ROAD TRIP

Black and white line cartoon of a worried man standing beside his car with a flat tire on a city street, an American flag flying behind him and steam rising in the air.

America gave the world the gift of travel. Now it’s destroying it.

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America gave the world the modern vacation. But as the United States turns 250, it is on the verge of destroying it. The country pioneered the idea that an ordinary person could go somewhere purely for recreation. The long weekend, the affordable plane ticket, the great American road trip, all of them are U.S. exports. It is hard to overstate what this country did for travel: the world’s first national park, the first scheduled passenger airline, the interstate system that birthed a whole roadside culture, and the radical notion that a factory worker with two weeks off deserved a real vacation too. That is the inheritance. Now look at what we are doing with it, the airlines that treat your carry-on as a revenue line, the rental counter that doubles the online price, and a brand-new fee that quietly changed who gets to walk into a forest that is supposed to belong to everyone.

Simple hand-drawn Bauhaus-inspired minimalist illustration on a white background showing a black line-drawing of an airplane taking off on the upper left and a small black line-drawing of a car on the lower right, separated by a single bold red diagonal line running corner to corner, symbolizing the widening divide between affluent air travelers spending more per trip and budget-conscious travelers priced out of summer vacations this year

The summer travel divide: How to find affordable vacations this year

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Summer travel intent has hit its lowest point since the pandemic. Deloitte’s latest summer travel survey found only 45 percent of travelers plan a summer vacation with paid lodging this year, the lowest figure in six years. Travel intent fell across every income bracket, but the drop among households earning under $100,000 was twice as steep as the decline among middle- and high-income earners, an 8-point drop versus 4 points each. The travelers still going plan to spend $4,069 on their summer vacations, up 17 percent from last year. Deloitte’s broader 2026 outlook calls this a bifurcation of standard and luxury travel and frames competition for the high-spending traveler as one of the year’s defining trends. Travelers earning between $100,000 and $199,000 show the biggest booking gap, with 37 percent fully booked versus 45 percent last year, leaving a large amount of unsold late-May inventory that revenue managers are aware of.

How to survive a road trip with your kids

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About halfway through a 3,755-mile road trip from Orlando to Seattle, I had a little reality check. It happened a few minutes into an hour-long interview with an NPR show in Madison, Wis., when the topic swerved toward unruly kids in a car.

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What to drive this summer

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It isn’t too soon to think about what you’ll be driving this summer. For Alan Monaco, that’s an easy decision: He and his wife, Stephanie, will take their GMC Yukon Denali to the Jersey Shore.