I have a weakness for signs. Not stop signs, of course. Those are generally worth obeying. I’m talking about the other ones, the signs that appear along the side of the road promising HISTORIC SITE – 2 MILES, SCENIC OVERLOOK →, OLD FORT, TRAILHEAD, or, perhaps most dangerously, WORLD’S LARGEST SOMETHING.

That last category is particularly difficult for me to resist. Once you’ve been informed that the world’s largest ball of string, rocking chair, frying pan or concrete chicken is only twelve miles away, how do you not investigate? You can’t simply continue driving as though you don’t now have questions. Why is it there? Who built it? Why did they build it? At what point did someone look at an ordinary-sized chicken and decide, This needs to be considerably larger?

These are questions an adventurer has a responsibility to answer.

The Arrow

There’s something wonderfully simple about an arrow on a sign. It tells you that something is over there, just beyond where you can see. That’s all the information you get. The rest is up to you.

Maybe you’ve never heard of the place. It isn’t in your guidebook, wasn’t part of the itinerary, and didn’t appear when you searched for things to do. Thirty seconds ago, you didn’t even know it existed. Now there’s an arrow pointing down a road and curiosity starts doing its thing.

What’s down there? Is it worth stopping? How far out of the way is it? Do we have time? This is usually when the sensible part of my brain reminds me, We have somewhere to be. The adventurous part responds, It’s only six miles.

The adventurous part wins more often than it probably should. I’m okay with that.

Some of my favorite discoveries have begun with exactly this kind of decision. You turn off the road you were supposed to be traveling, follow another one for a few miles, and find something you never would have known was there. Sometimes it’s fascinating. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Occasionally it’s completely ridiculous. All three are acceptable outcomes.

The Things We Almost Miss

Travel has become incredibly efficient. Our phones find the fastest route, warn us about traffic, tell us where to turn and calculate our arrival time almost to the minute. That’s incredibly useful, especially when you actually need to be somewhere at a particular time, but the fastest route isn’t necessarily the most interesting one.

When I think about trips I’ve taken, some of the things I remember most weren’t destinations at all. They were places I discovered between destinations: a strange little museum, an old cemetery, a historic marker, a roadside stand, an unexpected overlook or a forgotten stretch of highway that made me wonder what used to be there.

Then there are the conversations. You stop at a local restaurant or small shop and mention where you’re headed, and someone says, “If you’re interested in that, you should go see…”

Those words have probably altered more of my travel plans than anything else. Suddenly you’re being given a tip that didn’t come from an algorithm or a travel guide. Someone who knows the place is pointing you toward a story. I’ve learned to pay attention when that happens.

The places we almost miss are often the places that make a trip ours. Like this troll in High Point.

Follow Your Curiosity

The real lesson isn’t about road signs. It’s about curiosity and our willingness to follow it. An old building can be a sign. So can a trail disappearing into the woods, a strange name on a map, a story someone tells you, a historical marker you’ve passed a dozen times or a road you’ve always wondered about but never taken. Something catches your attention and a little question appears in your head: What’s over there?

That’s the beginning of an adventure. The next part requires a decision. You can wonder and keep going, or you can turn the car, take the trail, walk through the door, read the marker or ask the question.

Curiosity points. Adventure follows.

I’ve found that the more often I follow those little moments of curiosity, the more interesting the world becomes. A building stops being just a building when you learn what happened there. A road becomes more than a way to get somewhere when you discover who traveled it before you. A tiny town you couldn’t have found on a map yesterday suddenly becomes a place with people, stories and a really good diner you now intend to visit again.

Nothing about the world changed. You simply stopped long enough to notice more of it.

You Don’t Need to Go Far

That’s another reason I love this kind of exploration. You don’t need a passport, an airline ticket or even a full day. There are probably signs within thirty miles of where you live pointing toward places you’ve never visited. There are almost certainly roads you’ve never taken and buildings you’ve passed without knowing their stories.

So try an experiment. Take a Saturday morning and drive somewhere relatively familiar, but this time pay attention to the invitations along the way. If a sign points toward a historic site, turn. If there’s a scenic overlook, stop. If you pass a local museum you’ve somehow never entered, go inside.

And if there’s a giant fiberglass animal? Obviously, we have responsibilities.

Give curiosity permission to alter the itinerary. You might discover something extraordinary, or you might discover something wonderfully ridiculous. You may learn a piece of history, meet someone interesting, find a new favorite place or simply come home with a story you didn’t have when you left.

Either way, that’s usually worth the detour.