The journey begins—technology fades into the background as the mountains take center stage.
By Futurist Thomas Frey
Arrival
Jake Walker watched his wife Linda’s face light up as their plane descended into Denver International Airport. Below them, the Rockies stretched like a jagged spine across the horizon, peaks already dusted with October snow.
“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Linda said, gripping his hand. “A whole week. Just us and the mountains.”
“And approximately seventeen different Teslas,” Jake added with a grin.
It was October 2029, and they were about to experience something that had become wildly popular in the past eighteen months: a fully autonomous multi-destination tour. No rental car to return. No worrying about mountain driving or parking. Just a seamless chain of self-driving vehicles that would appear exactly when needed and disappear when they didn’t.
Their luggage arrived at carousel 7 within twelve minutes of landing. As Jake pulled the last bag off the belt, Linda’s phone chimed.
Your Tesla has arrived. Bay C-14. Welcome aboard, Jake and Linda.
The white Model Y was waiting exactly where the app indicated, rear hatch open, interior lights glowing warmly in the late afternoon sun. As they loaded their bags, the car’s voice—neutral, pleasant—greeted them.
“Welcome to your Rocky Mountain Experience. I’m your vehicle for the next forty-seven miles. Estimated arrival at your Lakewood accommodation: 52 minutes, accounting for current traffic. Would you like to begin the regional audio tour, or would you prefer music?”
Jake and Linda exchanged glances. “Let’s start with the tour,” Linda said. “We can always switch.”
“Tour activated. We’ll begin once we reach I-70.”
For the first time, neither of them touches the wheel—and neither misses it.
The Drive Begins
The Tesla merged onto Peña Boulevard with the confidence of a driver who’d made this trip ten thousand times—because, collectively, the fleet had. As they accelerated toward the mountains, a warm voice filled the cabin.
“You’re entering what the Arapaho people called ‘the spine of the world.’ The Front Range you see ahead was formed roughly 70 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny, when tectonic forces pushed ancient rock upward…”
It had assumed a historical tour, but could have switched to an architectural tour, ghost tour, musical tour, or dozens more. Jake could have even selected a futures tour, or an alternative futures tour.
“This is actually good,” Jake murmured. “Better than that awful podcast you made me listen to on the flight.”
Linda swatted his arm. “That podcast won an award.”
“For most effective sleep aid?”
Twenty minutes in, Linda tapped the screen. “Can we switch to music? Something local?”
The tour voice faded. A moment later, John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” filled the car.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Linda said, leaning back in her seat. “God, when’s the last time we actually relaxed on a trip? Not worrying about directions or traffic or Jake’s terrible navigation skills?”
“I have excellent navigation skills. I just prefer the scenic route.”
“You got us lost in a mall parking garage.”
“That parking garage was poorly designed.”
The Tesla climbed steadily into the foothills, the city falling away behind them. Neither Jake nor Linda touched the controls. The car handled everything—speed adjustments for curves, lane positioning, the subtle brake as a deer bounded across the road ahead.
“You know what’s weird?” Jake said. “I don’t miss driving. I thought I would, but I don’t.”
“That’s because you’re not stressed. You’re not white-knuckling the wheel wondering if that semi is going to drift into our lane. You’re just… here.”
First Night
The Airbnb in Lakewood was a renovated craftsman with a view of the mountains. As they unloaded their bags, the Tesla’s voice chimed softly.
“Your belongings are secured. I’ll be departing to my next assignment. When you’re ready for dinner, simply request a vehicle through the app. Enjoy your evening.”
The car backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the street.
Two hours later, freshened up and hungry, Linda tapped her phone. “Requesting pickup for two. First stop: Creekside Cellars winery, then Elway’s Downtown.”
Vehicle arriving in 4 minutes.
A different Model Y—identical but for the license plate—pulled up exactly on schedule.
The winery was tucked into a converted barn, strings of lights crisscrossing the outdoor patio. They tasted six wines, bought three bottles, and learned more about Colorado viticulture than either expected.
“The trick is the elevation,” the sommelier explained, refilling their glasses. “We’re at 5,800 feet. The intense UV light makes the grapes develop thicker skins, more concentrated flavors. We can’t compete with Napa on volume, but on complexity? We hold our own.”
“How do you handle tourists?” Jake asked. “This place seems remote.”
“Used to be a problem. Now?” She gestured to the parking area where four Teslas sat silent and dark. “People come from Denver for an afternoon, no designated driver stress. Business tripled once the autonomous network got reliable. We even added a second tasting room.”
At Elway’s, they ordered steaks and recounted the day. The restaurant hummed with conversation—anniversary couples, business dinners, a family celebrating someone’s graduation.
“We should do this more,” Linda said, cutting into her filet. “Not wait for retirement to actually see things.”
“Agreed. Though I’m still processing that we’ve been in three different cars and haven’t signed a single rental agreement.”
After dinner, they stopped at Hammond’s Candy Factory for dessert. The shop smelled like caramelized sugar and childhood. They bought chocolate-covered toffee and watched through the windows as workers pulled ribbon candy on massive hooks.
Back at the Airbnb by 10 PM, they sat on the porch with wine and toffee, watching the mountains fade to silhouettes against the darkening sky.
“Tomorrow’s the big drive,” Jake said. “All the way to Steamboat.”
“I’m ready. No stress. Just scenery.”
Every morning is a new experience when taking a Tesla Tour.
Into the Mountains
The next morning’s Tesla arrived at 8:47 AM, exactly on schedule. Their bags went into the back, they climbed in, and the car began the climb toward I-70.
The audio tour narrated their ascent through the mountains—the history of the Eisenhower Tunnel, the ecology of the alpine tundra, the mining towns that rose and fell with silver strikes. As they crested the Continental Divide, Linda gasped.
“Stop the tour for a second. Jake, look at this.”
The valley spread below them, a tapestry of aspen gold and pine green. The car had automatically slowed, as if it knew they’d want to look.
“Photos don’t capture this,” Linda said softly.
“No. They really don’t.”
They passed Dillon Reservoir—the tour explaining how it was created in the 1960s, how the town of Old Dillon was relocated, how the water supplied Denver—before the highway curved north toward Steamboat Springs.
The Tesla deposited them at the temporary bag storage facility at the Steamboat resort. A cheerful attendant scanned their luggage tags.
“We’ll have these delivered to your hotel by 4 PM. Car will be waiting whenever you need it. Enjoy the springs!”
The hot springs were everything promised—natural mineral water, mountain views, the pleasant exhaustion of heat soaking into tired muscles. They spent three hours alternating between hot pools and cold plunges, reading, dozing, not checking email.
“This is why we needed this trip,” Linda said, head tilted back against the pool edge. “When’s the last time you went three hours without looking at your phone?”
“When I forgot it at the airport in 2019?”
“Exactly.”
That evening, they summoned a car to the storage facility. Their bags were already loaded. The new Tesla took them to their hotel—a ski lodge converted for year-round operation—and they had dinner at a local steakhouse where the server recommended the elk medallions and told them about Steamboat’s ranching history.
No parking stress, no logistics—just mineral springs and mountain air.
The Northern Loop
The next three days blurred into a rhythm: wake, coffee, summon car, drive, marvel, repeat.
The route to Jackson Hole took them through landscapes that seemed designed by someone with a flair for drama. The Tetons rose like teeth against the sky. In town, they browsed art galleries and ate at a barbecue joint where the owner, a former California tech worker, explained why he’d left Silicon Valley.
“I was writing code for apps I didn’t care about. Now I smoke brisket. Better life.”
From Jackson, they drove to Devils Tower—the audio tour explaining the geology, the Native American legends, the climbing routes up the igneous intrusion. They walked the trail around the base, necks craned upward.
“It’s like something from another planet,” Linda said.
“130 climbers have gotten stuck up there since the 1930s,” the tour voice informed them. “All were eventually rescued.”
“That’s… not as reassuring as you think,” Jake muttered to the car.
Yellowstone consumed two full days. They saw Old Faithful erupt. Watched bison cause traffic jams. Photographed the Grand Prismatic Spring’s impossible colors. Each new Tesla that picked them up came with the same seamless handoff—bags automatically transferred to the next vehicle, no keys, no paperwork, just continuity.
At a pullout overlooking the Yellowstone River canyon, they met another couple doing the same tour.
“Minneapolis,” the woman introduced herself. “Sarah and Tom. We’re on day nine.”
“How’s it been?” Linda asked.
“Incredible. We’ve been in, I don’t know, maybe twenty different cars? Never waited more than five minutes for one. Never worried about parking or navigation. Just… went places.”
“That’s exactly it,” Tom added. “We’re not planning. We’re experiencing. Yesterday we decided to add an extra day in Cody, changed the whole itinerary in about thirty seconds on the app. Try doing that with a rental car.”
History feels closer when you’re not rushing to return a rental.
The Black Hills
The drive from Yellowstone to the Black Hills was the longest leg—seven hours—but the Tesla made it manageable. They stopped twice for lunch and leg-stretching, the car automatically routing them to charging stations that had restaurants and clean bathrooms.
“Remember road trips with your parents?” Jake asked as they rolled through Wyoming grasslands. “Trying to hold it for hours because the next rest stop was disgusting?”
“And your dad insisting we could make it another hundred miles on fumes?”
“Different era.”
The Black Hills welcomed them with pine forests and granite outcrops. They stopped at Prairie Berry Winery—South Dakota’s largest—and tasted wines made from local fruits: rhubarb, chokecherry, buffalo berry.
“I’m not even pretending to be a wine snob anymore,” Jake said, buying a bottle of the cranberry blend. “I just like what tastes good.”
The woman processing his payment laughed. “You’d be surprised how many people say that. The autonomous tours have been amazing for us. People stay longer, drink more, don’t worry about driving after. We’re adding a restaurant next spring.”
Mount Rushmore was smaller than they expected and more moving. The evening lighting ceremony—rangers spotlighting each president while narrating their contributions—left Linda wiping her eyes.
Crazy Horse, still unfinished after seventy-six years, was more impressive for its ambition than its completion.
“When it’s done,” the tour guide explained, “it’ll be the largest sculpture in the world. The entire heads on Rushmore could fit inside this horse’s head. Assuming we finish. Could be another fifty years.”
“That’s insane,” Jake said.
“That’s vision,” the guide corrected. “Sometimes you start something knowing you won’t see it finished.”
The Return
The drive back to Denver felt different. Not sad exactly, but thoughtful. The Teslas carried them through the mountains they now felt they knew—not as tourists but as visitors who’d paid attention.
Their first stop was Boulder, for an early dinner at The Kitchen, Kimbal Musk’s farm-to-table restaurant on Pearl Street. The Tesla dropped them at the temporary bag storage facility downtown—bags tagged and scanned in under a minute—then disappeared to its next assignment.
The restaurant was everything the reviews promised. Exposed brick, reclaimed wood, an open kitchen where chefs worked with ingredients sourced from Colorado farms. Their server, a CU student named Maya, walked them through the menu.
“Everything changes seasonally,” she explained. “Right now we’re featuring roasted butternut squash from Jack’s Solar Garden in Longmont, lamb from Ollin Farms in Hygiene. The chef gets deliveries three times a week.”
Linda ordered the wild mushroom risotto. Jake chose the grass-fed beef short rib.
“You know what’s interesting?” Jake said, watching the kitchen through the pass. “A week ago we were eating at chain restaurants because they were easy to find. Now we’re seeking out places like this.”
“That’s what happens when you’re not stressed about driving. You have energy to actually choose.”
The food was extraordinary—complex without being fussy, ingredients that tasted like they’d come from actual soil rather than industrial farms. Halfway through dinner, Kimbal Musk himself walked through the dining room, stopping at tables, asking about dishes, listening to feedback.
When he reached their table, Linda complimented the risotto.
“Best I’ve had outside of Italy,” she said.
Kimbal smiled. “That’s because our mushrooms were picked this morning, forty miles from here. You can’t fake freshness. Real food, real flavor, real connections to the land. That’s the whole point.”
“We’re on an autonomous tour,” Jake mentioned. “Week through the Rockies. This felt like the right place to finish it.”
“Those tours have been incredible for us,” Kimbal said. “People used to skip Boulder because parking was impossible. Now they just… come. The car handles it. We’ve seen a thirty percent increase in tourists who actually have time to eat slowly, enjoy the experience. Technology serving humanity rather than the other way around. That’s how it should be.”
After dinner, they walked Pearl Street—the pedestrian mall buzzing with street performers, college students, families—before summoning their next Tesla.
On nights like this, even the best technology disappears—leaving only music, stone, and memory.
Their final stop was Red Rocks Amphitheater, carved into sandstone formations that turned crimson in the sunset. The combined Botticelli Strings and Ed Sheeran concert filled the natural bowl with sound that seemed to come from the rocks themselves.
“This,” Linda said during intermission, “this is what I’ll remember. Not the hotels or the restaurants. This moment. This place.”
Jake squeezed her hand. “We should come back. Make this regular.”
“Deal.”
The final morning, they found Snooze—a Denver breakfast institution famous for its pancakes and morning cocktails. The place was packed with locals and tourists, the energy of a city waking up.
Their last Tesla arrived at 10:30 AM to take them to DIA. As they loaded their bags—the same bags they’d loaded nine days earlier—Linda turned to Jake.
“So. Verdict?”
“On what?”
“This whole autonomous tour thing. The future of travel. All of it.”
Jake thought for a moment as the car merged onto Peña Boulevard, the mountains receding in the rearview mirror.
“I think we just saw the death of the rental car industry and the birth of something better. Easier. More accessible.”
“Explain.”
Wild landscapes unfold while the network handles everything else.
Why This Changes Everything
The autonomous tour model works because it solves problems travelers didn’t realize were dealbreakers until someone eliminated them.
The Hidden Tax of Traditional Road Trips
When you rent a car, you’re not just paying for the vehicle. You’re paying in stress: navigating unfamiliar roads, finding parking, worrying about damage, calculating mileage limits, fighting over who drives, dealing with return logistics. You’re paying in opportunity cost: the person behind the wheel isn’t experiencing the scenery. You’re paying in inflexibility: once you commit to a rental, changing plans means renegotiating contracts.
The autonomous tour eliminates all of it.
The Economics Are Compelling
A week-long car rental in 2029 costs roughly $850, plus gas, plus insurance, plus parking fees that can hit $40 per night in resort towns. Total: around $1,400.
An autonomous tour—using on-demand Teslas with per-mile pricing—costs about $890 for the same trip, with electricity included. No insurance fees. No parking charges (cars leave when you don’t need them). No stress premium.
But the real value isn’t in the $500 savings. It’s in what you gain.
The Freedom Paradox
Counterintuitively, having a car you own for the week makes you less free. You’re tethered to it. You have to plan around parking. You can’t drink at wineries. You can’t both enjoy the scenery.
On-demand autonomous vehicles make you more free precisely because you don’t control them. They appear when needed. Disappear when they don’t. You’re not managing a car. You’re experiencing places.
The Network Effect
The tour only works because of scale. Tesla’s fleet in the Rocky Mountain region in 2029 includes roughly forty thousand vehicles in constant rotation. When Jake and Linda summoned a car in Steamboat, it might have just dropped off another couple in Vail. When they left the hot springs, their car drove itself to pick up a family in Breckenridge.
Maximum utilization. Minimum waste. No cars sitting idle in parking lots for twenty-three hours a day.
The Cultural Shift
Within three years, the autonomous tour model expanded from niche experiment to mainstream option. The Rocky Mountain Experience was one of forty-seven curated autonomous routes across North America by late 2029.
The Pacific Coast Highway tour. The Fall Foliage Loop through New England. The Music Cities Circuit through Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans. The National Parks Grand Circle. Each one optimized for scenic value, charging infrastructure, and tourist density.
Traditional rental companies adapted or died. Hertz and Enterprise pivoted to managing autonomous fleets. Budget and Thrifty disappeared entirely, unable to compete.
The change happened faster than anyone predicted because it made traveling easier, cheaper, and better. That’s a rare combination.
The Accessibility Revolution
The most profound impact wasn’t economic. It was social.
People who couldn’t drive—too old, too young, disabled, anxious about highway driving—suddenly had access to experiences previously closed to them. A grandmother could tour wine country without relying on family. A blind couple could “road trip” with full independence. Teenagers could explore national parks without parents.
The car ceased being a barrier and became an enabler.
The road trip ends, but the freedom it revealed lingers.
The Morning After
At the airport departure curb, Jake and Linda stood with their bags, waiting for the check-in line to thin.
“We’re doing this again, right?” Linda asked. “Maybe New England in October next year?”
“Already looking at dates.”
A white Tesla pulled up to the curb, discharged a young couple with hiking gear, and drove off to its next assignment.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” Jake said. “That couple we met at Yellowstone. They changed their whole itinerary in thirty seconds. Just… decided to stay an extra day somewhere they liked. When’s the last time we could do that?”
“Never. There was always some constraint. Rental return deadlines. Hotel cancellations. Logistics.”
“Right. And now there’s not. The infrastructure just… accommodates. That’s what’s different. The technology doesn’t make you adjust to it. It adjusts to you.”
They checked their bags, cleared security, and found their gate. On the monitor, their flight showed on time.
Linda pulled up the photo from Red Rocks on her phone. The amphitheater glowing in the sunset, Ed Sheeran on stage, the crowd a sea of phone lights and raised hands.
“I want to remember something,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“That this trip wasn’t about the cars. The cars were just… invisible. In the best way. This trip was about us, finally paying attention to what we were seeing instead of how we were getting there.”
Jake nodded. “The technology disappeared. That’s when you know it’s working.”
Their flight boarded twenty minutes later. As the plane climbed above Denver, Jake looked down at the mountains, the highways threading through them, the invisible network of autonomous vehicles shuttling people toward experiences they’d remember long after they’d forgotten which car they rode in.
The open road hadn’t died, he realized. It had just been reimagined. And it was more open than ever.
Related Articles:
The Economics of Autonomous Vehicle Tourism – Analysis of how self-driving vehicles are transforming the travel industry
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving: Capabilities and Limitations – Current state and trajectory of autonomous driving technology
How Autonomous Vehicles Are Reshaping Rural Tourism Economies – Research on the economic impact of autonomous tours on rural communities
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