The fastest route is rarely the one you remember. You can drive the interstate between two cities a hundred times and recall none of it, and then take the road that runs parallel to it once and still be talking about the diner twenty years later.
There is a particular kind of attention that only switches on when you are not racing. You notice the diner because you had time to be hungry rather than late. You stop at the overlook because nothing is waiting for you at the other end at a specific hour. The route did not get more interesting. You did.
We have got very good at optimizing the distance between where we are and where we are supposed to be, and very bad at noticing that the optimization is the part we resent. The efficient path gets you there on time with nothing to show for it. The long way costs you an afternoon and gives you the whole story.
That applies to more than driving. The career that took a detour through something unrelated. The friendship that came from a class you nearly dropped. Most of the good things in a life arrive because somebody took a turn they did not strictly need to take, and were not in enough of a hurry to regret it.
The scenic route on the way home. The road you have driven past a hundred times. The extra hour that turns a journey into something you tell people about.
