Just think how much more scenery she would take in if she put the damn phone away.
It’s not a “road trip” just because there’s a lot of driving involved. If I’m driving from NY to Florida to visit my uncle for Christmas, I’m going to have a date that I want to arrive, and will make hotel reservations in advance for the trip down, for my stay and the trip home. Because this trip is about my destination and I will need to be home on a certain date in order to return to a certain date. Chances are I’m only driving because enough people and/or luggage are in my car to make it cheaper than flying. On the other hand, if I’m driving to Florida to spend the winter after I retire, I won’t have a set day I have to be there or a set day to be back and I can make it a road trip either or both ways. They’re two different sorts of trips and they don’t mix well.
And I’ve been on trips where there were literally no meals at actual fast food places with more than 4 people (more like 10 or 12) but they were all adults well over the age of 20. There usually is one person who wants fast-food but since he doesn’t drive, he’s generally out of luck. There are , however, a fair amount of meals at places like Perkins or ChiliAppleFridays sort of places. Not any at small interesting restaurants.
I’m the kind of guy for whom the ideal vacation is a week spent puttering around the house, or maybe sitting in the yard reading or drawing. Travel is stressful to me, and not at all a pleasant experience. The more planning that’s done in advance, the fewer surprises there are, and the less agita I get. Spontaneous side trips add to the stress.
Once I’m at the destination, I usually enjoy myself until it’s time to go home again. Curiously, taking side trips on the way back doesn’t bother me as much. All in all, though, I’d rather just stay at home.
The OP’s daughter chose to put her traveling in someone else’s hands. Get over it. If the daughter (and the OP) wish the trip would be more adventurous, then plan your own trip.
I absolutely LOVE road trips - as anyone who has read this recent thread of mine can tell - but I’ll say, without hesitation, it’s about the destination, not the journey. I love seeing multiple destinations on my way to and back from an end-point, but I don’t intentionally meander. If someone would invent a teleporter that can get me to my destination instantly, I’d drop the driving in an instant, and zap myself to my multiple destinations one by one.
Maybe to others, “road trip” means setting out without an itinerary in mind and stopping wherever the mood strikes you as interesting. For me, it means planning a trip in which the interim destinations are just as important as the furthest-out destination, but still all planned.
I’d say it depends on where you’re going and how you’re getting there.
I mean, if I was going to the UK on the QM2, the journey would be most of the point, considering that it would be my 4th trip to the UK.
OTOH, if I was going to say… Germany or Tokyo on an airliner, then the destination would be the point, and the trip a sort of penance to be endured for taking what augurs to be an awesome trip.
Other times, it depends on how the destination and the journey end up being; we visit our parents in Houston and Austin several times a year, and some trips turn out to be a barrel of fun, while on others, the journey seems to be the best part, with stopping for picnics, eating at new places, taking alternate routes, etc…
I think if I was driving to somewhere as far as Orlando is from Minnesota, the trip would be a big chunk of the point- it’s going to be a big chunk of the time regardless, so why not make it worthwhile? Driving hell-bent doesn’t seem like a fun way to spend a few days getting anywhere.
And seriously… at 21, I’d have been doing the stuff with the group during the day, and hitting the local clubs at night, with the assumption that I’d sleep on the boring-ass road trip home. I wouldn’t have put up with a chaperone or anyone treating me as anything other than an adult and equal at that age. I likely wouldn’t have gone had I thought someone would expect me to be under their thumb at that age; I’d been on my own in college for nearly 3 years by the time I turned 21.
Like others have said. It depends. I’m basing my answer on a 2 week vacation and we’re driving.
If I’m going out to see my dad and it takes 2 days to get there then I am definitely taking an extra day or two seeing the sights on the way because he lives outside a small town out in nowhere land. There is nothing to do there but sit around playing cards, mow the lawn and feed the neighbors’ horses pears from his pear trees.
If I’m heading out to southern California and it takes 2 days to get there then we ain’t stopping for nothing. You gotta pee? Too bad. You should have gone before we left. We got a lot of things to do in SoCal. Disneyland. Universal Studios. Maybe a TMZ bus tour of the celebrity hangouts. Then it’s down to San Diego. Sea World. The zoo. A day or two at the beach.
So, it depends.