These Are The Ultimate Summer Road Trips

The Ring Road around Iceland. It’s a trip that could be made in a couple of days, but everyone recommends taking at least a week because every corner brings yet another stunning view or something marvelous to look at.

Also, Icelandic temperatures during the summer are great. I hate sweating.

I want to drive around the world. Start in Seattle have my car shipped to Vladivostok and book a seat on the boat. drive to South Africa and back to Sweeden across to Canada down through the states, through South America to the tip of Argentina.

Newish Unimog or 1990s diesel converted Bronco. A few giant water tanks and a soft place to sleep and a reliable place to cook. And I would happily spend the summer getting lost in the nothingness of the southwestern states.

End-to-end on Route 66 in my Miata. Take the long way, take my time, see the things, have adventures.

Yes, I know the show featured a Corvette, but that’s not what I own.

Wild Atlantic Way.

1600+ miles along the entire west coast of Ireland, from Cork all the way to Derry. Some of the best natural sights in the world with the opportunity to take a quick detour to some world rally stages.

I’m heading overseas. I’d like to do the whole-Japan challenge. Starting at Wakkanai in Hokkaido and going all the way south, via ferries and bridges, on all the main islands, to Itomanon Okinawa. Sure, I’ll do it by Kei car if someone wants to pay me for it.

I actually want to road trip through Newfoundland as well but a critical part of that road trip is to take the ferry to Saint Pierre and Miquelon as well. It’s a small French territory, not exactly common knowledge, and the last vestige of New France. Once you’re there, you are essentially driving your car in Europe just an hour off the coast of Canada.

I actually did the whole Newfoundland road trip last summer. We spent time in St John’s and drove all the way up to L’Anse aux Meadows. The only problem is that the speed limits are very low (@100kph), the drivers there are generally very polite (but slow), and the roads in the western Newfoundland aren’t the best. We did the whole 1100+ mile trip in a Rubicon Jeep Wrangler. If you are driving up in the summer, be sure to stop at Bay of Fundy for Tidal Bore Rafting. It’s worth the trip just to do that.

About 5 years ago I did a lovely one. Minnesota to Maine. My brother lives in Maine and my whole extended family split a house on the water for a week. We drove through the Upper Penninsula through Canada and then Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Porcupine Mountains, Pictured Rocks, Algonquin (beautiful, but extremely buggy), Papineau-Labelle, Montreal, White Mountains. We mostly camped, but also got a nice hotel in Montreal and a cabin in Vermont along the way. Walking into a Marriot with a weeks worth of camping grunge was actually pretty entertaining just on its own.

That was a bucketlist level roadtrip.

I’d love to take my kids on a trip from MN to the west coast at somepoint too with a lot of stops along the way. Again, lots of camping with a nice hotel thrown in a few times to do laundry, sleep in a real bed, and swim in a pool.

As a European I’m quite interested in an East Coast trip, south to north. But then finish in the New England states in autumn. Sadly I have no idea whether there are any roads of any interest on the East Coast because you always hear about the ones on the other side (of which I’ve seen a couple already).

Blue Ridge Parkway comes to mind as a major road in the east worth traveling for—drove it with a friend when I visited him in South Carolina. I’m sure it would be fun at speed, but it is more of a sightseeing road so we were moving slow. I think the best would be to do that road in a Gen 1 Miata—perfect car to have fun at reasonable speeds on a public road.