16 years old, just got my license...about 20 members of our swim team on a long weekend in mid - June. Houston to New Braunfels. It was awesome.

It was 1957, I was 12 and had cleared all the plans to ride the Greyhound from Boise to Cascade to meet the folks, who had left a few days before to tow the trailer up to a civil project labor camp job site where Dad was cat skinner.

In those days the bus stopped at every milk can & wide spot in the road. The trip was far longer than I expected, and ticket cost was around $8 IIRC.

December 1977 - I drove from Lowry AFB, CO to USS INDEPENDENCE at Norfolk, VA. I was a 17 year old Seaman Apprentice (E2). I was ready to face the world!

1974 - I was 21. Got all psyched and geared up for several nights of solo, first-time-ever backpacking. From Chicago I drove to the Upper Penisula of Michigan to some national forest (maybe Hiawatha) and trudged a mile or 2 into the woods. After the first night I said screw this and went to Wisconsin and found a pizza place and came across festival at a rock quarry. Somewhere along the line I managed to climb a ranger firewatch tower and still have a few pictures of the adventure.

I was 16 and drove from Calexico, California to family farm south of Albuquerque via Las Cruces to pick up my brother for Thanksgiving. Still a boring drive.

My first real trip was from Dayton to Cincy. On the bus. To the Armed Forces Recruitment Center. Once there, me and about 300 other guys swore to defend and uphold. Then to Lackland AFB. I got lots of supervision there!

1977 summer between my Junior and Senior year. We were both 17. Left central Illinois and drove to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin where the drinking age was 18. I looked about 12 but my friend looked 20 and had no trouble getting alcohol. We camped out about 4 days and went to see Bob Seger where we proceeded to drink a fifth of vodka.
My first major hangover but we drove the 7 hours back and I worked my dishwasher job at a restaurant that night.
Not sure what my parents were thinking.

1976, rode as a passenger with two friends. We went from NYC to Montreal.

Saw my first burlesque show. Woman shot ping pong balls, into the audience, from her snatch. Those Kegel exercises paid off for her.

18 years old in 1973 driving from Portland, OR to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

‘71 I had just turned 16, still had a paper temporary license.
Hopped in my buddy’s car and we drove from Phx to Wisconsin. It was fine until the transmission shit the bed on the way back and we had to hitchhike from Iowa to AZ.
(He got busted for a warrant that stemmed from him writing checks on daddy’s acct, I continued on alone)

16 years old, 1985. St. George, Utah for Spring Break. Some of the best times of my life!

Summer after I turned 17 my buddies and I went to Destin, FL for spring break. Debauchery ensued at virtually every turn, and a great time was had by all. We still get together every blue moon, and that trip WILL be brought up by someone as a potential blackmail point...

What is a road trip in your mind?

As soon as I could drive, I was taking overnight trips with friends to places that were 3-6 hours away. Lots of camping during the summer and cabin trips up in the mountains during the winter.

For a multi-day drive, I think I was 19 when my 5 buddies and I took a minivan from Southern California to Fort Knox Kentucky to visit a friend stationed there.

I went to college at 17, so lots of trips there, but the earliest "unsupervised" trip wasn't really a road trip. I was 15 and my parents but me and my two younger brothers (12 and 9) on a plane in Prague Czech Republic to go visit our grandparents in Johnstown, PA.

Things went ok at first. We had a transfer in Paris that was uneventful except that security confiscated my maglite flashlight. Czech airport security hadn't cared, but apparently the French did. This was before 9/11, and they actually mailed it to me...I got it about a month later.

The shitshow started when we landed in Newark. We actually got on the ground a little early, but couldn't get to our gate because some other plane was sitting in it and wouldn't move. We sat on the apron for over two hours, finally deplaning about the time our flight in Pittsburgh was scheduled to leave....and we still had to go through customs and get to the gate.

While navigating the goat-rope that was EWR customs, I learned from some airline woman that our flight to Pittsburgh had been cancelled anyway due to weather, so we were supposed to keep our bags instead of re-checking them, and go find a bus that was serving as alternate ground transportation to Pittsburgh. Problem was nobody knew where the bus was. So my two younger brothers and I began wondering EWR with two 70lb bags trying to find this mythical bus.

It was impossible to find an airline person who wasn't dealing with a line of 200 people, and when we finally got to the front of the lines, they'd send us somewhere else. So we trudged all over the airport, dragging these huge suitcases, and getting cussed out by all these east coast assholes for getting in their way.

Ultimately, we got separated in the crowd, and I lost my brothers. So here I am, 15, alone, in the shittiest airport in the world, dragging my giant suitcase, trying to find my two younger brothers (9 and 12) who are also dragging a giant suitcase, getting yelled at and cussed out by all these NJ asshole adult passengers every time I try to approach an airport employee to get help because I'm cutting in line. Note this was before cellphones, too, so all I had was a calling card that my mom had given me to use at payphones...which was pretty pointless, anyway, since my nearest adult family was in Pennsylvania.

I finally found a security person who contacted the cops, who had already found my brothers. The cop took us to the check-in counter, walked us to the front of the line, and handed us off to the ticket agent, who freaked out when she learned we were "unaccompanied minors." They called my grandparents to let them know what was going on, then ushered us off to some room for abandoned (unaccompanied) children. They bought us food, then we waited there for a few hours until everyone else was gone, then sent us to a hotel with some guy named Fabian.

Fabian let us in our room, told us he'd be next door, to knock if we needed him, and not to open the door for anybody. The next morning, we got up and he took us back to the airport. When we got on the shuttle at the hotel to leave for the airport, it was too full and everybody wouldn't fit. Some stewardess tried to make us get off the bus because she thought aircrew should have priority because they needed to make their flights. Fabian basically told her to piss off, and we stayed on the bus. They put us on a flight to Pittsburgh, where we arrived without further incident.

That was 19 years ago, and apart from our return flight to PRG I've not set foot in NJ since. The one time I've had to drive that way, I went 85 miles out of the way to avoid it. Eff that place.

College at 17 I guess. It was a long unsupervised trip.

I was 19 when I drove off Long Island by myself for the first time. I recall vividly being in the middle of the Throgs Neck Bridge and realizing this was it, I was free!!

Drove up state to spend the weekend at the house of a girl I met in college. We went out with all her friends, everybody got drunk, one of them threw up all over the back of somebody's car on the way home. I woke up Sunday with her cat on top of me and me wondering where the hell I was. Good Times!

I think I had just turned 18 when I bought a car, sight unseen (other than photos) in Kansas City. A buddy and I took the 'hound overnight to KC and drove the car back. I did all of the car buying myself as a high school senior, with the exception of having my mom co-sign the loan. Bought the bus tickets, figured out how to get from the bus station to the dealership and from the dealership home (about 5 hour drive).

I've thought about that trip since then and I don't know that I would want my 18 year old high school senior kid making that trip down and back with no sleep to pick up a car with an unknown pedigree, but for some reason my folks (and my buddy's) were cool with it. We were good kids, but there was plenty of potential trouble to be in that didn't involve us.

 
Summer 1965, after graduating high school, a buddy & myself took a road trip from Austin to New Orleans. Passing through southern LA, we were inundated with masses of small bugs that completely coated our windshield. Most were joined end to end procreating. When we stopped for gas and to clean the windshield, the old man who owned the station said "We call them telephone bugs, they just say hello and hang up". Really enjoyed New Orleans for a week.

quote:

Originally posted by Oz_Shadow:
College at 17 I guess. It was a long unsupervised trip.

Same, but I was eighteen then.

I was fortunate in that my parents gave me a ton of freedom or, they were so busy with my 4 younger siblings they just didn't notice my absence.

I grew up in the suburbs of Boston and skied a lot as a kid and I would just get random rides with friends and friends of friends to to VT/NH for days at a time to ski.

My first real solo road trip was shortly after I turned 17...I had an old Honda SL350 that my Sunday school teacher have me as a basket case and I rebuilt it with paper route/grocery store money. I decided, on a whim, to ride that thing up to Loudon NH for bike week. Later, when my Mom found out where I had been she came a bit unravelled but the trip was worth it!