Anyone still go for Sunday drives?

[Quinn]

The gas threads got me thinking about the death of a great American tradition of cheap fun for the family--the Sunday Drive.

 

 

 

When I was a kid, we would all load up into the family car, a '54 Chrysler New Yorker with an invisible wall between the front seat adults and the rear seat kids, and head off to the country on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we'd visit relatives and sometimes we'd just look at scenery. Somewhere on the way back we'd manage to find a Dairy Queen and stop for a treat. Still remember playing car games, watching vultures circling (funny, we never saw any hawks in those days), cooling off with the breeze through the open windows. My little fat father would be perched up on an extra cushion, smoking a cigar, and feeling important. My mother, his lieutenant, would have to break down the invisible wall to yell at us or point things out.

 

When I started driving, I'd also go out for Sunday drives. I'd put the top down on the car, pick a funny sounding small town in rural Georgia and head out hoping to find a Dairy Queen on the loop back. But, by the time I got married, there were no more Sunday drives; we were always going some place and doing something. It got even more hectic with my son.

 

Now, it's just me and the motorcycle on Sundays and I'm picking out funny sounding small towns in rural North Carolina and hoping to find a BoJangles on the way back. Does anyone still take family Sunday drives

 

 

 

 

[KrazyHorse]

Every once in a while. On a rare weekend day when none of us have anything scheduled and we don't feel like working around the house we take a take a drive down to Palm Beach County. There's the PBC Zoo (Dhreher Park), a science museum, Lion Country safari, different beaches, a water park and more. Then we'll usually come back home the long way via Okeechobee.

 

We went down twice in the last two weeks. Did the zoo and museum one Sunday, and the following Saturday we drove around Loxahatchee. Though I guess that trip did have a bit of a purpose as we are looking to move down there and wanted to check out the neighborhood.

 

 

[russell_bynum]

We took the old 325 out on Saturday afternoon to test out the new suspension (H&R, Bilstein, Suspension Techniques, etc).

 

I drove like a complete maniac and we managed 26.4mpg.

[Joel]

Being selfless types with an ideal childless lifestyle [/sarcasm], "family" probably doesn't quite fit, but my better half and I go "gallivanting" quite a bit. Last Sunday it was about 150 miles of canyon carving to and from brunch. Usually a meal or coffee is involved. Sometimes we're on 2 wheels, sometimes 4. It's a good way to shop for rural real estate. Doesn't hurt to have twisty roads a short distance away.

[Matts_12GS]

i'm going to do it Saturday, riding down to Tampa to have breakfast w/the Tampa guys and then lunch w/my dad.

[Bob Palin]

i'm going to do it Saturday, riding down to Tampa to have breakfast w/the Tampa guys and then lunch w/my dad.

Can you go for a Sunday drive on Saturday?

 

We didn't have a car when I was a kid (we were so poor we lived...) Sometimes a friend's father, Trevor Long's to be precise, would take us boys out for a ride. If his wife didn't come along we would go to a whoop-de-do section of road and try to get air, it's amazing his old car didn't fall apart. We never ate or visited anybody, it was just a ride. (I don't think I ate in a restaurant before I was a teenager, we were so poor...)

[tallman]

Can you go for a Sunday drive on Saturday?

 

Bob,

You, of all people, should know that when it is Saturday in Tampa, it's Sunday in New Zealand.

 

So, yes, you can.

You can be in more than one place at a time, and more than one time at a place.

 

And, Yes, to OP.

[upflying]

No Sunday drives. If I go anywhere, it's to Lowes or Home Depot for honey do project supplies aided by a TV set tuned to NASCAR.

I used to put 30,000 mi a year on my car when I was a kid. I would leave home just to go for a drive. Those days are gone.

[Bheckel169]

My family started the tradition of Sunday drives in our 1960 Chevy Impala station wagon with two forward benches and the death bench in the back pointing out the back. We had deflectors that were supposed to deflect something, but it basically deflected exhaust fumes directly back into the back with the electric window down. By the end of the drive, whoever was back there had lost a significant portion of their capacity to think and move. Probably lost about 30 to 50 IQ points by sitting back there.

My dad took Sunday drives seriously and we would leave Orange County, CA and end up in Ensenada, Mexico, then turn around and come back.

In the tradition I've come to love, I used to do the same thing to my kids. Eventually, they got wise to my "Sunday trips" and started bringing sleeping bags. I've been known to circumnavigate the entire state of Utah, north to south and east to west in one day. Now, as adults, when visiting, my kids will not ride with me unless I promise to keep the drives down to 2 hours max.

They're no fun at all.

Bruce

[WURTY]

Great story about the rear faceing seat.

Our 1966 Olds Vista cruiser wagon used to make all of us kids sick from the fumes.

Then throw in mom and dad sucking on 3 packs of Pall Mall's and you know where my first batch of brain cells got fried

 

Now a days we have a new Honda Minivan and at least once every other month Mrs Wurty and my 2 rug rats deploy to parts unknown for a family adventure.

It's still fun but they won't let me smoke Anything in the van...Bummer.

[ShovelStrokeEd]

I still do it on the bike.

Sunday is meander day. I get up at the crack of dawn, put some gear on and just ride. I'll stop somewhere for breakfast and then somewhere else for a snack. Ice cream is always good.

 

I don't head out with any destination in mind, just go.

 

This after 50 years of riding. I still like doing it better than nearly anything else. I don't get up at 2AM anymore to go for a ride but I used to and may again one day.

[Bullett]

We do, usually on the bikes.

[Bheckel169]

Oh yeh. I have to tell you that on Sundays here in western North Carolina, I go up Highway 9 to Lake Lure and hang out with a bunch of compatible miscreants and we congregate near the hotel where "Dirty Dancing" was filmed and oogle the young fair maidens who come to visit the beach. We're a bunch of 60 year olds who are basically invisible to the young crowd who visit the beach but we sit and visit in our little roadside park and watch the bikes, cars and people go by waving at all of them. I think this is kinda fun and upon reflection kinda weird. I use to remember the "greeter" in Southern California in the 50's who would stand on the side of the highway to San Diego and wave to everyone. I miss him. He seemed to have a purpose in life.

Bruce

[Matts_12GS]

bruce, which hotel is that?

[Francois_Dumas]

Sunday RIDES yes, Sunday drives, no because we would wind up in a traffic jam 99% of the time these days.

[TyTass]

I have so many inerests that a Sunday ride/drive is not a weekly event. But I'd say I do a Sunday ride about once a month minimum. Rode all alst weekend with another couple, but the Sunday before was just Terri and I riding not terribly far from home ... just to see the sites, have a nice lunch, etc.

[Calvin (no socks)]

As a child we rode somewhere nearly every weekend...gas was 0.27 a gallon and you got green stamps to boot. I grew up in Connecticut and the state park system is incredible. A small state and lots of back roads similar to the ones our English friends post. My brother and I had no idea where we were going. What adventures we had. Fishing with my dad.. Haven't done it since..I need to take him on a ride!

 

I ride somewhere very early on most Sunday mornings. I am usually coming back home when other people are getting up and out. That has been tough to do over the last 3 years, as we opened a resturaunt and that sucks up my extra time/energy/money.

 

A few years back I took a old Chevy Malibu to a car show. Windows down, listening to the exhaust, speed limit on rural roads, didn't have to rush. Had a frickin blast. Stopped for a DQ. Pulled over along the highway under the shade of a tree.

 

I am planning to take my wife and one of her freinds on a drive tomorrow. Destination unknown to them. Lets go have lunch and burn some $4.10 gas while we still can.

[Bheckel169]

The 1927 Lake Lure Inn and Spa.

Bruce

[Knifemaker]

Ahhhhhh....the old days....Our Sunday drives always started out on Friday night in the early days.....

 

Friday night we would all pack in the car and run down to the Krystal Drive In on Beach Blvd and the friendly car hop girls would hang a large stack of Krystal cheese burgers, cokes, and fries on the window of the car and my sister and I would try and see how many for those "burgers" we could shove down our throats in the shortest amount of time and usually as we got better at it oneburger per bite at a time....

 

Saturday morning we would load up and go the the local Winn Dixie on University Blvd for some weekly grocery shopping where my grandmother would always make sure I carried in her 2 empty cases (24 in a case) in a wooden crate of 8 oz. bottled Cokes and she would shop for food...We would geat home and Dad would bring out the old wooden hand cranked ice cream churn and he and I would crank out homemade peach ice cream. By the time we finished churning out the ice cream my grandmother had just finished baking her homemade hot pound cake.....Hot pound cake, fresh peach icecream and 8 oz. Coke....life was grand...

 

Sunday morning go to church....After church go to Morrison's Cafateria or to Beach Road Chicken Dinner for lunch...After lunch get in the old station wagon and head for Switzerland just outside Jacksonville, Fl. My uncle owned an orange and grapefruit grove in Switzerland...We would spend the afternoon picking our weeks supply of fresh fruit and loving it...One more stop on the way back home to complete the day....The old black man on the side of the road who hade a rock wheel grinder and a mule who walk around in cricles all day as the rock wheels ground out fresh sugar cane juice that he would bottle and sell for 50 cents a gallon and my sister and I got a stalk of sugar cane to chew on for the ride home...

 

Wish I could have shared this with my kids....but time change...This was our weekly "Sunday drive"

[Lets_Play_Two]

The gas threads got me thinking about the death of a great American tradition of cheap fun for the family--the Sunday Drive.

 

 

 

When I was a kid, we would all load up into the family car, a '54 Chrysler New Yorker with an invisible wall between the front seat adults and the rear seat kids, and head off to the country on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we'd visit relatives and sometimes we'd just look at scenery. Somewhere on the way back we'd manage to find a Dairy Queen and stop for a treat. Still remember playing car games, watching vultures circling (funny, we never saw any hawks in those days), cooling off with the breeze through the open windows. My little fat father would be perched up on an extra cushion, smoking a cigar, and feeling important. My mother, his lieutenant, would have to break down the invisible wall to yell at us or point things out.

 

When I started driving, I'd also go out for Sunday drives. I'd put the top down on the car, pick a funny sounding small town in rural Georgia and head out hoping to find a Dairy Queen on the loop back. But, by the time I got married, there were no more Sunday drives; we were always going some place and doing something. It got even more hectic with my son.

 

Now, it's just me and the motorcycle on Sundays and I'm picking out funny sounding small towns in rural North Carolina and hoping to find a BoJangles on the way back. Does anyone still take family Sunday drives

 

 

 

 

My wife and I go out for Sunday ride every week. Many times on motorcycles but if not that we put the top down on the convertible and cruise with 50's and 60's music playing. Sometimes makes me feel and act like a teenager!

[Matts_12GS]

The 1927 Lake Lure Inn and Spa.

Bruce

 

I'll have to look that up.

I've been to a few places around lake lure. thanks!