Saw a piece over on MSN the other day about the history of the American road trip, and how the same machine that made the whole thing possible has been quietly working against it the whole time. That sounds like a contradiction until you sit with it for two minutes, and then it's just obvious.

The car gave us the freedom to go anywhere. Before that, you went where the train went, when the train went. Then along comes the Model T and suddenly a farm family from southern Missouri can drive themselves to the Lake of the Ozarks, or clear out to Colorado, stopping when they want and eating sandwiches off a tailgate instead of a dining car. My granddad used to talk about the first car his family had like it was a mule that never got tired. That's what it meant to folks.

But there's a flip side, and the article gets at it well. Every convenience the car brought, it also took something back in trade. The interstates that let you cross Kansas in a day also let you skip every town along the way. The diners and motor courts and filling stations that grew up around two-lane roads, the exact places we now get nostalgic about, mostly died when the highway moved a mile outside of town. I've written about Route 66 plenty, and that road is the poster child for it. The road trip got faster and easier, and the stuff that made it worth taking got paved around.

And it goes deeper than that. Traffic, for one. There's a special kind of irony in driving three hours to sit still behind brake lights on a park road in August. The machine that promised escape delivers you to the same overlook as ten thousand other folks who had the same idea. Anybody who's rolled into Yellowstone in July knows exactly what I'm talking about.

The car also reshaped the country in its own image. Strip malls, parking lots the size of small farms, fast food designed to be eaten with one hand at 70 miles an hour. The road trip was supposed to be about seeing America, and a lot of what there is to see now is what the automobile itself built. Sometimes that's charming and sometimes it's just an exit ramp with six chain restaurants on it.

I still think it's worth it, though. Tell you what, I've spent more hours on two-lanes than I can count, from the Ozarks to the salt flats, and I'd do every one of them again. The trick isn't to quit driving. It's to be picky about the road. The interstate will get you there fast, but the old highway two miles over will get you there right. Stop at the diner with the hand-painted sign. Buy the jam. Wave at the fella on the porch.

The automobile made the road trip and complicated it, sure. But the road still goes somewhere, and it's still yours to point a hood down. Just don't expect the drive-thru window to be the highlight. That part's on you.