I do, if I can get out when I know I can have the open road mostly to myself, so this is more often in the early morning. I love driving through the countryside, and although I live in CA and there are millions of people here, there is still a lot of open space.
My parents would do this in farm country, in the days before car seats and even air conditioning, as a way to cool down on a hot Sunday afternoon. Ostensibly it was to check out the condition of the neighbor’s crops (“Look like Irv got his corn in straight rows this year for once”), but seemed to always include some snooping statements, like “I wonder who’s white car that is in their driveway?”. I think my parents picked up on us commenting on the snooping and gossiping and stopped doing the drives.
wed do this occasionally in Indiana and ca and stop for ice cream or a shake somewhere…but then mom couldn’t drive and I cant drive …so I go for a walk and wander around questionably safe neighborhoods …
Wife and I took a Saturday drive yesterday, drove around Hood Canal and some of the Olympic Peninsula. It was part of the state I had never seen even though I have lived in the Seattle-Tacoma area all my life. It was a pleasant way to kill a day.
An earlier thread on the subject.
My family did one or two a year, but always with a specific destination in mind.
A fair bit but in the interest of full disclosure I do it on a motorcycle.
My Sunday drive this past weekend was from Fort Bragg down the coast to Guerneville with stops at the Pt Arena Lighthouse and Fort Ross. The smoke haze was pretty bad but it was still a nice drive.
When I lived in Hood River, I used to go on this Sunday Drive periodically. But I was always on my bicycle, so maybe it doesn’t count. OTOH, its name didn’t change no matter what vehicle I was using.
I live in a beautiful part of the country, of course we spend as much time out in it as we can. Sunday drives are part of that - often along roads like this or this or, recently, this place (not my photos, but all views I’ve enjoyed this year)
Back when I was a youngster and had just passed my driving test, driving for pleasure was a thing, but that’s all gone now. Driving is a way of getting to a place. Cars are less exciting than broccoli.
Not every Sunday, or necessarily on a Sunday, but I do enjoy driving in the country.
i rarely drive just to drive around, unless i’m with some friends and we got something rolled up and some new tunes / albums to bump in the stereo. I do like driving though, and if gas / car maintenance was cheaper, i’d drive a looooot more. sundays i’m usually free, so i like to go somewhere, the movies, restaurant, skate park, maybe even visit some friends who live far away - spend the night or something.
I feel like when I was younger and lived by myself, I would be more inclined to hop in the car on Sunday and just drive around for a couple hours exploring or just inventing random destinations to check out. But then from age 28 to 40 I didn’t own a car at all and I’m not going to rent one just to drive randomly.
Now that I have a family (and a car), we do take a lot of “day trips” or “weekend trips” to visit family, go to my family’s beach house off Long Island, and other various family activities. Typically the drive is anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours.
It actually appears to be a routine “thing” in my apartment complex. Every Friday the front of the building is full of cars packing up to head off to wherever it is people are going for the weekend (typically the Jersey Shore, Hamptons, Fire Island, Poconos, Upstate NY, wherever), the rest of the weekend is quiet, then Sunday the lots full of cars returning.
Before my dad died in 2005, he and I went on Sunday drives regularly, sometimes with no destination in mind, sometime somewhere in particular like Land Between the Lakes. I haven’t done that since he’s been gone and I miss it. It was so relaxing, and we always had the best conversations.
Sunday drives were a regular thing in my family when I was growing up in the 1960s. I hated, hated, HATED them. It meant being stuck in the backseat with my two siblings for hours on a day that I would have preferred to spend at home doing kid things.
There was usually no particular destination involved—nothing that involved getting out of the car, anyway. Typically we’d be driving someplace that my parents wanted to see, such as a new suburban housing development. My parents always had vague notions of moving to a different part of the city, so there were many, many hours spent exploring places with names like “Riverbend Meadows” that didn’t have rivers or meadows. To add insult to injury, my mom would be smoking nonstop during the drive and we’d have all the windows rolled up and the A/C on. This finally ended when my parents got divorced.
Now, I’d never take a drive with no specific destination.
I grew up taking Sunday drives. Lived on a farm and after the chores were done and lunch was over we’d pile in the car. Mainly we drove around looking at what the neighbors were doing. This was back in the 60’s. Nowadays I consider my Sunday drives as the side trips I take when actually going somewhere. I build at least 2 hours into my trip so I can go where ever the road takes me.
Hey blondebear if you like getting out for that kind of country scenery around the Bay Area and points north, you might enjoy checking out these videos and blogs with some spectacular still photos (taken from those videos I guess). Includes views of Pt. Reyes among other scenery:
(No, that isn’t me in any of those videos or pics, but a guy that I know.)
http://yanetz.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-22611-bay-tour-soaring-flight-with.htmlhttp://yanetz.blogspot.com/2012/01/bay-tour-sequel.html(BTW, I think you can click on most of those still pics to embiggen them.)
This reminds me of an old Mad Magazine cartoon that’s probably lost to the ages. But, did you see what the neighbors were doing, or was no one home because they were all out trying to look at what their neighbors were doing, too? 
Occasionally, and not necessarily on Sunday. Now with GPS I think it’s fun to just go where I feel like and use the GPS to get me out if I get too lost.
Weekend RIDES on the motorcylce, yep, getting lost is the best thing. Discovering that small town diner or local dive that is actually only 60 miles or so from your house is awesome.
During the week, my occasional secret indulgence is a top down drive in my convertible through the city in the wee hours. If I wake up at 2 or 3 AM for some reason, I’ll just go for a drive and have the roads mostly to myself. It’s zen.
Obligatory link to this fabulous VW ad from years ago