MONTHLY WRITING CHALLENGE
Road Trip Stories — the Finale
The editors announce their favorite reads
With the monthly challenge of August we had asked you for your road trip stories and we got overwhelmed with amazing articles to read. We laughed, we cried and were surely entertained. What connects all of us is that sooner or later we did a memorable road trip somewhere in the world.
You might be the reason why I am planning my next road trip, because well, I’m sitting enough in planes every day. I could do some driving again. I’m ready for it.
I’m starting with the presentation of the editor’s stories since these aren’t part of the competition.
JoAnn Ryan with “The Road Cursed by God and the Ocean That’s “Purging Itself”
Adrienne Beaumont with “Road Trip in an Empty Truck”, “The Road Trip That Almost Never Was” and “A Road Trip I’ll Never Forget”
Gerald Sturgill with “The Longest Road Trips We Can Make Currently”
Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages with “A Short Road Trip Ugandan Style”
Anne Bonfert with “Living 24/7 for Two Weeks With a Total Stranger”, “The Most Amazing Pictures From Road Tripping Namibia” and “Returning to Transylvania — Where I Found More Than Just My Roots”
The winners
Anne Bonfert
I always struggle with picking a winner. Mainly because there are so many amazing stories written on different topics. They’d all fit into their very own category making them unique and special.
This is why I decided to announce my favorite three — each standing out in a different category.
The storytelling and entertainment level
Why do people still take road trips? We can fly anywhere in a matter of minutes. And then you decided to cross from east to west with two teenagers in the back?
Yip, simply because it will make up for a good story. That wasn’t fully Kevin Shay’s reason but he wanted to give the kids memorable experiences to look back at.
It’s a two-part series taking you back in time and keeping you entertained throughout the country.
The type of traveling
With no specific plans, a long summer ahead, and a small car to take them to the open lands, S.K. Shandlin took off with his girlfriend for an adventure that would connect them more than ever.
Camping through most of the trip and sleeping at many exciting campsites along the way is how I love my adventures. This is why I chose the story. It’s been a while ago, making us do some time travel while enjoying the read.
The article is also a two-part series. Both of them are worth your time.
The destination
Well, the last category is about the destination or countries people did road trips in. While I surely would love to go to Argentina one day and Lane Henry definitely convinced me of the beauty of the country with her submission “You Can’t Go Wrong In Argentina”, I chose a different one as my favorite here.
Ronald Smit has lived and traveled through Africa in times before I was born. He’s experienced the raw wilderness before cell phones and GPS were available to guide us from the supermarket to the gym.
I don’t just love the journeys he went on but the way he traveled. His memories are worth a lot more than the few pictures he has found. Reading the story of how he traveled through Ghana 15 years before I touched down there was very personal for me but intriguing and fascinating as well.
Jillian Amatt
This was a difficult task!
Up until now, I have been a competitor in these fun writing prompts, and I can now see that writing and submitting a piece is the easy part. To be on the other side of the fence, and to have to choose a favorite from so many great submissions, is certainly a more difficult task.
I reminisced
Ronald Smit certainly captivated me with two of his submissions this month. The first one caught my attention because his title included the name of the town that I was born in, Beauty and Bother in Banff. Although he didn’t stay in Banff itself very long, I always love to read people's thoughts on the beautiful corner of the world that I grew up in.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Ronald’s piece about driving through the unmapped bushes of Zambia in The trek over the track less traveled. My partner and I just traveled through Zambia within the past year, and I appreciated the hilarious stories he told about life in those far reaches of Africa and the struggles with finding his way through it on unmarked trails and roads, trying desperately to navigate with GoogleMaps.
Jerry Dwyer’s story Our Epic Southwest 1975 Road Trip in a Little Pinto really brought back some great memories of mine of camping with my parents at a young age. There is something so endearing about old photographs. Jerry weaves them beautifully into his story about going on a 30-day road trip with his family in a funny and lighthearted way. They visited multiple national parks, national monuments, reservations, recreation areas, and pueblos. His first sentence had me at the get-go:
Our first six years together is now a blur. We got married (1969). We had two kids (’70 and ‘73). Then we went on a road trip (‘75). I remember the road trip.
I laughed
Like Anne, I also really enjoyed Kevin Shay’s story The Last Magic Road Trip. In it, he is determined to give his kids an experience that he had as a young man while road-tripping with his parents in the 1970s. I love the comical and lighthearted feel of his writing and he kept me captivated and laughing throughout. Part 2 is just as good!
I was amazed
I laughed so hard at Meandering Naturists post Road Trip: Who are the Nudists in Your Neighborhood, which is about driving from one nudist resort to the other across the United States. Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not comfortable with public nudity, so this story had me entertained and flummoxed, to say the least. For starters, I had no idea that so many nudist resorts existed! Thanks for opening my eyes and broadening my horizons!
I got goosebumps
But my favorite has to go to Janin Lyndovsky in her post With My Parents Through Australia . Against all odds, she was able to get her aging parents to visit the place she calls home, traveling all the way from Poland. She had been living in Australia for 13 years before they were able to make the trip. With health problems and age against them, this was their last chance.
Since I can remember, my mum has wished to visit the opera house in Sydney, and both my parents wanted to experience a taste of the Outback, the unique-looking mountains, the rainforest, and of course the famous golden beaches.
This was a one-chance trip and they made the very best of it. They all piled into her 14-year-old jeep and hit the road. They bumped their way across Australia, finally seeing why their daughter had moved away and fallen in love with this foreign land.
“I haven’t even dreamed that I would still experience something like this in my life”, said dad in a joyful yet slightly thoughtful voice.
Thank you, Janin for bringing us all along on this heartwarming reunion. I do hope they get the chance to visit you again someday:)
Gerald Sturgill
All of the stories this month took me on an adventure. I had so many more stories to tell myself about my various road trips this month but I was so busy taking so many short road trips and moving around so much this month that I could only muster sharing one story about them.
Of course, that was me sharing my adventures from the interstate travel center to the Walmart 15 minutes away and to the State Park campground. I enjoyed many of your submissions this month and I always want to just pick all of them but I’m going to highlight a few that really stood out to me this month.
S.K. Shandlin shared this long and adventurous road trip that was shared in two parts.
Darren Weir shared a road trip through Tuscany and so many beautiful photographs that I feel like I was taking the road trip with him. Thank you for also informing us about those strange Italian road signs.
I was drawn to the Meandering Naturists story about traveling to different nudist resorts in the United States, and since there was a mention in the story of a nudist resort near Sacramento, California, my hometown, the rest of the story definitely caught my attention. It was definitely entertaining, for sure.
Lucky Janin Lyndovsky wrote about going on a road trip in Australia with her elderly parents which was very nice to read. I sure do hope that they get to visit her again from Poland.
And again, it’s hard to pick just one and I enjoyed all of the road trip stories this month.
JoAnn Ryan
We had so many great road trip stories this month, and who doesn’t love a great road story? There were a nice potpourri stories featuring such places as Argentina, Australia, Canada, Western Africa and Zambia. We had road trips through the desert, to nudist resorts and baseball travels.
We had magic road trips, epic road trips, eventful road trips, long and winding road trips, unhappy road trips and kinda miserable road trips… hey, we’ve probably all experienced a little bit of each, right? So these were all fun to read!
And even though all the stories were excellent a few did stand out:
- I always love reading about Mexico: “Central Mexico by Road” by Robert Knight.
- Reading Darren Weir’s lively descriptions of his travels are always a treat: “Road Trip Through Tuscany.”
- Also loved S.K. Shandlin’s Piggly Wiggly story, especially this second part: “We Started at the Piggly Wiggly (Pt. 2)”.
- Janin Lyndovsky never forgets to put a lot of heart and emotional connection into her stories and I love that!: “With My Parents Through Australia”.
Overall though, the one that really stood out in my mind belonged to Jerry Dwyer. The photos alone sold me on this story! The family photos with everyone who was obviously having such a great time — especially the laughing children. But also, the fun family descriptions were lovely as well:
“We purchased a little white Ford Pinto wagon the year before and we packed it with Pampers.”
“We spent Sunday night in Bakersfield and the next day arrived in Las Vegas. Debbie Reynolds was the headliner at The Desert Inn. We told our Debbie that her name was up in lights.”
Thank you so much to everyone for your great stories!
Adrienne Beaumont
My Road Trip Picks
Another very, very difficult task to choose my favourite road trips. And very hard to compare accomplished writers with newbies. I’ve decided I’ll choose my favourite road trip from each continent.
North America
There were lots of entries from North America but my favourite will have to be S.K. Shandlin’s two-part road trip. I loved every minute of this read, and wanted more!
Central and South America
Lane Henry’s road trip in Argentina was amazing! I loved that she included the actual map of the route they had taken.
Australia
Michael Cameron’s road trip had me in stitches. Maybe it’s the Aussie sense of humour shining through? Who else but an Aussie would call their road trip “The Road Trip”?
Europe
Darren Weir’s “Road Trip Through Tuscany” made me want to be there too.
Africa
Ronald Smit submitted quite a few road trips but this was my favourite. A road trip where there was no road!
Asia
Osan Fernando’s road trip didn’t all go to plan, but that’s what memories are made of.
Congratulations to all Globetrotters who entered their road trip stories into our writing challenge. Stay tuned for September’s challenge.
And here is the full list of all submissions. We thank all our writers for taking part in the challenge and for submitting amazing road trip stories:
John Culver with “Heading West: Road-tripping through the Desert” and “Fire and Ice: Road Trip Warmup”
CatHERine with “The Road Trip That I Was Not Supposed to Be A Part of”
Osan Fernando with “A Long And Winding Road Trip For A Catch Me If you Can Sunrise” and “Houston, I’ve Got A Little Problem Here”
Ronald Smit with “Beauty and bother in Banff”, “Hotels, hovels and homes”, “Ten days to Tombouctou” and “The trek over the track less traveled”
Jerry Dwyer with “Our Epic Southwest 1975 Road Trip in a Little Pinto”
Marcia Gage with “My Favorite Side-Trip on Our Baseball Travels”
Melissa Morris with “Roadtrip To South-West Queensland” and “The Most Eventful Drive From The Gold Coast.”
Meandering Naturists with “Road Trip: Who are the Nudists in Your Neighborhood”
S.K. Shandlin with “We Started at the Piggly Wiggly” and “We Started at the Piggly Wiggly (Pt. 2)”
Nella DiCarlo with “A Tiny Road Trip — St Thomas to Port Stanley”
Kevin Shay with “The Last Magic Road Trip”, “The Last Magic Road Trip — Part 2”
Michael Cameron with “The Road Trip”
Shubha Apte with “Road trip to Coimbatore-a beautiful heritage destination in South India”
