The Lost Art of the Sunday Drive: Going Nowhere on Purpose
My father drove a 1967 Ford Fairlane, powder blue, and on Sunday afternoons he would say "let's go for a drive" and we would get in and go. Where? Nowhere particular. Just around. Through parts of town we did not usually pass through. Down county roads that ran between fields. Past farms and small lakes and grain elevators. He drove slowly, which I used to find embarrassing, and now I understand was the whole point.
The Sunday drive as a family ritual is mostly gone now. We are not a people who have time for going nowhere. We have destinations, agendas, podcasts to get through, errands that couldn't get done during the week. The car is a tool for arriving somewhere, not for looking at things along the way. This is a loss of a specific kind, quiet and not dramatic, the sort that takes decades to fully notice.
When Driving Was Still New
The Sunday drive became a genuine American institution in the 1920s and 1930s, as car ownership spread beyond the wealthy. Before then, a Sunday outing meant a picnic you walked to or a carriage ride if you were fortunate. The automobile opened up the entire countryside to ordinary families in a way that felt like magic, because it was — you could go twenty miles in forty minutes, which was a kind of freedom that had not existed before.
Early roads were not highways. They were two-lane affairs that passed through towns and around hills rather than over or under them. They had names like the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway, which were not so much official designations as informal networks stitched together from local roads. Driving on them, you saw things: roadside stands selling local produce, small motels with neon signs, towns you would not otherwise have any reason to enter. The road was a view into the country rather than a way to skip it.
This is partly why the Interstate Highway System, for all its genuine utility, contributed to the decline of the Sunday drive as a pleasurable activity. On an interstate you see the back sides of highway signs and the undersides of overpasses. This is not interesting. You arrive faster, which is often what you want, but faster is not the same as better when the activity is pleasure rather than transportation.
What Happened to the Sunday Drive
The oil crisis of 1973 was the punctuation that ended the sentence. Gas prices quadrupled, lines formed at stations, and driving for pleasure suddenly felt not just expensive but vaguely unpatriotic. The Nixon administration asked Americans to drive less. Speed limits came down. The message, which was economically reasonable, was also culturally durable in a way that the economy eventually was not. Long after gas became affordable again, the habit of driving for pleasure had acquired a slight sense of self-indulgence that it had never carried before.
Suburban sprawl also made the Sunday drive less scenic. When the countryside around a city is replaced by subdivisions and strip malls for thirty or forty miles in every direction, there is less countryside to drive through enjoyably. You have to drive farther to find anything worth looking at slowly, and driving farther means committing to a larger chunk of the day, which the calendar resists.
And there is the productivity problem. Somewhere in the last few decades, Americans absorbed the idea that leisure time should be earned and that it should be improving in some measurable sense. Exercise counts because it is good for you. A museum visit counts because it is educational. Driving around looking at things does not obviously count as anything, which makes it difficult to justify against the competing claims on a Sunday afternoon.
Why the Sunday Drive Was Worth More Than It Looked
The family car, on a Sunday drive, was one of the few places where conversation happened without an agenda. You were not at the dinner table, where there were topics. You were not watching television, where silence was normal. You were in a moving vehicle, looking out windows, and you talked about what you saw: that barn looks like it's been there a hundred years, wonder what those horses' names are, didn't we stop at that diner once when you were small?
This kind of talk, inconsequential but continuous, is the connective tissue of family life. It is how you find out what your teenager is actually thinking about, not because you asked but because there was nothing else to do for twenty minutes on a county road and they started talking. It is how grandparents tell grandchildren about the land they are passing through in ways that never come up at kitchen tables.
There is also the specific virtue of looking at things you did not plan to look at. Every place has more texture than its residents usually notice, because residents are usually on their way somewhere and not paying attention to the way the light falls on the courthouse in the early afternoon or how the old grain elevator looks against a November sky. The Sunday driver, going nowhere in particular, sees these things. This is not nothing.
How to Take a Sunday Drive in 2026
The secret is to not use the navigation app. Put it away. Choose a direction, get on a state highway or county road, and follow your curiosity. If a road looks interesting, take it. If a small town looks like it has a diner, stop and have coffee. Allow yourself to be surprised by your own county, which has almost certainly not been fully explored by you even if you have lived in it for twenty years.
The National Scenic Byways Program maintains a list of designated scenic routes across all fifty states, which is a useful place to start if your local geography needs any help. State highway departments often mark similar routes. But honestly, you do not need a scenic byway. Almost any two-lane road that avoids the interstate system will show you something worth looking at, if you are going slowly enough to look.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Sunday drive?
A Sunday drive is a leisurely car trip taken without a specific destination or errand in mind — purely for the pleasure of driving and seeing the surroundings. The tradition was particularly common in mid-20th century America when car ownership was new and exciting, roads were less congested, and gas was comparatively inexpensive.
Why did the Sunday drive decline?
The 1973 oil crisis made leisurely driving feel wasteful, and this cultural attitude persisted even after gas prices stabilized. Urban sprawl made Sunday drives less scenic as countryside was replaced by development. Cultural shifts toward productivity-oriented leisure also played a role — spending time doing nothing purposeful became harder for many families to justify.
Are there good scenic drives near most American cities?
Yes. Most American cities are within an hour of scenic back roads, state parks, or rural routes. The key is deliberately choosing smaller state and county roads rather than interstates. The National Scenic Byways Program maintains a list of officially designated scenic routes across all 50 states, available through the Federal Highway Administration.
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