We asked our readers earlier this week what are the best sights they’ve seen while out on the road. ‘Best’ is an extremely subjective qualifier, and responses understandably ran the gauntlet from natural beauty to highway calamity. Without further ado, here are the most memorable moments where readers could stop themselves from gawking out of the window:
Oh gosh, I’ve done and seen so many places just in Southern California with my car. But I liked this shot with my car from the top of Big Bear. I was rolling with a caravan of enthusiasts that day, very fun.
Submitted by: darthspartan117
Glacier National Park, just before dawn, sometime in late April 2003.
I was sitting in the bed of my ‘99 Nissan Frontier and had just brewed a cup of coffee. My travelling companion was still asleep in the tent and there was no one else in the campground.
I sat for over 30 minutes in the quiet and watched the dawn break over the Rockies and race along the valley we were in.
Submitted by: IstillmissmyXJ
My mother is from MA, but we lived in MI, so a few times a year we would road trip to her parents through Canada, meaning a few times a year I would get to see Niagara Falls. We didn’t always go the Rainbow Bridge, but when the weather was right, we would just to get to see it and stretch our legs a little.
As an adult, it surprises me how many people have never been. But seeing it from the captain chair of a Ford Aerostar was always pretty amazing.
Submitted by: PotbellyJoe and 42 others
There used to be a really good annual folk music festival in New Bedford, MA, in early July. One year when the Fourth fell on that Saturday, we were heading home up Route 24 after sunset and we saw a fireworks display off to the left. And then another to the right. And another to the left, and maybe a couple more...it was a nice bit of magic to end what had been a pretty good day already.
Submitted by: Affenschmidt
I have several:
Christmas Light Show at Lanier Lake in Georgia with the top down on my Wildcat convertible. Sure it was a little chilly (low 50's that night) but that’s why we brought a blanket.
Driving down I-95 south from Savannah to Miami on the 4th of July, watching all the fireworks displays of the little towns we passed.
Somewhere between Lubbock and Amarillo TX in the early 80s, about 2am, away from all the city lights, I was able to see so many stars, which was amazing for someone who grew up in NJ. After a while, we stopped and once our eyes adjusted, we were able to make out the Milky Way. Barely.
Just before we got back in the car, we saw a shooting star that lit up the sky.
Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I
I once saw someone who was texting while driving their minivan ~10 under in the fast lane of the freeway rear end someone who was texting while driving their minivan ~20 under in the fast lane of the freeway.
It was so beautiful.
They should have sent a poet.
Submitted by: TRath
I was driving solo to California the week of the 2020 election. It was somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona - where the landscape had given way to that mix of scrubland, desert, mountains and plateaus. I was driving along one of those state highways that just seems to stretch on forever into the distance (because the route was quicker and more interesting than taking the interstates the whole way), listening to Tash Sultana’s Tiny Desk Concert. I crested a hilltop around the time the song “Jungle” was hitting one of its choruses, and laid out before me was the most beautiful scenery as far as the eye could see. Juniper-scrub, and desert, hills near and far, clouds casting patches of shadow here and there.
I’m not a religious person, but if I’ve had any genuinely spiritual moments of my adult life, that was one of them. Definite core memory moment - probably the best memory I have of the time I spent visiting and living in California. Just thinking back to it still takes my breath away...
Submitted by: Skamanda
I don’t have a photo anymore, but I can share the details of the wildest thing I’ve seen while driving.
You know how you hate “rubbernecker delays” where everyone slows down to gawk at some mundane thing. They want to see who the cops pulled over or how bad the crash might have been. One night (it was dark), while driving down I-85 through rural SC (foreshadowing, perhaps?) at a normal highway pace, I came across a car on the side of the road. I have no idea what sort of car it was. The reason I couldn’t identify it is also the reason I’m telling this story.
And that reason is because it was fully, completely, utterly engulfed in roaring flames. And it was pitch dark out, so it was extra visible.
And everyone was just cruising on by it like it’s just the most normal thing in the world. The dichotomy between normal humans’ desire to gawk at something even a little bit unusual combined with the utter madness of the thing they were just not interested in looking at has stuck with me to this day.
Maybe that’s just a normal thing in bumblefuck South Carolina?
Submitted by: Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death
The best sight I ever saw from my car was an act of social kindness.
A few years ago I was driving through our downtown at 3:00 in the afternoon. While I was waiting for the light to change, a young woman - clearly under the influence of something beyond alcohol - stumbled out of an alley, took off her top and started dancing around a light post.
There was a cop two cars behind me. He lit up his flashers and got out of his car to go “deal with” this person who was clearly in distress. Before he got there, a shop owner came out of his shop with a blanket. He coaxed the woman off the pole, wrapped her in a blanket and got her out of public view. He was quiet, kind, and so gentle with her.
I hopped out of my car to see if I could help - and to possibly intercept the cop. We went into the shop. The owner had already called our city’s Social Diversion team, and we waited for them to show up. He gave the woman juice and food, and locked the door of the shop so nobody would bother her.
When the Social Diversion team showed up, two amazing women gave the victim a hoodie, escorted her to the back of the store so she could change in private, and then took her out the back door, to resources that could help.
The cop was hopping mad that we’d locked the front door before he got there. He wanted to arrest her for creating a public disturbance. Fuck that guy.
That shopkeeper’s quick thinking and compassion for one of his fellow humans, is the best thing I’ve ever seen from my car.
Submitted by: JohnnyWasASchoolBoy
After a long business trip, there is nothing more beautiful than my own driveway coming into view. None whatsoever.
Submitted by: skeffles