Every road trip starts with optimism.
“We’ll make great time.”
“We won’t need that many stops.”
“We definitely don’t need to use the bathroom already.”
Five minutes later, someone needed a bathroom.
My best friend and I recently drove from Manchester to Beaufort, South Carolina. By hour one, we needed coffee. By hour two, we needed a bathroom. By hour four, we needed both. Somewhere around Virginia, we started measuring progress in service plazas instead of miles. The trip covered more than 1,000 miles and took us past military bases, NASA signs, giant bridges, beautiful waterways, and enough gas stations to qualify as a geography lesson.
One of the coolest moments came when we spotted signs for Quantico, home of the Marine Corps base and FBI training academy. A little farther south, we passed signs pointing toward NASA facilities, which instantly turned the car into a rolling episode of a space documentary. It was one of those unexpected moments that reminds you how much there is to see even when you’re “just driving.”
Of course, no road trip South is complete without a stop at Buc-ee’s. If you’ve never been, imagine a convenience store, barbecue restaurant, gift shop, tourist attraction, and small city all rolled into one giant building. We went in for a bathroom break and somehow came out with armloads of snacks, fudge, beef jerky, and several items we absolutely did not need.
As we crossed into South Carolina, the scenery began to change. Marshes stretched to the horizon, waterways sparkled in the afternoon sun, and the pace felt just a little slower. Near Beaufort and Port Royal, we even spotted military aircraft overhead from Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, which made for a pretty memorable welcome to the Lowcountry.
By the time we finally rolled into Beaufort, we’d consumed enough snacks to feed a small army, made approximately 4,000 bathroom stops, debated every possible food option along I-95, and become experts on every service plaza between New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Would we do it again?
Absolutely.
But next time, we’re packing even more snacks… and maybe mapping out the bathrooms ahead of time.
