interesting travel encounters

[big teej]

greetings playgrounders,

often, PCs must travel from Point A to Point B to reach their next adventure.

usually, this travel is interupted by 1 (and only 1) random encounter en route. as everyone wants to get to the main adventure and be done with it.

however.

occaisionally, the travel is PART of the slated adventure.

my question is this.

how do you run travlling encounters/adventures in such a manner that they are not simply a string of combat encounters?

favorite creatures and/or tactics?

for the record, I'd rather avoid a major detour/sidequest such as a bandit camp or something. but I digress.

more specific context can be provided if necessary

[CTrees]

Enemies parallelling the PCs' path, using hit and run tactics. Horsebound or flying archers/mages pulling repeated driveby's, for instance. Suddenly, speed of travel becomes more important, how they travel (on the roads, stealthily, detouring, etc.) becomes VERY important. It's one group of bandits or whatever, but they're playing it smart and wearing down the party. Maybe toss in an arcane trickster attempting to steal things at a range each encounter, adding to the attrition. Also, poisons.

First thing to come to mind.

[SleepyBadger]

I ofter create very elaborate sidequests (caravan asking for help, villager in need, murder mystery etc) depending on the party's alignment and interests. This will deter them a while from the main campaign but they don't necessarily mind. But of course we usually play campaigns, so a sidequest taking three sessions to solve doesn't really matter. I also use some mini adventure ideas to incorporate in the campaign when I get bored of rolling for another random encounter.