It has been just over a week of travel and I’m starting to think of a road trip as a different style of travel. Different than a resort trip, a cruise or even a destination tour (e.g., a tour of Europe).
In my experience, a resort trip places emphasis on the resort and while there may be excursions out of the resort these are simply diversions; most activities are centred around and within the resort. For these types of trip the nature of the resort weighs heavily on the overall satisfaction of the vacation. The excursions have less weight.
For cruises, the weight shifts towards the excursions and the destinations the cruise liner visits. As such, the weight can be pretty balanced between accommodations (the ship) and the destinations.
The destination trip shifts the weight a little further away from the accommodations towards the sites to visit. Thus the weight in these type of trips tend to be more on the side of the destination, lodgings carrying less weight.
The road trip in my mind is a variation of the destination trip by offering more flexibility. First, a typical destination tour begins with air travel. This has the effect of gating how much luggage can be carried. While there are obviously limitations on a road trip as well (e.g., trunk space) they are by no means as severe. Second, and granted this may be more about our modus operandi, the typical destination trip is fairly structured and highly planned. This limits ones ability to change itinerary and duration of stay.
For our road trip we have only two dates booked: our accommodations in New Orleans (January 21) and Atlanta (February 18). Beyond that we plan day-by-day. The various internet booking services are a boon to this type of travel.
Yesterday we decided we would like to join a tour run by the volunteers of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge. The tour is offered just once a week, it is limited to 11 people, and is suspended in February and March during mating season. Flexibility in our plans allowed us to extend our stay in Biloxi and join the tour.
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