The Ultimate Road Trip: The 2022 Nissan Pathfinder is Ready for the Unexpected

“Inspired by Nissan Pathfinder, writer Chris Atwell has written a series about the fictional Anderson Family and imagined the adventures they might have on a summer road trip with Pathfinder. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this article are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, or entities is intended or should be inferred.”

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Mastering the Unfamiliar

It’s a long stretch today for the Andersons and their all-new Pathfinder. The family is piloting their rugged, tech-advanced Pathfinder toward Louisville, Kentucky, a long-desired destination for diehard sports fans Darryl, Denise, and their kids Janae and Zane. (Eldest daughter, Malena, has left the family road adventure to start classes at college.) However, before their pilgrimage is complete, the Andersons will have to cover plenty of miles (and take a few detours). Fortunately, the Pathfinder is ready for the unexpected. Darryl talks about the day’s journey.

Louisville has been near the top of my list of cities to visit for a long time. It’s a big baseball town, and I was excited by the prospect of seeing the baseball museum and taking the kids along. So many of my childhood heroes are featured there; last year, our son Zane wrote a report on the Negro Leagues for school—and he, of course, got an “A.” I wanted to show him the plaque honoring one of his favorite league legends.

Beyond baseball, Louisville is also home to some famous boxing legends that I can’t miss a chance to teach the kids about them.

So, Louisville was the plan, but first, we had to get there. It’s supposed to be a three-hour drive to Louisville from our last stop in Rock City, Tennessee, and we figured we had time for a brief detour to Mammoth Cave Park. That was Janae’s idea. She saw something about these fantastic underground caverns on some nature channel and wanted to check them out if we could.

We had never driven through this part of the country before, but that didn’t faze us. One of our first discoveries on this road trip was how well the 2022 Nissan Pathfinder’s ProPILOT feature takes the stress out of long drives in unfamiliar territory. Today’s route, for example, was scenic but twisty, with a lot of deep road turns and those abrupt speed limit changes that can get you ticketed if you’re not on it. Well, the Pathfinder was on it! The Navi-Link navigation system detected the road changes and auto-adjusted our speed accordingly.

With the ProPILOT’s assistance, we made excellent time driving to Mammoth Cave Park, and Janae was right. The place is spectacular. We got so caught up exploring the caverns that we spent more time there than we planned.

We were about 20 minutes out of Louisville when Denise came up with a solution. Connected to the high-speed Wi-Fi, she searched online and saw an old-school drive-in movie theater nearby. Man, I hadn’t been to a drive-in since I was little, and the kids had never been to one ever! And since a new blockbuster movie was playing, off we went. And you know what? I think we made drive-in converts out of Janae and Zane!

There we were, chilling inside the Pathfinder’s spacious EZ FLEX seats, with the coziness of the Tri-Zone Automatic Temperature Control and the movie’s soundtrack pouring into the cabin through our peak Bose audio system; watching yet another hero save the universe. It wasn’t how we expected the day to end, but there were no complaints.

My sports heroes will be waiting for me tomorrow.

_{ProPILOT Assist: ProPILOT Assist and ProPILOT Assist with Navi-link cannot prevent collisions. It is the driver’s responsibility to be in control of the vehicle at all times. Always monitor traffic conditions and keep both hands on the steering wheel. System operates only when lane markings are detected. Does not function in all weather, traffic and road conditions. System has limited control capability and the driver may need to steer, brake or accelerate at any time to maintain safety. See Owner’s Manual for safety information.}