I remember the Sunday drive where I fell asleep in the back seat in Minneapolis and woke up that evening in Chicago. I was three or four years old at the time, but I knew where we were immediately because we had been there many times before and the street signs were different.
Back in those days, there was no I-90/I-94, so I must have been really, really tired to sleep through a drive across Wisconsin.
Yes indeed. The Parental Hooks were very big on this.
The other Sunday tradition was stopping at the donut shop after church for a late and sugary breakfast.
The drives were limited to the warmer parts of the year but we did the donut thing a couple of times a month, maybe a little less.
I was born in 1947.
You’re one of those people who seems to define LA broadly as “anything south of Bakersfield.” Driving out to Hemet? That would only take forever. Lake Arrowhead? That’s only 90 mi outside of the city. Driving to La Brea Tar Pits (which are actually in the city) would be doable, but there’d be traffic getting there. And I don’t think you’re allowed to drive on the SM Pier. If you were, I’m sure the traffic would be terrible like it is in all of Santa Monica.
It wasn’t post-church, per se, but just a Sunday drive. Some were interesting. Quite a few were just random drives thru uninteresting sticks. But even those were a lot better than a Sunday afternoon spent at a semi-relative’s place. Classic old people smell turned up to 11 and nothing for kids to do but sit.
Some positive highlights: A Native American carving a totem pole, people harvesting hops, the actual scenic areas near us.
Thanks to the OP. Hadn’t thought about those drives in years.
Never happened in my family. Sundays were church, dinner, go home where the parents would read the paper/take a nap, and I’d sit around bored all afternoon with nothing to do until 6 or so when Star Trek reruns started. On a really bad week my parents would randomly decide to go to the evening church service, which started at 7, so I wouldn’t even get to watch more than a few minutes of Star Trek thanks to having to get ready then leave before it was done.
My first job was in a supermarket and I always got a kick out of some of the church crowd who’d pick up a few groceries after church and then tell me how I shouldn’t be working on Sunday. :smack:
LA is anything south of Bakersfield. 
How far something is depends on where you start, yas? And LA is vast.
With the possible exception of Hemet (I only knew one friend there, so it wasn’t high on the list) and Big Bear (too far for a short trip), I have driven to all of those places on nothing more than a lark. Hey, I was young, fancy-free, and had a convertible sports car. Sometimes a GF would say, “Hey, let’s go somewhere,” so we did.
Traffic? Not much at 2AM. Bars close, we party. Got a jump on the Sunday crowd.
As far as the Santa Monica Pier, we walked on it, but drove to get there.
Growing up in the Dakotas in the 1960s, probably not after church so much (that’s Sunday dinner time), but sometime in late afternoon. My parents would drive around looking at the neighbors’ farms and crops, or stop in for a quick visit with the cousins, perhaps even stop at Dairy Queen or A&W (get a gallon jug and take it home!)
I always think of On the Road to Abilene, a classic management-training video (just watch the first minute). Bored and hot and nothing else to do…
I recall being hauled in a van with a bunch of other kids to Sunday School at a church. The only reason I still recall it though was because of the time that a door was unlocked and a kid fell out; we had to turn around and pick up the kid who was all bloody. That’s my only memory of those rides, and its main effect has been to instill a reflex to always make sure the car door is locked, and to always wear my seat belt. It left an impression.
My parents and I did a lot of Sunday drives. After Mom died in '99, Dad and I went SOMEwhere about every other Sunday. Sometimes it was a zoo or aquarium, sometimes a state park- Brown County or Land Between the Lakes were great in the fall.
He passed away in 2005, and I miss those long drives with him beyond belief.
Oddly enough while I’ve been to plenty of church and taken some aimless rides, I’ve never done the latter after the former. When I was living in Upstate NY we took rides occasionally but we didnt go to church often. In Florida we went to church often but I don’t remember taking aimless rides with my family. I’ve done it a couple times myself in FL, but I don’t go to church when I’m alone.
I remember, and I hated them once I was twelve or so. Four kids packed into the back seat while we just drove around and that was considered enjoyable?
And we still use the term “Sunday driver”, or “just out for a ride” in describing slow cars even though my thirty year old daughter has never been on a Sunday drive in her life.
One drive I did enjoy, though, was when my mom or dad would want to drive around and look at Christmas lights. That one I liked.
I moved to another state when I finished college.
My aunt decided I needed looking after and had her brother (no actual relation) who lived in the same town contact me.
They invited me along for one of their after church Sunday Drives. Loretta drove because Lester could no longer see well enough.
Loretta drove 35-40 mph maximum. Even on the interstate. Thank god the the speed limit was 55 back then.
Several times Lester would point something out, and Loretta would just stop 'till he finished. Right in the middle of the two-lane highway. Fortunately this did not happen on the interstate. Loretta also believed in stopping on on-ramps to wait for traffic.
They did show me some little-know petraglyphs. Loretta pulled onto the wrong side of the road and stopped so we could see them better. Loretta had some great stories about growing up on a ranch in central New Mexico during the Depression/dust bowl. She drove slower when she was telling them.
It was terrifying. After the one drive I was always busy on Sundays, even when I wasn’t. I did go over and play cards a few times.
We did it often, through the winding country roads of central and western Maryland, usually culminating in an ice cream parlor somewhere. Parents, grandparents, kids enjoying the scenery and seeing places that we hadn’t seen before, beating gums and never far enough from home that we had to hurry.
I still like doing this. I never seem to get bored as long as I’ve got new asphalt in front of me.
Asphalt? You don’t need no stinkin’ asphalt! Get yourself on a dirt road! 
I don’t remember ever going out for an aimless drive. When we took our bicycles to the trails, that would better fit the idea of the ‘Sunday’ drive.
Ah… that depends on how you define aimless! What would seem random and aimless to us today seemed much more logical back then.
You see, the aim wasn’t to get somewhere…the aim was to go somewhere.
Anywhere.
Around 1950-1955 many (most?) Americans were buying the first car anybody in their family had ever owned. The simple act of driving was new and interesting. The sense of freedom was exciting. Stopping for ice cream at a place that was not within your regular neighborhood was an exotic experience–almost like going to a foreign country. (well, I exagerate, but only a little)
And the whole feeling, combining the proudly-bought new car with the whole family sitting together inside— was a new thing, too . Sort of what today we would call “quality time”.
It was a worthy aim…even if the method was a little weird.
And it took a decade or so before people realized that it was a pretty silly activity.
[whine]“Oh, Dad, not again…”[/whine]
Some combination of aunts & uncles,grandparents and we would head for the Catskills. My father’s technique was “I’ve never been on that road before, wonder where it goes?” Picnic when we could find a roadside place where the landowner didn’t chase us off. Family dynamics changed in '50, so it happened less.
I remember our Sunday afternoon drives very fondly. It was always after Sunday dinner (noontime meal). I grew up in a small town in Mississippi (Laurel, MS) and almost all of the area was farmed or was pasture for livestock. I can still remember our drives out to the big lake east of town. It was beautiful there.
The fields were either filled with rows and rows of vegetables or with cotton. This was in the '60s and early '70s. There was an old farm right past the lake that had a spring fed well with the best water I’ve ever tasted… It had an old iron hand pump that you had to use to get the water going. Best.water.ever!!
I remember one Sunday trip out to the lake that ended badly. The sheriff’s department had set up a road block so that you couldn’t drive by the lake. We found out later that a black family had gone to the lake to try to swim and the local KKK had shown up with their guns to threaten them. I believe their guns were fired but no one was hurt. We went straight home after that. I later heard my Mom and Dad talking about it. The sheriff had made the black family leave the lake and told them they couldn’t come back. No charges made against the KKK assholes for firing their guns and threatening a family… and that’s how it was in the '60s in the South.
Which reminds me of a story my Mother told me. I was only a baby so I don’t remember… One afternoon in the early '60s, a car with four men pulled up in front of our house. We were playing out in the front yard at the time. When my Mother saw who it was, she yelled at us to go inside the house. My Dad walked out to the the curb to talk to them while she watched from the window. He only spoke to them for a couple of minutes and then they drove slowly away. When he came inside he told her that it was Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard himself. He and his KKK buddies were out “recruiting” new members. My Dad worked with one of the guys in the car and he told them where we lived. Their theory was if you’re white in the South, you have to hate black people… My Dad told them he was NOT interested. For awhile there, my parents were nervous since they were known to make bad things happen if you refused to join the KKK when “invited”.
Sorry for the slight hijack, OP.