That road is Route 1 in Iceland. A week driving it costs roughly $2,500 per person. Flights from the US run $500-600 round trip. Gas is $8-9 per gallon. A glacier hike is $125. A night in a decent hotel near Vatnajökull is $160-200. Total tab for two people to spend a week staring at that glacier instead of a monitor: somewhere around $7,000. The median American household earns that in about 18 working days. Sitting in a room. Staring at a screen. The people who actually drive that road on a random Tuesday in March fall into two categories: retirees who stared at screens for 40 years and saved enough to stop, or remote workers who figured out how to stare at a screen from Reykjavik instead of a cubicle in Ohio. Both paths run through the screen. The photo is real. The freedom it represents costs $7,000 and 10 days of PTO. The device you’re reading this complaint on is the same device that books the flight.