The best part of a road trip is usually a stop that wasn’t on the plan.

Plans give you a route and almost never the best part. The stop nobody wrote down tends to be the thing people talk about years later, which does not mean planning is pointless. It means a plan works best with slack in it, enough room to pull over without the whole day collapsing. Schedules packed to the minute cannot hold anything good that was not already scheduled.

Leave one empty hour in your week on purpose. Do not fill it in advance, and when something comes up in it, say yes.