My 12-year-old son suggested we take the scenic route. It's helped us appreciate our town, and he's opened up to us more in the car.

The author's son suggested taking a more scenic route to school.

Courtesy of Ashley Archambault

My husband and I have been sharing one car this summer while we save up for a second, and we've been opting to take the scenic route for trips around town. We can actually credit our 12-year-old son for the change, who requested we start taking a different way to school in the morning — one through town, on side roads, instead of the highway.We were OK with the change as long as the drive didn't take too much longer. My husband compared the two routes on Google Maps, and we were all surprised to discover that the scenic route only took one minute longer. No one minded leaving the house a minute early in the morning to avoid the highway, so we tried it.After testing out the scenic route just once, we were hookedThe highway speeds are enough to make me grip the wheel tighter, and I know our son can feel that kind of energy shift in the car. As a driver, I need to focus solely on the road, and even when I'm in the passenger seat, I keep my eyes straight ahead. When I shared this with my husband, he said he felt similar in that it is far more draining to take the highway.We started experimenting with other routes to our most frequent destinations and found that the time difference was about the same for nearly all of them. If we're just going somewhere nearby, it often takes the same amount of time to get there via the more scenic — and much more relaxing — route.