a lake for an hour or so, with him silently reminiscing until my sisters and I got too bored for our mother to control.
Sunday drives? In LA, driving is not relaxing. It’s a stress-inducing shit storm that you don’t do with your family for recreation unless your idea of recreating is screaming at the moron in front of you who didn’t turn left on the yellow light.
Musta been a town/city thing. Or at least it didn’t exist in my rural area. I was familiar with it from TV/movies, but I don’t know anyone on my road that did it.
See Rock City.
World’s most massive advertising campaign if there ever was one.
Luckily the guys in charge of that probably died before the internet came into being.
Fat man’s squeeze was kinda fun.
We didn’t go for a ride every Sunday but often enough.
For a while the after church Sunday routine was stopping at Dunkin Donuts. Then when the first McDonalds was built we went there instead. There was no indoor seating so we’d eat in the car while taking the drive.
The Sunday (or maybe just weekend) drive seems to still be pretty common among classic car owners.
My family used to do this in the 90s, but not after church, because we rarely went there when I was growing up. I didn’t really enjoy it except on days when it was kind of sunny and the warmth and the motion would make it easy to nap in the back seat.
“Sunday driver” is still a fairly common term of derision in the UK, to describe the sort of person (usually elderly, almost invariably wearing a hat) who pootles around at 25mph on a Sunday, clearly not going anywhere in particular but still with no idea how to get there.
I thought a Sunday drive was apocryphal, myself.
Then again, I never attended church either.
We did the Sunday drive too, at least in the days when we were still going to church. Even after we stopped going, we often did it. But West Texas looked all pretty much depressingly the same. I think we generally just went to neighboring towns, all of them looking like the movie set for The Last Picture Show.
I still do it, there are several rural dirt roads with big farms and estates that I like to drive. Yeah gas is expensive but you don’t have to go far.
Stress-reducing locations in LA that you might have overlooked: Rim of the World Highway; Lake Arrowhead; Big Bear; Angeles National Forest, Mulholland Drive, Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, Topanga Canyon, La Brea Tar Pits, Palm Springs, Hemet, Malibu Creek State Park…