For long distances, especially cross regions or across country, getting behind the wheel sounds decidedly inconvenient and unpleasant. It would seem much nicer to settle into a comfy airliner seat, take a nap and then – voila, you’re landing in a place it would have taken many hours or a couple of days to drive to.

As nice as that may be, there are benefits to covering your tracks the old fashioned way. Here’s just five reasons to take a road trip:

Scenery

The geography of the United States is stunning as well as varied. You can fly high over the Rockies on a clear day and see the mountains and snow, but the raw experience of actually driving through a mountain district is something everyone should experience at least once.

The pine scent, coming up on a sudden snow squall, a small herd of deer at the side of the highway, even the slush at the exit to a rest stop are all part of the sensual journey through a real landscape. You don’t get that from staring down from 35,000 feet.

That’s just one example – substitute mountains for desert, or desert for coastline, and you get the idea.

People

On a plane, you might meet somebody from, let’s say, Albuquerque. They may give you the resident’s silver dollar description of the highlights and lowlights of their town. A richer experience is to chat up, say, a waiter at a diner, who can give you a local’s opinion of one must-see sight before you have to drive out of town, in a way that only the local can tell it.

Or, you may see people that upend what you previously thought about a particular place. For instance, in driving through Kansas, I’ve seen cowboys. Stetsons, jeans, boots, something I thought might be reserved for a place like Texas. In Kansas I thought I’d see overalls only. So, a road trip can be a stereotype-buster.

Regional Food

I guess an airline could serve you some version of regional cuisine. But, of course, it would be dry, probably either overheated or cold, and be overpriced. No comparison at all with going to a restaurant on the ground that serves authentic local cuisine.

Also, food that’s mass produced like something for a chain or an airline has little incentive to be innovative or surprising. Independent restaurants in out of the way places are the exact opposite. Whether it’s Texas barbecue, Cajun recipes in Louisiana, seafood in New England or Americanized German or Scandinavian dishes in the upper Midwest, you find delicious authenticity on the road.

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Serendipity

A relaxed road trip sets up perfect circumstances for serendipity to happen. Most often for me this has meant coming across something in the landscape that I did not know was there, but yet it turned out to be the perfect thing for the time and place.

I was off the main roads to get to Mt. Rushmore; then I realized that an iconic image from a movie I loved (Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, from Close Encounters of the Third Kind) was within easy driving distance of where I was, so I could include that on my itinerary. Or, meeting a sexy guy by chance in Boston, who turns out to live in Denver, a stop on my journey. He turned out to be a fortuitous tour guide and well, a lot more. Which brings me to:

The Kindness of Strangers

Especially now in our hyper-partisan world, it’s pretty easy to lump huge swaths of territory into stereotypes. On a road trip we’re reminded that people are individuals, and most often, friendly and hospitable.

The very nature of a road trip — you’re in a car that must stop for gas and food and rest, at least at some point — makes it likely that you’ll come in contact with locals, who can add a tremendous amount of color to a journey through a particular area. Whether it’s an historical perspective, a suggestion for a restaurant, or directions to your next stop via much more interesting back roads, it’s the people who live there that give a region its personality. Definitely something you can’t get from reading about an area or flying high above it.

Those were just Five Reasons to Take a Road Trip, though there are many more. To find out what I found on my own road trip, check out my new book Wanderslut 1996: A Gay Road Trip Across America.