These Are The Worst Things That Ever Happened To You On A Road Trip

Circa 1974. College. Spring break arrives and someone gets the drug-fueled idea to get in the back of a pickup and drive to Baja. From Colorado. Somewhere outside of Ensenada we’re blasting down a dirt road and hit a bump which causes the driver who is swilling on a bottle of mezcal to swallow the worm. Hallucinations ensue and somewhere up in the mountains he drives two wheels off the side of a hill and we’re stuck. Everyone is scratching their heads. There’s a field down the hill maybe 100 feet. I say, “push it.” This angers the mob. They strap in the hallucinating driver and I’m like no no no... eventually he gets out and they push the F-150. It rolls down the hill, thru the farmer’s fence and into his field, they run down and get the truck and off we go to the beach. After such trauma the need for drugs was foremost on the mob’s mind. At this point I discover not only is cannabis onboard, but LSD and some other substances that will see me sitting in a Mexican prison for many Gringo-abusing years. So I walk off into the desert alone. Eventually I find some nice people with a trailer. They’re rockhounds. They drive me back to California. Police stops ensue while I hitchike. I spend all my money on a plane to Vegas then take a bus to the edge of town where a one-armed man and a pitbull guard a junkyard with a sign that says, “WARNING ARMED PERSONNEL.” There’s some scribbling on the lightpost that quotes Emmy Lou Harris- “oooooo... Las Vegas ain’t no place for a poorboy like me.” A gambler in a van drives me to the junction of I-70 and I-15 in the middle of the night. At first light I wake up in my bag under two feet of snow. A trucker saves my life. Hitchiking on I-80 a cute woman in a Chevy LUV truck slows down, but does the right thing and keeps going. Later I find her in Boulder and eventually marry her. We spend over 30 years together. I talked to her just the other day.

Suggested by: TheBlightOfGrey

Back in 2018 my wife and I took my 2010 Honda Odyssey on a 1000 mile road trip to Disney’s Vero Beach Resort. We were then planning to spend a few days in Disney world before heading home which we had a time limit on because my best friend was having a baby shower we HAD to be at. Ill start this story that the week long beach vacation went great nothing wrong went there.

Now lets go to the day of departure from the resort to Disney World (a 2 hour drive from Vero). I always pack the car and have a specific way I do it so my wife and I bring the bags to the car and I start loading it to fit all of our crap. I go upstairs to grab the last thing which was our beach chairs and bring them to the car. When I pack I normally have the side captains doors open and the trunk for organization purposes. I left the keys in the car since I was the one doing the loading and when I come back down with the chairs... My wife had closed everything. Me seeing this realizes instantly the keys are still in the car and it probably locked. Sure enough that’s the case. No big deal my wife felt bad but whatever wait for a locksmith and go on about our day after waiting for someone for 2 hours.

My wife insists she wants to drive us to Disney World because she thought I was mad but you know shit happens and I know I have locked my keys in the car plenty of times. Well while driving past a gas station about a half and hour into our trip I mention to her “Oh I think last time I drove we were a little below a quarter tank so we might want to fill up” She insists its fine and we continue. Well about 10 miles past the gas station and in the middle of hell Florida in 104 July temps the car just shuts off while shes driving. I immediately tell her to pull over to figure out the problem... Sure enough we ran out of gas. I go did you not see a big orange light turn on when the fuel is low? She stated she didn’t even look.... Now’s where I get irritated as I just asked about the gas. We ended up stuck there for about 45 minutes in the burning heat as I waited for an Uber to come pick me up to take me back to the gas station and buy a jug... Got back filled up the car and finally got to Disney which I think at this point my wife felt my annoyance.

Shoot to 2 days later we had gone to highly reccomended resturaunt in disney springs for dinner and we had to leave at 2am to make the baby shower I mentioned earlier. Well we both ended up getting food poisoning at the place and had to spend 20 hours driving back just for both of us to pull over puke or sleep.

The trip was great and all but good god I never want to do it again

Suggested by: Who.the.hell.is.Mac

My ex-wife accidentally flushed the keys to our rental minivan down the toilet at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Alabama. There’s nothing that makes the long slog back from vacation like being stuck in a town that measures its population by the double-digits with 6 kids under the age of eight and your mother-in-law.

Thankfully, Enterprise was able to deliver a replacement van after an insufferably long wait, but as awful as that was, it could have been worse. We could have opted to take our own CR-V instead, and we weren’t exactly in a place with a Honda dealer nearby to get us a new key, especially on the Sunday before Labor Day Monday.

Suggested by: paradsecar

Not a long road trip. But I rode with a friend down to another friends college graduation party. It as about 2 hours away. She drove like a total maniac. A few times I was getting nauseous. The icing on the cake was when a CD (this was like 2005) was skipping bad and she decided to take it out and bend it until it broke. If you ever have done then then you know they pretty much explode. It that was going down the highway at 85mph and almost getting shards of CD in your eyes.

Suggested by: Nemo

About 30 years ago we were driving on scenic 212 from minneapolis to the black hills on ha very hot summer day. I did not know at the time but my 19889 for ranger hated ethanol. I gassed up in eagle butte. 1/2 later my ranger vapor locked. we were just stranded on the side of the road. I had a 5 gal water jug I pored over the motor to cool the fuel lines and wile waiting a large flat bed truck of bee hives pulled up. My wife is allergic to beestings so she dove into the truck and rolled up the windows. I waved them off. after sitting a while the truck restarted, we drove off and then vapor locked again luckily at a gas station, but. The gas station no longer sold gas and stopped working on car years earlier, it was just a few old guys playing cards. They let us use the hose and we sat in the 100+ degree shade. we got going. Down the road we vapor locked again. This time 2 13-year olds with a flat bed trailer behind an old 1 ton truck towed us to Newell SD for $20 and we sat and had dinner at a restaurant until sunset and the temp went down. After a week of rock climbing in the Black Hills and Devil’s Tower. We took the highway home and only used good gas. I sold the truck about a year later.

Suggested by: 4jim

2005-ish, I decide to help my best friend move from the east coast to Portland, OR. I had relocated to Olympia, WA about a year prior, so I had already made the trip in a box truck pulling my car on a flatbed, and generally knew what to expect in addition to having experience with big trucks + trailers by way of growing up on a farm. I fly back east and my buddy has already packed the U-Haul, so all we need to do the next morning is get his car onto the flatbed and head out. Everything is smooth sailing until we hit Missouri (I think it was April or May) right around the same time that a tornado shows up and rocks the shit out of the lower half of the state. Semis are getting blown over, interstates are shut down, so we try to find the nearest hotel ASAP to wait it out but everything is booked up. We finally find a small trucker motel that I’m certain was only used for prostitution. We’re skeeved out and sleep in our clothes for fear of catching crabs or something and just want to get some sleep and get back on the road at the earliest opportunity. Morning rolls around, the weather has cleared, so we hit the road. Traffic is crawling due to all the tipped semis, so we’re already more than a day behind schedule. Fuck it, I drive through the night and most of the next day, which was more comfortable for me anyway since I’m 6'2 and my buddy is like 5'6 at best, so I don’t have my knees jammed into the dash when he needs to adjust the single bench seat to drive.

We’re finally approaching Cheyenne, WY as another weather event happens. This time, it’s a freak blizzard accompanied by high winds, so once again the interstates are shut down and it is incredibly difficult to find a hotel. We finally get a room in a small motor lodge attached to a seedy bar and diner. Not ideal, but at least we can get some drinks and put cooked food prepared by an actual person into our bellies. Now, this particular bar and diner was apparently the favored hangout of local roughnecks and we became hyper-aware of not fitting in immediately upon entering. Imagine the type of joint portrayed in a Coen Brothers movie, where the jukebox skips and everyone stares when outsiders walk in. Exactly that type of vibe. We sit at the counter, order some beers and food, and do our best to become invisible and mind our own business. This went south when the two local shit-kickers at the table behind us decide to entertain themselves by asking us the same questions repeatedly in a way that became less friendly. “Where ya’ll from?” “Whatcha’ll doin’ here?” “Ya’ll drive a truck? Does the short one sit on your lap?” We’re doing our best to diffuse but it is clear that conflict may be imminent. Eventually, words are exchanged, threats are made, and we just want to get out peacefully. We settle up and head for the door, but our aggressors follow. Next thing I know, my buddy is getting sucker punched in the eye, the other tries to glass me with a beer bottle when I intervene, and now we’re in an all-out brawl in the parking lot. I don’t know if a cop was nearby or if somebody called, but within a couple of minutes we all get lit up by lights and sirens and instructed to line up against the wall, hands over our heads. All of us get cuffed, patted down, and put into 2 different cruisers so each pair can tell their side. Obviously, we were painted as the instigators by the 2 townies. Smartly, the cops didn’t necessarily buy it, so they jut cut everyone loose before giving us a warning to leave town as soon as the roads are clear, which we eagerly did the next afternoon.

I’m basically going to yada-yada the rest because this is already too long. In addition to having a fucked up and swollen eye, and me having a couple of broken fingers, my buddy then gets food poisoning from a truck stop Subway in Utah and shits repeatedly along the roadside all the way through Idaho, before we finally arrive in Oregon about 3 days later than anticipated.

Suggested by: Hankel_Wankel

On my way home from a motorcycle rally ages ago, I took a secondary road to try to shave ~45 minutes off of the 8 hour ride to hopefully beat some looming weather.

Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough. High winds and rain turned into hail, which started getting pretty big. If you’ve ever been caught in hail on a motorcycle, it’s like getting shot with thousands of bbs, even through gear. I was trying my best to hide behind the short windshield, and my wife was doing her best impression of a backpack.

On the road ahead of us, I spotted a station wagon towing a fixed keel sailboat. (They sit quite tall on the trailer, usually 6-8 feet above the ground.) I tucked in as close to being under the stern of the boat as I could and gave the driver a few flashes to let him know I was there. He gave a thumb’s up and we started the coordinated drive. The person in the passenger seat gave hand signals for upcoming turns so that we could try to do things as “safely” as possible.

After a while, I spotted a hunting lodge that I knew was open to the public, so I flashed again, waved a thanks to the car, they gave a honk and a wave, and we parted ways.

Before we even got off the bike, the folks at the lodge told my wife to get inside for a hot coffee and for me to get the bike into a storage area in the back. They let us know that a tornado watch had been issued, what to listen for and what to do.

Thankfully, no twisters hit us, and the storm blew itself out after an hour or two. We then waited about another 4 hours for the road to be plowed so we could get back on our way.

Maybe 15 minutes down the road, we came across a lot of emergency vehicles, an overturned semi, and the boat trailer. The semi had blown over onto the station wagon we had been tucked in behind and completely flattened it. There is now way anyone in the car could have survived, and we definitely wouldn’t have either if we were still drafting them.

I don’t take that road any more.

Suggested by: TRath

Summer of 1997. End of college road trip around the U.S. starting from NJ which covered 11,528 miles in 31 days in a 1995 Plymouth Neon (4 door Highline, white, just like in the “Hi” commercials). The car was packed with clothes, food, camping equipment, two shoe boxes of mixed tapes (remember those), bike and general tools, and our mountain bikes hanging off the back on a cheap, but effective bike rack. It had about 24k miles when we started the trip, so still under warranty (this is important to note).

I know what you’re all thinking...but no, the car ran flawlessly. We ran it across the midwest, up and down the Rockies, as far west as San Fran, down the coast to San Diego, Vegas, Moab, White Sands, a 16-hour slog across TX, across to New Orleans, down to Miami, and back up the eastern seaboard with detours in western NC and West Virginia before heading home. Out west we routinely traveled at 80+ mph for hours at a time, with one stretch in NV at 95+. The A/C even worked all the time, but the one glitch was interesting: The neon green key got stuck in the ignition on Day 3 or so somewhere in South Dakota! It would not come out no matter what we tried.

So, for about two weeks, we drove everywhere and parked with that damn key stuck in place. We draped a towel over the steering column, and thankfully, we could shut the car off and lock it while using our spare to get into it. It wasn’t until an extended three-day stay with friends in Albuquerque where the local Plymouth dealer was able to sneak us in and replace the ignition cylinder, while still a few thousand miles under warranty. Fun times!

Suggested by: Brock Landers

I used to drive from SF to NYC twice a year during my college years. I loved being on the open road and seeing this huge country. Had a CB to monitor the trucker channel and keep abreast of speed traps and traffic backups around metro areas. Out on the long stretched of nowhere I would get to know the truckers and chat for hours. Once on Hwy 80 in the Wyoming a truck passed me and I gave him a wave. Next thing I know he’s moving into my lane and forces me onto the shoulder and then with two wheels off the embankment to avoid a bunch of debris. Rattled I got on the CB and voiced my displeasure to all within range. After some back and forth, the trucker got on and apologized. He’d been on the road for too long and thought I flipped him off, instead of waving.

Suggested by: sfrobert

My father and I decided to take his newly resto-modded ‘86 El Camino to the Charlotte Auto Fair from Baltimore about 9 years ago. We’re talking about 1 week after the car started for the first time in 10+ years. The drive down went great, no issues besides some high RPMs at cruising speed, nothing to worry about. The drive back though became a completely different issue. Somewhere along I-81 in the VA mountains, we notice faint smoke coming out the back. We pull off and get under the car to see what is going on and notice transmission fluid is slowly leaking from the seal and coming in contact with the exhaust, running the risk of igniting. After some debating, we decide to pull off at the next exit and find an autoparts store. In some backwoods town we find a store and explain what we need and the cashier says that the gentleman standing behind us is ‘the guy’ in town for transmission fixes. We chat with him and he says to follow him back to his place where he already has the parts to fix it, we take up the offer. As we follow him we eventually turn into the sketchiest trailer park on the east coast. Stray dogs, trailers barely holding themselves together, burned out cars, the works. It was at this point I texted my mom and girlfriend (now wife) and told them I loved them, we didn’t know where we were, and some random guy was going to help fix the car in a trailer park. We get there, put the car up a jack with a cinderblock as a jack stand and he gets to work. Had the jack failed, the cinderblock was going to do nothing and our car would have crushed this man, who we still didn’t have a name for, and we would be the only witnesses. He does fix it and we ask how much and simply asks that I help him carry a transmission from the yard, inside his trailer. It was at this point I believed that was the end for me. I oblige and haul the transmission in and place it on what is the kitchen counter, while stepping over the holes in the floor of the trailer, cigarette butts, and cockroaches. I bolt out of there, we hop in the car and make it home. To this day, that transmission seal is still in the car and has never leaked once.

Suggested by: Kyle Morosko

I once drove from Kilmarnock in the UK to Gibraltar for a holiday, vacation for all you Americans, taking the Portsmouth/Bilbao ferry. So it was like a little minicruise inbetween and we cut out driving through France. Which seemed fun, except that one of my friends I was sharing the driving with went and lost the car keys. He legit thought he had knocked them overboard, as he was playing with them while on the deck at one point, so you can imagine the panic as the ferry is trying to get everyone off and we are blocking all the traffic, tearing through bags and searching every pocket, to either find the keys or find the spare keys. It was not looking good. Then someone from the ferry security walked up and the car chirped at us. Turned out my friend had left the keys on a table in the bar. When word got around we were blocking traffic the security just radioed around the bars to see if anyone lost any car keys and brought it down to us. Apparently it is quite common for this to happen.

So, almost got car stuck on a Spain/UK ferry because my friend is an idiot. Also, we had to start in Kilmarnock. That is a horrible thing to have to happen to anyone in and of itself.

Suggested by: plant_daily

We spent a night in a pick-up truck in the no-man’s land due to border closed because guerilla attacks...

This was between El Salvador and Guatemala.

We reached the border in El Salvador and crossed it. When we reached the Guatemalan side, the border was closed. Why? Because the border in El Salvador closes at night, so why stay open... So we turned around, and yes, the officers on the Salvadorean side had just gone home for the night, so we were stuck... We went back to the Guatemalan side hoping for the best... Fortunately the worst was surviving the mosquitoes when I tried to sleep on the pick-up bed for a couple of minutes...

Suggested by: mocanlagunas