Road trips are amazing. They fill you with excitement and wonder, and the journey is just as good as the destination, sometimes even better. There are different types of road trips. There are spontaneous ones, planned ones, cross-country road trips. If you think about it and try hard enough, any time you jump in the car could become a road trip.

There is an essence to road trips that separates them from any regular trip to the grocery store. Road trips have a careless air about them; a sort of “anything can happen” vibe. You could be out going on a normal Starbucks run when suddenly you decide to go a theme park. I once went on a road trip to Disney World. We drove for 24 hours straight, and it was tons of fun. It was almost as if we forgot that the goal was the happiest place on Earth, not the road trip itself.

Taking a road trip is the best way to see and explore your state—or even the whole county. Maybe you can finally see that monument or state park, like Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon. Maybe you just want to see how far you can drive without turning back. Or maybe you will start a quest to find America’s best cup of coffee. Road trips can hold any number of wonderful hidden gems. Any midnight Wal-Mart run can be a road trip as long as no one is cranky.

The thing about road trips, though, is that it is easy for everyone to get a little tired of each other in such small quarters. You have to be ready to acknowledge the fact that if you get bored or annoyed with someone, you can’t just walk into another room. The farthest you could get would be the trunk.

Summer is the perfect time for road trips. The weather is warm and beach-perfect, you can drive with the windows down and sing along to feel-good music, and there is the bonus of not having to worry about getting stuck in the snow. Whether you go on a whim or look forward to it for weeks, road trips are always fun.