As we're nearing the last leg of summer, we started reminiscing about family road trips. My parents were the proud owners of a 1984 Oldsmobile station wagon: the kind with wood paneling on the side and the requisite backseat that folded open to face the person so unlucky to be driving behind us.
Road Trip Flashback: Forced Family Fun
Every summer, we'd take a road trip somewhere that should have lasted a week; and, at the very least one, often two, (and if we were in rare form, all three) of the following things would happen during our requisite family road trip:
1. I would get motion sickness and experience an upheaval of Denny's pancakes that would miss the intended target of an empty Burger King bag.
2. One of us would forget something at the hotel; and despite much pleading, there would be no turning back to get it (but we'd be served a lecture about the responsibilities of remembering our personal items).
3. We'd get lost due to our inability to keep track of the AAA flip maps, even though the nice travel agent would highlight the route on every single page.
Looking back now, we're able to laugh at these trips and even think back on them fondly (but mainly as a source of embarrassment to each other). And even though we say to each other, "Man, I'm so glad we don't take family road trips anymore!," I think we're all secretly glad we did, especially at a time when family vehicles didn't come with built-in DVD players and cell phones were the size and weight of a brick.
Do you have a funny family road trip memory? Share it with us in the comments!
[ Photo from Mark Potter's Flickr ]
Related Reading:
Escapes: Roadtripping Resources
Getaways: How Spontaneous Are You?
Best Desert Getaways: Where Do You Go?
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When I was a wee little lad, my Dad was reassigned from Michigan to California for the first time so they packed up the Chevy II wagon, hitched up the U-Haul and started on our first westward journey - the back seat had been folded down for the luggage and the remaining space was covered with a big blanket for me, my toys and my dog.
(No Lectures Please - This was the mid-60's when seatbelts were still an extra-cost option on many cars and children's car seats were widely regarded as unnecessary)
After an overnight stop at Grandma's house in Illinois where she gave my folks a Cherry Cheesecake (?), we continued on our way. After a time when things seemed all too quiet in the back of the wagon my folks turned around and to their great dismay discovered my dog and I well-occupied: I was scooping up globs of the now half-eaten cheesecake with my fingers and alternating between eating them myself or feeding them to the dog.
view bepsf's profile
My only family trip memory of any hilarity is when I was 9 and my sister 7. We took a trip to Minot to the zoo, where my sister proceeded to alternate between comical laughter and tears as the goats kept eating her m&m's off her outstretched hand. She couldn't quite grasp that the goats nuzzling her hands meant her candy was being eaten up, never to return.
view Melissa82's profile
We went camping, a family of 5, in a little Nissan Sentra. Although I was the tallest, I was generally in the smallest seat - the one in the middle or behind my dad, who gave himself lots of leg room, or I had to ride with my bag under my feet because Mom bought this huge buffalo skull.
One year we went to a primitive campground, Sage Creek in South Dakota (pit toilets but no running water.) There were prairie dogs nearby and coyotes howled at night. But on this particular year we had a really hot day which was followed by a hailstorm at night. We woke up to find our tent floor had been transformed into a sort of freezing waterbed. Our shoes were floating on the tent 'porch' outside among the ice bits in ankle-deep water. Then my brother had a tick bite that got infected. It was not the most enjoyable summer vacation we ever had, but it sure was the most memorable.
view whytephoenix's profile
Those Auto Club flip books are called TripTiks©.
view spinsLPs's profile
Summer of '82, for some reason "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" was in heavy rotation on stations throughout Illinois and Kentucky. Mom kept going "oh my goodness!!" and changing the channel at the part where "she kept her head even when giving head" although we didn't know what he was talking about. and by they way, we had the Vista Cruiser in hunter green with the fake wood.
view carolynapplebee's profile
Ours was a celery-green 1969 Plymouth Satellite station wagon. We felt *very* Brady-Bunch-retro when we took that thing on vacation in the Black Hills and Badlands--places which at the time still had a heavy 50's family vacation sensibility about them.
Really--look at a photo of that station wagon parked next to a brown and yellow National Parks Service sign, and you're pressed to determine if it's 1969 or 1994.
view Bruised's profile