Summer Road Trip: Spilled Milk #343

There's no better spot for the ultimate summer road trip than California. Plus: where to stay, eat, drink, shop, picnic, paddleboard and hike.

The Great American Road Trip is more than a vacation. It’s a ritual, a rite of passage, a gas-guzzling baptism into the chaotic poetry of freedom. This is not Europe’s train timetable or Japan’s hyper-efficiency — we're talking cracked windshields, melted milkshakes and the ecstatic possibility that something glorious or catastrophic is waiting just over the next rise. The American road is equal parts myth and asphalt, and summer is its season.

In our national psyche, it begins with Kerouac, his thumb out and notebook open, scrawling jazz and madness as he chased kicks across an America both real and imagined. Then came Hunter S. Thompson, who filled the tank with mescaline and paranoia and roared into the Nevada desert in a red shark, turning the road trip into gonzo scripture. Steinbeck brought a poodle and melancholy. Joan Didion brought a notebook and a California cool so dry it blistered.

No California road trip would be complete without a stop in Big Sur.

California, of course, is where this all begins. The birthplace of American car culture, where the Beach Boys sold the dream of a convertible and a girl in every port, and where the freeway was elevated, literally and spiritually, into a cathedral of speed. California is where the road becomes the destination: Highway 1 hugs the cliffs like a lover who refuses to let go, and the desert roads of Joshua Tree stretch like a hallucination toward nowhere in particular. It’s the only place where you can surf in the morning, drink wine by lunch and be in a redwood forest by dinner. Try doing that on the A4 to Slough.

New episodes of Wild Game Kitchen premiere every night this week at 7:00 p.m. ET as part of Tastemade’s Grill Week.

Tune in and learn how to grill everything from squid to quail to wild boar. The show airs on the Tastemade Smokehouse channel on Pluto TV — or anywhere you stream TV for free.

Why does the road trip endure? Because it’s untethered. Because you’re in control, until you’re not. Because a Waffle House at 2 a.m. outside Flagstaff is just as memorable as a museum in Florence. It’s the only holiday where the act of going is the whole point. You want the detour. You hope the motel has a vibrating bed.

In 2025, when curated experiences and algorithmic travel have sterilized spontaneity, the road trip still crackles with danger, promise and poor decisions. It is the last bastion of analog adventure. Pack snacks, cue your favorite playlist and point west. California’s calling, and the road, as ever, is ready to rewrite your story.