Welcome to the Roaming Yeti Podcast, where we share travel stories full of nostalgia, interesting locations, and the tales behind those locations. I am your Host and Head Yeti, Beth Schillaci.

In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of cross-country road trips with my guest, Steve McCready. Steve shares his personal experience of a baseball-themed road trip that he took with his father back in 1992. Steve’s journey taught him valuable lessons about planning, independence, and the appreciation of diverse parts of the country.

Building on his past experience as a psychotherapist and his extensive study of the human brain, personal growth, and personal performance, Steve McCready is a coach who helps solo and small-business owners make a bigger impact in the world. Learn more about him at stevemccready.com.

Are you ready to hit the road? Let’s Roam.

Transcript

Beth 0:04
Welcome to the Roaming Yeti podcast where we share travel stories full of nostalgia, interesting locations and the tales behind those locations. I am your host and head Yeti Beth Schillaci. In this episode we dive into the exciting world of cross country road trips with my guest, Steve McCready. Steve shares his personal experience of a baseball themed road trip that he took with his father back in 1992. Steve’s journey taught him valuable lessons about planning, independence and the appreciation of the diverse parts of our country. Building on his past experience, it’s a psychotherapist and his extensive study of the human brain, personal growth and personal performance. Steve McCready is a coach who helps solo and small business owners make a bigger impact in the world. Learn more Batum at Steve mccready.com Are you ready to hit the road? Let’s Roam. Welcome back to the roaming Yeti podcast today. I have Steve with me. And he’s going to talk to us about an interesting cross country trip. He talked. Steve, welcome. How are you?

Steve 1:13
I’m doing good, Beth, thanks for having me on.

Beth 1:15
Sure. Tell, just give us sort of that overview of what what route did you take on this road trip?

Steve 1:23
Sure. Okay. So this is this is a trip that I took this goes back to 1992. So it was a long time ago now. But basically, this was a trip. It actually began in Providence, Rhode Island. And it ended up in San Diego, California. This was a trip that I took with my father when I graduated from college, because I was moving from back east back to California. And so decided as long as I was going to do that move, and I was going to do it via the road because I had a car I didn’t want to sell I had a bunch of stuff. I didn’t want to ship cross country. So I was like, Okay, well, if I’m gonna drive, maybe I can make this into something fun.

Beth 2:01
So that’s not even like, like, it’s beyond cross country. That’s like diagonal. Like,

Steve 2:07
yeah, really? It really is. It’s kind of like Yeah, cuz we get ended up so all the different stops we made because we started in Providence. We went to Princeton, actually, because it was in addition to my graduation and my dad’s 35th college reunion was right after I graduated, so we went there. And then to Baltimore, Indianapolis, Louisville, Kansas City, Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, San Diego. So there was a lot of steps.

Beth 2:37
So, I know, in addition to getting cross country, you guys sort of made it you started stopping at baseball games. Right? Right. Was that planned? Was that something you were gonna do? Or that did that sort of naturally happen as you started driving across?

Steve 2:53
No, it was it was planned. I actually spent a lot of time planning this trip when I when I had the thought that like, Okay, I’m gonna go back to California after college. I’m gonna drive. And I was like, Well, what can I do? And I at the time was very much a big a big baseball fan. And so I had read a book. Sometime, I think, my senior year of college, about someone who had gone to every stadium and Major League Baseball, and I was like, Oh, that’s really cool. And that was a little bit beyond the scope of what I could do. But I thought, well, maybe I could work out a trip that involves getting to see some baseball games. And so as I started looking, and I started checking schedules, I was able to figure out a route and a schedule that fit where it was a combination of Major League and minor league baseball games that we saw. So but from the get go, it was really intended to be a trip where it was like, Okay, well, if we’re going to have to drive cross country, let’s at least put some fun into it, too.

Beth 3:47
How many games did you do you remember how many games you stopped in South Seas? So

Steve 3:51
So we saw we saw a major league game in Baltimore. With the Orioles then we didn’t see anything in Indianapolis but Louisville, we saw a game that was again a triple A baseball game. Kansas City, we saw the Kansas City Royals that was Major League. Denver was at the time still a minor league City was the Denver’s differs at the time. That was before the Rockies. were around. And then both in Albuquerque, we didn’t actually see a game. Because the scheduling just didn’t work out that they had to triple A team at the time. And then, but in Phoenix, we also saw a game again, back when they were a triple A city before there’s major league baseball in Arizona, and then back to San Diego, which was where my dad was living at the time.

Beth 4:37
Very cool. How many days did you take for I mean, again, this was this wasn’t just cross this was sort of zigzag so

Steve 4:46
right well, so once we basically it was it was one day to get you know, from destination to destination once we left Princeton. And so we were doing those one day at a time and most of those were not too bad. I think the longest one, I believe I’d have to check all the mileage issues again. But I think the longest one was Kansas City to Denver. And that one was not. It wasn’t bad from the standpoint of nothing awful happened, it was just kind of boring, because that’s a very, very boring, flat straight stretch of highway.

Beth 5:18
Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve done that stretch, it’s your you feel like you’re on a treadmill a little bit.

Steve 5:25
Right, there’s just just not not a whole lot going on. So that was the hardest part. But we that was part of the thing that was I tried to set it up so that there wasn’t excessive driving in any one day. And so we weren’t in any rush, we didn’t have any other stuff going on. And we would just kind of swap off, you know, swap back and forth. My dad had a camcorder that he had gotten not that long before. And again, this is 1992, folks. So it camcorder was, for the time fairly small. You know, it’d be huge by today’s standards, Friday kind of thing compared to because we just, of course, use phones. But we did a lot of so whoever wasn’t driving would be either filming scenery, or we would have some conversations or, you know, things like that. So we found ways to kind of keep ourselves entertained as we went along the trip.

Beth 6:12
That’s, that’s a lot of fun. I mean, because, again, I need to that, that technology wasn’t in everyone’s hands. So to do that is is really a fun thing.

Steve 6:24
The thing I haven’t done yet with it, unfortunately, that I still need to as I have the tapes from that trip, and how to get digitized them. So I need to I need to talk to my fellow unemployable. Mercy about that. And, but look at doing that, because we’ve got I’m sure there’s a lot of really interesting fun stuff there from the trip that I should should turn into something for sure.

Beth 6:50
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s cool to just have have those as memories and sort of a legacy as well. So I know you you went on the trip to, like it was a logistic thing to move. But was there sort of another motivation? To make it a road trip with your dad rather than flying? Or, or, you know, just sort of making it a straight shot? Or what was sort of, in your mind? Why did you? Why did you do that?

Steve 7:16
I think there were a combination of things. I mean, certainly, it was the like, wow, here’s this cool opportunity to get to see a bunch of baseball games, not something that would necessarily just be there. I knew, you know, I didn’t know when I would have the kind of freedom that I had in that space, right. Because I was I was I get done with college, I didn’t have a job, I was literally going to my dad’s house to stay there for a while, while I figured out what the heck I was gonna do with my life. And so it was a really good opportunity for that, number one, it was a good opportunity for my dad night to get to do something together to do an adventure together. And a different one. And it was, for me, it was the first time I had actually planned a trip, like I did all the planning for it. And so there was a little bit of I think, kind of, you know, growing up moment there of, look, I can do these kinds of adult sort of things, and I can plan things, you know, and all of that. But also, it was I thought it would be and it really was an interesting opportunity to get to see a lot of different parts of the country, right, I got to be in a number of places that I had never seen before. In fact, I think probably pretty much all of the cities that we went to and through I don’t think I’d been to any of them previously. And so it was good to see, you know, literally not the whole country, right, like all across the country, and just a lot of very different areas and environments. And so it was really cool. From that standpoint to say it was very interesting experience. So how did you

Beth 8:47
you know, you did all the planning. It was very good. adulting, shall we say? But like, how did you prepare for the trip? Like how what went into that planning? It was limited? Internet? No. Yeah, very limited internet, right.

Steve 9:02
Oh, internet nine. Okay. Yeah, literally no internet. So what I you know, what I had to do is basically if I had to do things, like make phone calls, right. But, you know, what I did is I was able to get schedules because, you know, scheduled baseball schedules were published. And so I really started by working with a map, and really working out different routes and then starting to figure out where are cities? That makes sense from, you know, I think I was trying to target like four or 500 miles a day as far as how far to travel and looking at what are cities that fall into that range that have a major or minor league baseball team, and then starting to check it against schedules. And I actually got pretty fortunate that a lot of the the timing of this worked out as it did in retrospect, but then it was like, okay, so you know, finding hotels Some of those places and all those things, and it’s, you know, it’s it wasn’t, it seems really primitive now, because now it is, it would just be like, Okay, I’m just gonna, you know, go online and do I could probably do it a lot faster it took me I don’t remember exactly, but I know it took a while because I had to put all these different pieces together and plan it, you know, and find hotels. But again, back in the days before the internet, we had other ways of doing this. We had travel guides, we had, you know, things like that. And so it was just a matter of doing research the old fashioned way, and putting together a plan, just with the basic constraint of, I’d like to see as much baseball as possible. And I want to try and make the travel not more than four or 500 miles a day if I can. And I think there’s just there was no good way to get Kansas City. There’s kind of that dividing point there. And it was like really wasn’t anything to do, but like, Okay, we’ve got to go Kansas City, Denver, and that’s, that’s a bit of a track, but that’s okay.

Beth 10:57
Yeah. Yeah, that’s, like I knew you’d said 92. But it really hadn’t hit me till we were just talking. And I was like, oh, yeah, that was like, there wasn’t go into triple A’s trip ticket online and put in your locations and let them figure it out for you.

Steve 11:14
Right, yeah, exactly. You know, it was just it was a very, very different kind of thing. But getting people you know, people have done stuff like that before. There’s just just different tools. Not ones that were as fast or as simple to use, but, but definitely still still there. You know? Exactly. So yeah.

Beth 11:33
And you said you stayed in hotels, so you booked those ahead of time you weren’t sorted? Just show up? And

Steve 11:38
no, he’s not he was not done that. Right. And then, for the major league games, I arranged tickets beforehand, just because I wanted to make sure you know that those would be available for the minor league ones, I don’t believe I worried about it. Because minor league baseball, especially back then was not that big a deal. So I wasn’t too concerned about them being sold out or anything. But the major league ones, I just again, you know, looked at the schedule called called and was like, hey, I want to get you know, seats for this day. I get back how we used to do that back back in the day, and just have them you know, just have them keep those we’ll call. So if you go and pick them up. And that was that.

Beth 12:15
That’s very cool. Did you have a What was your favorite stop along the way?

Steve 12:22
Yeah, yeah, it would be really hard to pick like, per se a favorite no problem from a baseball standpoint, probably Baltimore, because that was when Baltimore at this new stadium at Camden Yards had just opened that year. So it was brand new. And it was there was a lot of talk about it. It was really the beginning of this era of these new, really well design stadiums. And so getting to see that in person, when I’d heard about it and read about it and was kind of an architecture fan. Like that was super cool. And so it was a great way to start the trip off. So on one hand, that was really cool. But every place that we went, because they were also different, was pretty interesting, and had different elements to it. Right? Like Like, one of the things that stuck out to me in Louisville, is the stadium itself was very unremarkable some old random stadium, but the people there were incredibly friendly. Like I just was amazed by just how friendly people were everywhere that we went there. We had several conversations with people in the stands during the game, which was not something we experienced elsewhere in the country, you know, and so there was like that, and then getting to see Albuquerque, we didn’t see a game there. But seeing Albuquerque, where it’s got such a different architecture than you know, the rest of the country and different climates along the way. So really, everything was cool in its own way.

Beth 13:40
As a Marylander I appreciate your appreciation of cam demeanor.

Steve 13:46
Yeah, and I again, Baltimore was cool to it, we had some time to you know, to kind of explore and go around. And so it was just it was it was really a great opportunity for me to see a lot of different places, either whether it was actually being there are also driving through, you know, we had a few really random, like, I always remember we have all places we stopped. I think it’s just in Kansas, right? So this is where in the middle of that drive. And so we’re like we’re trying to figure out someplace to eat in Morocco. Okay, well, we’re gonna we see, like, I think we saw like an ad, you know, sign by the side of the road, something about that Pizza Hut somewhere or whatever. So we pull off the freeway and go down this road, you know, it’s getting middle, literally middle of nowhere. It’s flat. As far as you can see, we’re in the middle of Kansas. I don’t even remember the town we’re in. And we so there’s, here’s the Pizza Hut. We go and walk in. And everybody in the place. There wasn’t a ton of people, probably six or seven people, like all the heads kind of turn and look at us and give this kind of look like you. You’re not from around here. Right? And then they just went back down their business, but it was like, what did we just walked into?

Beth 14:52
Just a Pizza Hut. Right?

Steve 14:53
Right. It’s like, yeah, we’re just stopping. I mean, we can’t be the only people who’ve ever hopped off the freeway to get pizza here but Hi

Beth 15:03
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Were there any other good food stops that, uh, that you enjoyed along the way?

Steve 15:10
You know, I’m trying to, at the time, I wasn’t a big food person anyway. So I’m trying to think if there’s anything that particularly stuck out to me foodwise is, a lot of it is we were trying to be relatively low budget about at the time, because remember, just out of college and unemployed. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of fast food, there was a couple things like seeing where you would see some of the regional differences and fast food chains. We stopped. There’s like a Wendy’s in West Virginia. And I don’t remember specifically, there was something about I think that might have been the first Wendy’s where I’d ever actually seen like a salad bar or something I don’t remember. But it was

Beth 15:52
the Wendy’s buffet of the 90s.

Steve 15:54
It was the buffet. Right? Exactly. It was like, Oh, wow, this is different. That’s what it was. It was like the buffet and pasta other stuff. And I was like, Oh, this is this is kind of weird. And I don’t think there’s any other. I don’t think there were and a lot of it for us we were because what we were doing is usually lunch was just like, hop off the freeway, whatever, some fast food place. Because it didn’t. This is a thing where today, I would do it really differently, where I would actually research restaurants along the route and find cool places to stop here. It was more like if we saw something or whatever. And then we were mostly eating dinner at the baseball games. So it’ll have hot dogs.

Beth 16:31
Yeah. Well, and that was before, like now a lot of these minor league stadiums and stuff. They they have all kinds of fancy crazy food because they’re trying to keep people there. But I’m assuming you pretty much ate hot dogs.

Steve 16:44
It was pretty much hot dogs, there was no there was no fancy food in the stadiums as a whole like so. So the like I said Louisville was this very old kind of random place. That was, I think it was it was clearly used for some other purposes, too. Like it was a weird shape, whatever. But it was so cool. And it’s it’s quirky sort of way, Denver at the time, they were the Zephyrs were playing in Mile High Stadium, which is a football stadium. And so they converting it for baseball you ended up with I think it was I don’t remember if it was right or left field, but one side was a very, very short field with a really high wall. So similar to how Fenway Park works, but even higher, like you’re just crazy, and it’s weird seeing a baseball game in a football stadium. But Phoenix actually, at the time, had their stadium was relatively new. And it was the nicest minor league baseball stadium I’ve ever seen. It was it was pretty modern. It was nice. Didn’t have like fancy food kind of stuff that I recall. But it was It wasn’t really nice new stadium and the Firebirds, which was the team at the time was kind of a big deal. There was there was definitely like, Okay, this is like a whole other level of minor league here.

Beth 17:53
Right? That’s very cool. It’s, it’d be interesting to do the trip again and see how things have how stadiums have changed? Did you learn anything about yourself on this trip? Like, either through the planning or anything? Like what? Any life lessons?

Steve 18:13
Yeah, I mean, I think one I learned like, I can spend more time in a car, at least at the time, I realized because there’s it was like, This is gonna be, this is gonna be a lot. And I did learn that my, that my dad and I travel well together. Because we had, I think both of us personality wise, were a good a good fit for that. As I told you before we late later, you know, whatever it was 15 years later or so did a very different road trip together to but you know, I think for me, it was a lot of it was just this awareness of like, again, adult tech, right? I was like, okay, I can plan this trip, I can do these things that I think up until then I’d seen as like, those are grown up things are not really necessarily seen myself as that much of an adult because in college, it’s like sure you’re technically and legally an adult, but you’re in this kind of sheltered environment. And it’s, you know, a lot different. There’s a lot of other other things going on. So I think that was one. I also think I had an awareness that was what really gave me an awareness of that. I knew this to some degree, but I think a deeper level of really how diverse the country was, from a like cultural and environmental standpoint. I mean, I knew that, in a sense, like I said, because I grew up largely in in Santa Cruz, California, as is a beach town and then going to school in Providence, Rhode Island. I mean, those two places are radically different. But but you know, but seeing these other spots in the country that are also very different. It’s really just getting how many different types of environments and cultures and different architecture and things. So that was really interesting, and I think cool to just to see how much variety there really is. And I think it gives you a new perspective. They’ve like, you learn how big this country really is when you drive across it,

Beth 20:04
right? Yeah, you don’t you don’t think about how much on all the little sub cultures and you know, many is, it’s really interesting to see the differences. And yeah, what a great learning experience. Like when you get out of college when you think you have it all figured out to sort of go, oh, look, there is this big country and differences with people. So I know you like, like, in in Louisville, people were really nice. And, and like, were there any other sort of things that you just weren’t expecting from from areas?

Steve 20:44
So like, I, I was expecting Kansas to be flat, because that’s what I’ve been told and warned. But it’s one thing to expect something. It’s another thing to experience it. Right. Right. So that that that was that was one thing that was like, Whoa, this is this is weird. And again, well, one thing I just didn’t did not know what to expect, and was like, What the heck is this is in West Virginia. So as we drove through West Virginia, and I assume these are still there, but at the time I didn’t, I had no idea this was going to be coming all over the place you’d see in the hills, these clusters of three crosses. And I was I was like, What is this? You know, obviously religious, symbolic thing, but I was not super religiously aware or anything. And I didn’t know anything about West Virginia, really. And it was so it was just like, This is odd, because it was very much isolated to West Virginia. Right. Like, that’s, that’s interesting. And then, you know, that’s, that was kind of unexpected. All Albuquerque, again, I had been led to it, you know, I knew that it was different kind of different architecturally. But really seeing it again, in person with all the Adobe houses and the different style and stuff was really, really cool. i The biggest this was. So the one thing that we saw, but only in driving through that I wanted to and actually still haven’t revisited is we drove through Flagstaff, Arizona, right on our way to Phoenix. And it was, I kind of figured like Arizona is just a big desert. And it’s actually not like, again, most states in the country are not they we think of them as one thing. And they’re there very few of them really are. And you know, seeing Flagstaff, which is one at higher altitude and who just has lots of trees and things. It was like, it reminded me a little bit of Lake Tahoe here in California, in a sense, and it was just but it was really neat. I was like, well, this place seems cool. And I’d like to go spend more time there. Have again, have not made it back. And then like Phoenix was, again, I was prepared for it to be hot. But it’s again, one thing to hear like it’s hot. And so thing to experience the heat in that form. Because while I live in Sacramento now, and we can get pretty hot here. Intel then again, I grew up in a beach town, like 78 degrees was kind of hot, right? So, so triple digits is like, Whoa, this is this is a whole other thing. And then to have it be that warm in the evening, and Albuquerque was kind of like that, too. So it was both weird, but also kind of nice, because it was It wasn’t humid, like New England can be it was just like, oh, this is warm. So there’s just a lot of things that I have this year, you have this kind of sense in your head of like, what here’s probably what it is. And so it really, I think probably helped me to understand, guess what these assumptions that you make by default? They’re not very accurate, right?

Beth 23:39
It’s so true, I think and that’s, I don’t know, I’m starting to think like maybe we should make every college graduate, drive cross country and just sort of have a life learning thing.

Steve 23:52
I do think everyone should drive cross country once. I’m not sure if they should do it more than that. But I think it’s, of course, that creates some logistical issues unless you’re running your car. But if you do it right, I think it’s a really can be a really powerful and interesting experience. And you could do any number of themes, right? You could do like today, if I was going to do it, I would either do it, I would do it either as another baseball one, which would be cool where I would do like a like pizza and brew pubs one where I would just kind of plan it around that way, which would be great. I’d also have to make sure I worked in a lot of gyms or I would end the trip. 20 pounds heavier. But you know,

Beth 24:27
to make sure every hotel as a fitness center

Steve 24:31
is exactly

Beth 24:33
yeah, that’s a good theme. I’m, I might steal that one. Um, what do you wish you you would have known or, you know, before you went on that trip? Was there anything or were you sort of mentally prepared and physically prepared for for what came other than Kansas?

Steve 24:51
Right? Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. I don’t know that knowing that would have helped it just would have made me be like, Oh, Kansas has come Being in sorry, Kansas, nothing against your state.

Beth 25:02
We love you Kansas. It’s it’s 70 in Kansas is bad

Steve 25:07
70 In Kansas, it’s just there’s not a whole lot going on there. Yeah. And so, you know, I was, it was, again, as these things go remarkably like, just pretty, pretty smooth it was. And so I think that’s in part planning in part, my dad and I are kind of compatible travel energy. So I think that in retrospect, I know if there’s anything I wish I had had known, but like, it’s the if I had it to do over again, I would think about possibly like, one thing I might do is actually make it twice as long and spend two nights in each place. So we’d have the opportunity to do more exploring because we would often you know, pull into whatever city we got into somewhere between like four and five in the afternoon. And then by the time we got into our hotel settled, whatever, and it was, like time to go to the game. So there was not really a lot of time to explore any of these places. And all these cities are interesting in their own different ways and stuff. So something where I could get to do a little more exploration, I think could be good. And do that. I. Yeah. Because otherwise the pacing, like the driving except for that one day was was totally fine. It was a lot but not, not ever where it felt like oh my God, I need to get the hell out of the car, I’m going to lose my mind.

Beth 26:30
That’s, that’s good. Because that’s half of it. If you get get bored in there, it’s, it makes it even longer. For sure. Um, do you have any, if someone now is is looking to do a similar trip, whether baseball or anything, just a long, long road trip? What, you know, saying two nights in a place is I think it’s really great advice. But are there any other recommendations? You you would have?

Steve 26:56
You know, there’s some things one, if you’re going with somebody, make sure it’s somebody you know, you travel well, with? Yeah, because because there are people, people travel in different ways, right and different in different styles. And if you’re not compatible with your travel partner, it can make the day a lot longer. And that’s, that’s definitely one thing. I think, for something like that. It’s the right mix, we got we got lucky, you know, we didn’t have anything come up that really threw off our plan. No one expected challenges or surprises. And I think though, having being aware of that, it’s probably good, you know, and just it just really comes down to like, we got lucky, where we didn’t hit any weird like road construction issues or anything, but we would have had no way of knowing today you could know, right, because a lot of that stuff is planned and prepared, and you’d be able to see it on a map. So I think it’s just really be having a theme to it, I think really helps to organize the trip. And I think the fact that we didn’t try and overdo it. Also, it didn’t, it didn’t feel stressful. It was like it was in fact, the games were great because it was after, after traveling all day and being cramped in a car, getting to go sit in the stadium, you know, have a hotdog and some peanuts and just kind of relax with a baseball game, which like, that’s one of my for me, sitting at a baseball game. It’s just an inherently like relaxing center and calm activity, which Pro I like about baseball. And so having that as a component core component of the trip, I think really, really helped keep it from feeling like a grind. Right? And that’s, that’s I think, really it is like built in how do you manage the energy flow? I see a lot of people who do trips where they just they try and jam so much in and then it becomes stressful, right? You know, so that would be one is just balanced balance your effort and recovery, just like everything else in life. Right?

Beth 28:48
Right. You can’t push too hard, because then it does become a chore and it’s not fun anymore. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I definitely love the theme idea, because I’m I think you should have a theme for anything you do.

Steve 29:02
Yeah, and another one that I that I would totally do with my partner, although I think we would. She and I are both now old enough that like we can only do so much of this. But we’ve joked about the idea of doing a roller coaster road trip, where basically we go use my parks all around the country, you know, and do some kind of a loop there with the same idea that one would definitely take a lot more days because it just needs time to have our bodies recover from getting spun around and turned upside down and stuff but you know, anything like that, where you’re where you’re bringing in some kind of a fun thing gives you something to look forward to or some again, element of theme. I would also tell people, like keep a journal as you do as you go, or again, film it like we did or whatever because there’s I have I do have a journal that has some notes in it. I’ve got these videos and that’s a really cool way to be able to capture and remember it because there are parts about it that you will ultimately like forget because humans and human brains and how they work.

Beth 29:58
Exactly, yeah, you It’s the end, you’re doing so much that it’s hard, like, Oh, I’ll never forget this. And then sort of all like, which day did we do?

Steve 30:10
So make sure you make sure your car is in good shape we didn’t have, we only had one issue one point, I had some weird wiring issue with my car and it was somewhere and it was on the last day to that, thankfully, like the trip was really smooth except for this we had two incidents with we’re involving the car the last day one was I had had this weird wiring thing that turned out to be related to my car alarm. And it we stopped somewhere, you know, whatever bathroom food or whatever, and then the car wouldn’t start. And finally got it started. It took some some weirdness but got it started. But then the other thing is I got pulled over for speeding in Gila Bend, Arizona, of all places, which is yeah, if you haven’t heard of Gila Bend, that’s because it’s tiny. And there’s a it’s one of those spots where you hit the zone where unbeknownst to you, even though you’re on the freeway, as you go into the town, the speed limit drops, like 20 miles an hour. And I didn’t see the sign and didn’t notice and they’ve got cops hanging out there because it’s, you know, the first time so I get pulled over. And my dad, which I had never seen him do it was great. My dad goes into like, total, like, let’s try and talk and talk him out of this. He’s like, so he’s super polite. You know, officer, we’ve been we’ve been on our cross country road trip, and we’ve been driving for six days. And this is our last day and we’re almost home. And so we just, you know, it was one of those things in the cop let us go it was like I was like, All right, dad, impressive. But it was definitely kind of like, okay, this last day, it was like, we felt like we’re kind of, you know, staggering to, to get home here at the tail end of it. But at least it happened then, because of that kind of stuff had happened on the front and end of the trip, it would have made it feel a lot more stressful or a lot more anxiety like, oh my god, are we gonna get more of this? Right? You know?

Beth 31:52
That’s good. Yeah, not all heroes wear capes, some can talk your way out of a speeding ticket, right. I love learning about this road trip. It just seems like a really cool thing to do. I’m so impressed. You did this beat. I know. There’s maps, and there was ways to do it. And at the time, it didn’t seem difficult, but like thinking back now it’s like, oh, we are really lucky now.

Steve 32:21
What? Like, yeah, one of the things I did invest in was like a Rand McNally, like us Atlas, right? It’s one of those things, and it’s like big, it’s probably, I don’t know, 11 by 17. Right, this big giant thing. So we had maps of one the whole country, but two different places. So we could do that. Because yeah, we had no navigation. We were we were having to like follow signs and do all that. It’s not that hard, because we were on major freeways the whole way, right? But yeah, that that’s an example of something that today would just be infinitely easier because you just tell Waze or your navigation app of choice. Here’s where we’re going today.

Beth 32:55
And I’ll tell you what to do.

Steve 32:57
But yeah,

Beth 32:59
yeah, so I have some I have some pop quiz questions that I don’t send along. And I don’t think there’s anyone better prepared to answer this first one but what is your favorite road trip snack?

Steve 33:16
My favorite road trip snack is probably peanuts.

Beth 33:18
Just you go roasted salted Well, if

Steve 33:23
I’m driving I’m gonna go with like I will just give me a bag I like the the planters cocktail peanuts. The only problem is it does make your hands a little salty. But if I’m at a baseball game, I want you know, ones that I’m actually shelled. But driving that gets really messy unless you like I guess want to throw them out the window, which is its own kind of problem. But yeah, probably probably peanuts. Because they’re good. Good protein and not too messy and they don’t melt.

Beth 33:50
That’s a very good point. Yeah, the melting is is definitely something that you have to keep keep in mind on on the road. Yeah. Do you have a like, what’s your next plan to trip where are you heading next any kind of trip not not just road trip.

Steve 34:07
So not planned yet. The the the conceptualized trip that we are starting to work on planning, we’ve actually my partner just got back from an eight day trip with with her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend up to Washington. And we had done a camping trip recently to so we’re kind of and I’ve been in Denver for a business trip recently. So we’re all traveled out at the moment. But the thing we were there’s there’s a few things we want to do. So one is we are we want to go down to Universal Studios specifically so we can go to Super Nintendo World of obsolescence because, yeah, I know I might be 52 but I still like to play Mario Kart. So but like all of us as a family, my daughter, I partner her her daughter and boyfriend we all like to play Mario Kart. And so it’s like that’s kind of one of our family things. And so we want to go do a trip down there. We want to do a trip to New York, and we want to do a trip to Chicago. My partner and I go Like, we’re both fans of architecture, and I’m a huge Frank Lloyd Wright guy. And so I’ve always wanted to go to Oak Park there and to do that, and so there’s a lot of different things we want to do, which ones next? Probably Universal Studios, because that’s just the easiest one. Right? And that’s the one we’re most actively doing. But all of those that one will probably be a car. The other ones will probably be planes. I’m not sure I’m driving cross country again.

Beth 35:24
once and done, do you have like a bucket list trip?

Steve 35:31
Do I have to pick one. I mean, there’s, there’s still a number of places in the country that I that I would like to see. But outside of the country, I’ve, I have not gotten to spend a lot of time outside of the country. I’ve been to Canada, I’ve been to Mexico, I’ve been to France once but I, I would really like to see more of Europe. Like to see Italy if that. We’ve talked about doing a Mediterranean cruise, which feels like the right balance of getting to see a lot of things but not having to like deal with trained and navigate around a bunch of foreign countries. So that’s one, I would really like to go up and spend some time in Scandinavia. Because again, never been there. But it’s kind of a fascinating place to me, Iceland, I’ve know a few people who have been there and sounds amazing. So there’s just, you know, there’s just there’s really a bunch of them. And it really did more comes down to for me. What is either what speaking to something current for me, and what makes sense. You know, the good news is, there’s lots of cool places to go. And so I try and do the thing of like, what of those? Which one makes sense, logistically, financially, someone else who wants to go do it, and just kind of what’s the way of doing it that will? You know, that’ll be as smooth as possible.

Beth 36:45
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s no, there’s no limit on destinations that are worth going to, it’s just totally, which ones you can, yeah. And then who is on your travel playlist, whether it’s a road trip, or flying, like, do you have music you listen to on a regular,

Steve 37:07
I’m not necessarily anything cheap or regular, I have, I have a number of different playlists. I’m now as I told you, before we started recording, I worked in radio for a time, and I’ve always been a huge music guy. So, you know, sort of, for me in this era of like streaming music and things is like amazing. Like if I if I could go back in time and tell 15 year old me, who’s just getting into music that hey, by the way, someday, this is how it’s gonna be he would have just been like no way, you know, wouldn’t have believed it, but would have been also, like, that’s so cool. So I tend to, I tend to set up playlists by either musical genres, or I have some that I’ve created that are more musical eras. So like, I have like 70s playlist and 80s playlist, and it is playlist, right? And so it really just is about mood and and figuring out what’s the mood that we need. So sometimes it’s something more higher energy. Sometimes it’s something a little bit more, you know, a little bit more relaxing. So if you if you ride in the car with me, you could hear anything, depending on what moment it is.

Beth 38:12
I love that. Yeah, it’s, I tell you, whether you have to stay awake or right you’re in traffic and you need to relax,

Steve 38:21
you know, or audio. I mean, audiobooks are also cool thing. My dad, my dad has spent a lot of time this is probably why we traveled well. And this trip, we used to go skiing a lot when I was a kid and we would drive from like Santa Cruz or the bay area up to Lake Tahoe, which is like a four or four or five hour drive. And he used to have, he got a bunch of old radio shows, they when they started putting these out on tape. So this is back in the 80s. So this is you know, forever ago, but he they put them out on tape. And so we would listen to those on on trips, which was really cool. Because it was these were things that were designed to be listened to, right not visual, and they were so these really good stories. And it was interesting for me from a history standpoint, because we’re looking at things like from the 50s and 60s, or even the 40s and so that was kind of interesting. And yeah, so we’ll do audiobooks sometimes it just again depends on what’s the you know, what’s the mood and I think that’s really it. It’s like what do you need? Do you need an energy boost? You need to calm down? Do you need a distraction? You know, if I’m driving through someplace it’s particularly boring That’s where having like an audiobook is great, because it really lets my mind get into the story and I don’t worry about the fact there’s nothing that interesting visually for me

Beth 39:32
I love it. Well, thank you so much for the this time I love the fact that you guys went on this road trip and I hope other people pick a theme and get out there but I really appreciate your your knowledge and your experience on this one.

Steve 39:49
Oh absolutely. Glad to glad to share the story. It was it was a really fun, definitely fun and special trip and hopefully it gives it gives other people some ideas or inspiration And because I think there’s a lot of cool things you can do with that. And it can provide both good experiences for people, but I think also good bonding with people and important people in

Beth 40:11
their life. Definitely. All right. Well, thanks again.

Steve 40:14
You’re very welcome.

Beth 40:16
Thanks again to Steve for sharing this great story about a fun road trip with his father. You can get all the ways to connect with Steve at the show notes on the website, the roaming yeti.com And thank you for listening. I hope these episodes inspire you to get out and roam even in your own neighborhood. So please subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. And if you like what we’re doing here, please leave a review and a rating it helps us so so much. Also, to help support us please head over to Yeti to shop.com to pick up some roaming Yeti merch. I’ll talk to you soon and keep roaming