The Worthwhile Detour

Sometimes, not getting there—or anywhere—can be beautiful too. Are there places that were neither where you started nor where you were going, but were worthwhile destinations in their own right?

You miss a turn, end up in a town you'd never heard of, and it becomes the best afternoon of the trip — the diner, the view, the stranger.

Key concepts

Serendipity: Finding something valuable by accident while looking for something else. The word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 from a Persian tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes keep discovering things they were not searching for — which is the whole shape of a good wrong turn.

What to know

01
Can a place you never aimed for be a real destination? Yes, and the reason is structural rather than romantic: an unplanned stop arrives with no expectations attached to it, so it is judged on what it actually is instead of against the version you had already imagined.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

Research runs on wrong turns. Fleming found penicillin in 1928 from a contaminated plate. Percy Spencer discovered the microwave when a chocolate bar melted by

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Some of the best destinations were never on the map. The wrong-turn town can outshine the one you planned, because it asked nothing of you. Plan tightly, or leave room to wander? One side champions serendipity: over-planning is self-sabotage. The other defends the plan — aimless wandering mostly wastes time, and the romantic detour is survivorship bias.

Practice — a sample

LITThe detour that becomes the point is to a planned route as Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways is to —

A The interstate system
B Route 66
C Roman roads
D A desire path
E A sunken holloway

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