When I was younger (not that much younger, but, early in my undergrad), my father and I took a bunch of long road trips. This was a tradition that had started with the Great High School Summer Road Trip, which all agreed was entirely too long (though I did get to see the Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore).

My dad and I are great road trip partners, however. We both drive relatively similarly, and have similar tolerances for when we need to get out of the car, pay rent on another cup of coffee, etc. My dad is also one of the people who I am intensely comfortably with. During the car trips there are long conversations, but also pregnant pauses, and long stretches of comfortable silence.

I have a romanticized version of the road trips - remembering the beautiful scenery and less the hours of boredom driving through the night through Northern Maine headed toward the New Brunswick border. Those were definitely times that I began to know and understand my father as a person and a human being, not just the idolized, father-child "my dad knows everything" sort of understanding of my father.