While we can't go anywhere together for a while due to social distancing, we can all agree these make the best companions on a road trip.

From a simple day trip to a month-long adventure, no road trip is complete without these four personalities. 

The Chex Mix Chef

Courtesy of Piqsels

Eating beef jerky and chips is fun for a few days, but what happens after the novelty wears off? Enter: the Chex Mix Chef. Having someone who knows how to combine your half-eaten snack leftovers into experimental trail mix blends is a vital part of any road trip. M&Ms and toasted nuts? Pop rocks and Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Slim Jims and Twix? Anything is possible.

Coming up with weird snack combinations isn’t the Chef’s only responsibility, however. These guys have a natural sense for all the best eateries wherever you stop, even if those places don’t show up on travel sites. If you want to explore local cuisine and enjoy some quality hole-in-the-wall restaurants during your trip, make sure to bring a foodie along with you. 

The Backseat Mechanic

Courtesy of Needpix

Finding the sweet spot on the car’s AC unit is a delicate art. The same thing goes with calibrating the exact recline angle for the seats and where to place the luggage so that it doesn’t drive anyone crazy. For matters like these, you want to make sure that you bring along your trusty mechanic friend. 

Even the best road trip itinerary can quickly become grating when That One Sound starts. You know the one: that mystery sound that isn’t coming from anywhere in particular and seems to get louder whenever you try to drown it out. In trying times like these, having a mechanic friend to sniff out the problem is both a lifesaver and a trip saver.  

The Aux Cord DJ

Courtesy of Pxfuel

Listening to soft rock and Top 40 tracks while driving is fun for a while, but as the hours turn into days, you’ll be antsy for some more exciting music. In times like these, you want to give the AUX cord to someone you can trust to make the road trip playlist truly epic. The right soundtrack can mean the difference between an exhausting 6-hour stretch of highway and a fantastical adventure. 

Road trips are a great chance to get into music that you otherwise wouldn’t listen to. Mongolian groove metal. PC-98 Vaporwave remixes. Japanese rockabilly grunge. A 16-minute long Dungeon Synth concept songs about haunted forests. Limp Bizkit. There’s nothing quite as liberating as driving through the night with the windows down while blasting songs.

The Wildcard

Courtesy of PickPik

Wildcard! No road trip is complete without that one Wildcard friend. When all else fails, it never hurts to bring along someone capable of turning any social situation into a singalong or any dinner party into a dance battle. It might not seem important now, but when you’ve got to dance your way out of a dance battle at a roadside restaurant in the middle of the desert, you’ll be thankful to have them.