Just this Christmas my wife and I flew to Dallas TX, rented a car, drove to the Bentonville area of NW Arkansas and spent five days with my entire family there celebrating both my Grandparents 50th anniversary and Christmas. We then drove back to Texas spending two days in the northern hill country at the ranch of some good friends of my wife, then we drove to just outside Houston and spent another couple days with some other friends before heading back to Dallas and home. It was BUSY but the combination of Family, friends, good people, new country and road trip is pretty hard to beat.
As soon as we got home I promptly got sick for a full week.