The Road Trips That Changed Their Lives

New York Times

16-05-2025

As part of our summer Travel issue, dedicated to driving across America — that enduring rite of passage for so many impassioned travelers — we collected snapshots of U.S. road trips undertaken by 13 creative people. We asked each of them to tell us about their most meaningful journeys and what made them so indelible. The destination? Certain detours and pit stops? Who sat beside them in the car, or who they met along the way? Their answers were as varied as their routes, but the underlying reason for each boiled down to one simple fact: Few other types of vacations fuel the imagination as effectively as a long, meandering drive.
Michelle Zauner, a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast, 36, musician
Philadelphia to Nashville, 2013
When my husband, Peter [Bradley], and I were in that vague, wild time when we were transitioning from being friends to lovers, we decided to go to Nashville on a whim. We were working at this Mexican fusion restaurant in Philadelphia and, after getting off an unexpectedly busy Sunday shift, we drove all night. We were young, and that seemed like a good idea. A friend had made us a mixtape with a country song for every year from the '50s to the 2000s. One of them, 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town' by Kenny Rogers, inspired a song on my new album called 'Men in Bars,' which is similarly about a guy pleading with his girl not to go out. We took a picture in front of the Nashville sign, we ordered meat and threes and we went to Robert's Western World. We'd never been to a honky-tonk bar before. One guy had this trick where he'd lift himself up off the body of his upright bass. It was inspiring to see people work that circuit, and it showed me what country music could be. We slept at a gross hotel for a couple of nights and, on the way back home, I broke out in full-body hives at an Olive Garden, so we swung by a hospital. They gave me Benadryl, and poor Peter had to drive for the next seven hours. I think all of the songs I've written about him have that trip in their subconscious.
Antoni Porowski, 41, chef and TV personality
Austin to New York City, 2021
I'd finished filming 'Queer Eye' in Austin and wanted to get back to New York but ended up lingering in Texas. I was with my newly adopted pit bull mix, Neon, and Ben Levine, an agent and friend. On our way out of town, we stopped by my favorite bakery, ThoroughBread. They have a peanut butter and jelly cookie they serve warm, and they make kolaches where the egg is somehow a very soft scramble. Then we headed to Waco, where I learned about the empire of Chip and Joanna Gaines [of the show 'Fixer Upper']. Outside their Magnolia complex in town, people were lined up like ants. I tried their famous chicken salad croissant sandwich, which was objectively delicious — it had wonderful lamination. In Dallas, the streets were wider than anything and dead empty because it was June and just so painfully hot. At one point on this trip, the road looked like it was rippling like in that scene from [the 1991 film] 'My Own Private Idaho.' We went to this sushi restaurant that had jalapeño-ranch-aioli-drizzled-over-a-rainbow roll-type vibes. Everyone was so dressed up, while I was in shorts and a ripped-up tee. In between stops, there were a lot of heart-to-hearts and a lot of laughs. It takes a specific kind of person, someone who can banter and go deep, and the trip eased my nerves about what was next for me. Ben also showed me how to put air in the tires. This was after a snafu where I'd pretended to know.
Stephen Shore, 77, photographer
New York to California, 1973
In 1972, having grown up in Manhattan and just learned to drive at 24, I went from New York to Arizona, taking pictures with 35-mm film. A year later, I decided to make another trip using a 4x5, which is an old-fashioned large-format camera mounted on a tripod that you go under a dark cloth to shoot. As I was going to explore the country, I thought I'd dress the part, so I got a belted safari jacket and matching khaki pants. I stuck to the old U.S. highway system, which went through the center of each town. I'd see something of interest and stop and work. I did that seven days a week for two months, keeping my film cool with ice packs I'd refreeze at motel restaurants. There was also a postcard distribution element. Previously, thinking they were what the New York art world wanted more than anything, I'd printed 56,000 postcards of spots I'd photographed in Amarillo, Texas — the county courthouse, the Army-Navy store where you'd get your Levi's — and hadn't sold any. As I drove around the country, I found postcard racks and stuffed them with my cards. In the past, when I'd taken pictures of people's homes, they'd sometimes call the police thinking I was casing their house. But this time, when I had my big view camera and my tripod, [people were less suspicious and] I found I could do more with it. One of the few times someone approached me was in Ashland, Wis. It turned out he'd grown up with my friend John Szarkowski, who was the head of photography at MoMA. This guy was a lawyer and invited me to his and his wife's home to have dinner and watch the Watergate hearings.
Valerie June, 43, singer-songwriter
Santa Barbara to Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., 2024
I was touring along the Pacific Coast Highway, which I periodically feel called back to. I was first there when I was 22 and homeless, but I'd learned I could depend on music. I'd busk and make enough tips to get to the next town. This time, I was marveling at how I now perform in theaters and people come to see me. I also had time to commune with the nature of the place, which I find rejuvenating. Traveling via minivan, my two crew members and I started in Santa Barbara, Calif., and made our way to Pismo Beach because I wanted to stay at this roadside motel perched on a cliff above the ocean. Then I played two shows in San Francisco. I rented a convertible and drove out to meet [fans and friends] at Bohemian Flowers, their farm in Sebastopol. The last show was down in Big Sur, outside the Henry Miller Memorial Library. It's nestled among redwoods. That's where I sang my song 'Endless Tree' in front of other people for the first time. It was beautiful to hear the sound bouncing off that living wood. Afterward, we drove to the Carmel Mission Inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea, getting in quite late. We sat by the fire drinking wine, but I still got up at 6 the next morning, and I happened upon a hiking trail. Have you ever seen a California poppy?
Sally Breer, 37, interior designer
Boston to coastal Maine, 2022
Starting in July, my family did a two-month road trip. It was the end of Covid and we were blending back into the world. Also, a friend of mine had passed away, and I felt an urgency to be present with my kids. We flew from L.A. to Boston and, from there, would drive in our rented red Jeep for a couple of days before spending a week somewhere, largely making it up as we went. I remember looking out the kitchen window of this farmhouse set on rolling hills in Ghent, N.Y., and starting to cry. I thought, 'I didn't even know I needed this.' That summer, I had visceral reactions to greenery. Then we went to Providence, which — what a scene. People were day drinking in the street, and we ate sardines and ricotta on toast. We pit stopped in Portland, Me., and continued on to the Bar Harbor area, where we met up with friends. One of them took us in his tiny putt-putt boat in deep fog. I was certain we were going to sink, but we arrived safely on Little Cranberry Island, where a sizable percentage of the population are lobstermen. Then we traveled around Maine for a month. There were no billboards, so it was like being in a nature preserve, and we ate about a hundred lobster rolls. Every morning we weren't in transit, we spent at the water. My husband and kids would swim and I would draw. That whole trip was a reminder to slow down.
Edvin Thompson, 32, fashion designer
Atlanta to New York City, 2013
A year or so after college, my friend Sakinah [Bashir], and I heard that Wintter [Alex] and Mia [Moto], who owned the Atlanta vintage shop Poor Little Rich Girl and were mentors to us, were driving from Atlanta to New York for the Afropunk Festival, and we asked if we could tag along. We piled into this Ford Explorer, which was packed to the brim with our luggage, and Wintter and Mia took turns driving. Sakinah and I didn't know how to drive and, fun fact, we still don't. We listened to Kendrick Lamar's 'Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City' album, which had dropped the year before, and I spent a lot of time staring out the window and daydreaming, just like I had when I was growing up in Jamaica and would take the bus from the country to visit my grandparents in Kingston. Except that I had no idea what to expect from this trip, which ended up being a different kind of experience of the U.S. for me. It was my first time in North Carolina, going to diners and gas stations, eating hot dogs and frozen yogurt on the road. We stopped in D.C. and saw the monuments, which, because of their bigness and what they symbolize, felt heavy. When we got to New York, I was on a natural high. I got my septum pierced on St. Marks Place, I saw SZA and that high kick that she does when she performs and I connected with a lot of Black and brown individuals, a lot of individuals in general, especially in creative industries. The energy was amazing, and that trip spurred my move to New York the following year.
Lucy Dacus, 30, singer-songwriter
Nashville to Memphis, 2017
My Boygenius bandmate and partner, Julien Baker, and I had been friends for about a year, and she wanted me to see her hometown. She drove from Memphis, picked me up in Nashville, where I was recording, and later drove me back to Memphis. I was touched that someone would go so out of their way. She'd made a playlist the length of the drive that was all Memphis people: Big Star, Three 6 Mafia. Julien's what she'd call a controversial driver, so I was keeping us on the road with the power of my mind while she sang and danced along. There's a lot of blasted rock on either side of I-40 that's very cool. When it rains, tiny waterfalls come off the rock. In Memphis, I got the tour de Julien. She drove me to her high school and where she'd worked and the skate park her band played at. We also stopped to see her dad at his work. He makes prosthetic limbs. We ate at Central BBQ, even though Julien was vegan at the time, because, she explained, it was important. And we went to Overton Park, where I wrote most of my song 'Kissing Lessons.' We'd been talking so much about our pasts and early queer experiences, and it had been cooking on the back burner in the car. I tend to write a lot on road trips. There's something meditative about keeping your eyes on the horizon and everything moving around you while you're sitting still.
Ignacio Mattos, 45, chef
Dallas to Tucson, Ariz., 2018
I went on a tour to promote the Estela cookbook [named for one of Mattos's New York City restaurants] and it took me to places I never imagined I'd be. For one of the legs, my friend Sebastian and I went from Dallas to Tucson, Ariz. On that drive, we had some of the best conversations of my life — personal stuff about relationships and growth — and we listened to Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and Neil Young, which felt fitting. I hadn't done much homework — on trips, I prefer to surrender to the experience. In Texas, though, we'd pull off the road and find really good barbecue every time. When we got to Tucson, we strolled around the town, and the saguaro cactuses outside people's front doors were mesmerizing to me. I'd seen pictures of them but never stood next to one or even been to the desert, and it was one of those powerful, spiritual moments with nature. I wanted to hug the cactuses, even though I clearly couldn't, and I thought, 'I need to know more.' The next day we went to Saguaro National Park, and I was struck again by the scale and shape and density of them, how they collect water and provide shade, their flowers. I wished we could stay for sunset, when the sky there looks as though it's on fire, but we had to be on our way for a book event. Even then, I couldn't get the saguaros out of my mind. I still think about them all the time.
Larissa FastHorse, 54, playwright
Sioux Falls to Eagle Butte, S.D., 2023
I was in Sioux Falls, S.D., touring a show that Michael John Garcés and I created called 'Wicoun' but took a detour to meet up with my family in Pierre to bury my father, who'd died the previous winter. I chose the route for my dad. He was a parole officer and his territory included five reservations. I'm adopted but, because I'm Lakota, he shared a lot about his time in those spaces, and I went through three of them on this trip: Crow Creek, Lower Brule and Cheyenne River. I took 265th Street, a rural road that cuts through all these little towns. What I like to do is drive around at lunchtime and go wherever there are parked cars. Usually it isn't a restaurant but a dinner club, the V.F.W. or the American Legion, and you chitchat and eat whatever they give you. At one place, it was $7 for a meat sandwich, three sides and a huge piece of homemade cake. When I got to the Missouri River, I headed north. There's a famous rest stop that houses a museum that used to be only about Lewis and Clark, but now includes the Lakota people and has a gigantic statue of a native woman with a star quilt whom I paid my respects to. The experience of being there, blended with my memories of my father, was really meaningful. I was alone but not, and there's something magical about prairie. You go up what seems like a slight hill, and suddenly you have this vista of valleys and tributaries and it feels like you can see forever.
Amanda Williams, 50, artist
Chicago to Ithaca, N.Y., 1992
I'd graduated high school in Chicago and gotten into architecture school at Cornell. Both my parents went to college, but in a different time and in the South, so their stories were more 'I had one trunk and had to drag it myself.' This was fun and a milestone for our family because it marked the end of us doing all sorts of things as a foursome. My dad rented a dark blue minivan. We had a new cooler filled with sandwiches — this trip was different because we'd bought the sandwiches from the store. It had all the elements of our usual road trips to visit family, but supersize and special. We also had a Rand McNally book of maps, in which we'd drawn our route in red pen. My brother and I chose the music, though our mom didn't approve of cursing, so that limited us to things like A Tribe Called Quest, LL Cool J, New Edition. We stopped at a Wendy's in Erie, Penn., where there was this sweet guy whose job was to welcome people. My parents had explicit memories of it not being safe for Black people to travel so, even though it was the '90s, there was relief in that. Another time we stopped for gas, and my friend Nicole happened to be at the next pump. She was also on her way to college, but she was going to Virginia, and that's when we realized we'd missed a turn. Years later, my mom told me that after we'd made it to my dorm and said goodbye, she got back in the car and sobbed. Still, the overall tenor of that trip was joy.
Rachel Kushner, 56, writer
Albuquerque to San Cristobal, N.M., 2019
The Lannan Foundation, which is in Santa Fe, had invited me to moderate a talk with the scholar and activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Ruth's an old friend of my aunt DeeDee Halleck, a media activist, so she came along, and so did my son, Remy, who was 11. Before the event, I couldn't find DeeDee anywhere. At the last minute, she showed up with this mysterious man with a black cowboy hat who turned out to be Lee Lew-Lee, a former Black Panther. That seemed like a great beginning. We stayed at a rural property near El Rito amid pink box canyons in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. At one point on a long hike, Remy very calmly said, 'We are directly over a cliff face, and I'm going to get us out of here safely.' We made three art pilgrimages: We rode horses past Georgia O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch house on the floor of a mesa. We visited [the artist] Wendy Clarke, the daughter of [the filmmaker] Shirley Clarke, in San Cristobal, and she showed us her exquisite fiber art and her llama, alpaca and donkeys. And we drove to Galisteo to see [the sculptor] Nancy Holt's house, which, five years after her death, was about to be sold. Nancy and DeeDee were close, and it was the last time we could go inside and see what Nancy saw from her windows. Her work is very much about a relationship to cosmology, and it relates to the desert with a kind of Zen emptiness. I've always felt like Nancy left directions and I'm supposed to pay attention to whatever they are.
Jody Williams, 62, and Rita Sodi, 63, chefs
San Francisco to Healdsburg, Calif., 2023
Jody Williams: We usually need a catalyst to get out. This time, it was [the chef] Chris Kostow asking us to do an event at one of his restaurants, the Charter Oak in St. Helena [in Napa County, Calif.]. We landed in San Francisco and, whenever I'm there, I have to do two things: get lunch at Zuni Café and see the counter at the Swan Oyster Depot. Then we beelined it up to Chris's. Rita drove.
Rita Sodi: I love cars, though I'm not in love with white cars and I think we ended up with something white. On the way, there was a lot of evidence of wildfires, which was sad, but it was good to see that trees were still standing.
Williams: We're always nervous when we do events, but we got to cook with some really cool chefs, and there was a lot of camaraderie. Afterward we went to Gott's, a roadside hamburger and milkshake place. I'm always trying to show Rita more of America, though she's never going to be the sort of person to have a milkshake for dinner.
Sodi: I take what I like and leave the things that aren't for me.
Williams: From there we just meandered: Healdsburg, Yountville, Sonoma, Marshall. In Calistoga, we saw what our friends at Schramsberg [Vineyards] had in their cellar, and in Tomales Bay, we had barbecued oysters at Nick's Cove. It was stop and eat, stop and eat, look, shop, go. 'What's this?' Make a right turn. Park at the beach. Fog rolls in. Fog rolls out.
Sodi: We went to the most beautiful beach, what was it?
Williams: We went to five, and the driftwood we brought back to New York is my prized possession, but I think you mean Bodega Bay. I like to sit and ooh and aah at things, the sea lions and starfish. Just make sure you bring a wedge of cheese, a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine and keep a corkscrew in your pocket.
These interviews have been edited and condensed.