Many, MANY moons ago, when I was a kid, my parents bought a 22" Tag-a-Long trailer.
They wanted to travel and show us places outside of our "box" so off we went. As a kid, you
don't appreciate learning about historical sites and such and I can remember that all we wanted to know is if the campground had a pool and a game room. I appreciate now what my parents did
and Tim and I are trying to travel with Olivia too. The most amazing thing though is that they
took us across country in 1977. My father's long time job had gotten too stressful and unfulfilling and he was going to open his own business. He figured before he signed on for that,
the time was right to do the big trip. It was amazing. We saw many of the national parks. We went to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Sequoia redwood forest, the Grand Canyon, Custer's last stand, Death Valley,San Francisco. WAY too many places to list. My sister and I(same birthday) turned 12 and 8 in Las Vegas. We learned alot about the American indians. Drove on route 66. The radio announcer broke in and told of
Elvis' demise when we were pulling up to the "Cadillac ranch" which was ironic since Elvis loved
caddies. My father worked in the Ford business and we had a 1974 brown country squire(yes with the wood grain decaled sides!) that had a 460 engine in it and my dad had put some high performance parts on that car to haul a trailer better and I tell ya, you have not lived till you've
watched the face of some hotshot in a sporty car get into the wrong lane at a light to cut in front of everyone only to get totally smoked by a station wagon. (Dad was a major hot-rodder in the 50's) Actually, way back then before we had traffic , they used to race across towns on a main drag for miles. One cop that could not catch up with my dad but was obviously a car buff finally found him after a race was over. I don't think he ticketed him, but he did ask him to pop the hood and show him what he'd done to the engine. The good old days! But I digress.
We climbed some mountain out west in that car hauling a trailer and the park ranger at the top stopped us and said he had never seen someone do that successfully before. That car was a brute. Pass anything but a gas station. My sisters and I truly think that this trip was the best thing our parents ever did for us. Imagine 4 girls(scary isn't it), my parents and 2 cats on the road for
2 months in a 22" trailer. It was the time of our lives though. I wish I remembered more of it and
have always dreamed of doing it again and bringing my parents. By the time I was 12, I had travelled up and down the eastern states from Maine to Florida more than once and, at the end of this cross country trek, had been in I believe 42 states of our nation and Canada. We have priceless memories from that trip. Besides the places we saw is the funny things that happened during the loooonnnngggg hours in the car where the boredom of driving through hour after hour of corn fields or dessert was mind-numbing at times. We would make up home-made jokes and sing(heaven help us cause their ain't an on-key set of pipes between us I think). I'll never forget driving through
Death Valley with the A/C off at times so the car wouldn't overheat. Yeah it's a dry heat unless
you are sitting and leaning against a dark brown vinyl interior. I was sitting behind my dad with
the window open and hugging my knees up as I sat so I was touching the least amount of vinyl possible. He hawked a loogy out his window which then whipped back into my window landing on my knee. Ah good times. It was gross but we
laughed ourselves silly over that and still do. I vividly remember driving across the salt flats(in the middle of nowhere) and talking about them. As my dad told us things about them, we wondered what those bubbles were on the ground. We drove along and talked about them, on the way to somewhere as we all are at any moment in the day, and finally I said, "why don't we just get out and see what the bubbles are?" My dad, probably realizing how silly it was to wonder when we could just pull over and truly experience the salt flats, did so and we went out walking on them and popping the air bubbles that form on the crusty surface. It was like walking on a different planet. A memorable "stop and smell the roses" moment. I also have a pretty vivid memory of the day I learned the hard way why you should never eat half a bag of your father's dried prunes at one time. DANG! We stopped to tour an old wild west ghost town and my family dropped me off at the restroom on the way in and picked me up there on the way out. The only "rootin' and tootin'" still happening in that town was in that ladies'room. Darn good thing we were towing a trailer with a bathroom that day too. Travelling was always a part of our lives and I am
SOOOOO grateful for it. To this day, I think the reason my sisters and I get along with and can
talk with anyone is that our parents "introduced" us to people from all walks of life in this whole
country. I may have taken this for granted at the time but not for long. When I went back to school, I had a science teacher who was teaching us about the hot springs, mud pots, and geysers of out west. I kept raising my hand to add facts to what he was teaching. What the mud pots smelled like(horrible, like rotten eggs, we held our shirts up over our noses the whole time),
things about the hot springs and such. The teacher stopped and said to me, "how do you know
all this stuff?" and I said, "we just spent the whole summer going across country and we went to all these places." I will never in my life forget his reaction. He literally was speechless. Even at
my young age, I realized that this man who was much older than me was teaching something out
of a book that he had never and probably would never see and here was this scrawny little kid who'd seen it all firsthand. He was so stunned that his reaction told me right then and there what
a lucky(blessed) little girl I was. So THANKYOU Mom and Dad for showing us the world(or at least as much as I will ever need to see in this lifetime). It was magical. Travel with your kids
people. It makes memories that last. I really am not a materialistic person. But that is where I
spend money. Taking my kid to a show in NYC or travelling to see new places is priceless to me.
