V is for Vacation

It all out started innocently enough, a few families, sitting around a friend’s dining room table, staring at a map of the US, reminiscing about places we had seen as children.  We all had stories to tell of trips gone wrong, dads who lost tempers over whiny children, children who were left in hotel rooms by parents who thought ‘someone else’ had them, and tales of siblings bonding over endless hours sitting in the back of the family car playing the license plate game. It wasn’t long before the reminiscing became dreaming and the dreaming became planning -and planning became the vacation of a lifetime.  Before the summer’s end, we would travel over 5,000 miles together.  In a motorhome.  Together.  Over 5000 miles and 21 days.  Together.  In a motorhome.  

After hours and hours of planning and negotiating the adventure, we decided on our route.  We would drive the middle of the country on the way out, and hit the southern route on the way back.  Our trip started on a Saturday morning around 6AM.  A family of four and me with our three girls loaded into a motorhome and headed out to see our great country.  First stop, The Orange, just a few miles down the road.  We jumped out of the motorhome – well some of us jumped while others grumbled, stumbled and whined, seeing that we were only 25 minutes away from our house and we were stopping to see a big Orange on the side of the road.  We took some pictures, met the owner, who opened up the restaurant so we could tour inside, and soon we were on the road again.

While we drove with the intention of seeing the ‘usual’ sites, we also stumbled onto some more out of the way places and attractions like the Orange that gave our trip a more organic, simpler feel than a frenzied destination driven experience.  We stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, we had our picture taken with the “Big Texan,” and we ate frozen custard in St. Louis.  We chased fireflies in the Ozarks and met some of the most delightful people while we were lost.  (Met some scary people too, but that’s a whole other post)  We watched the sunrise over Pennsylvania farmhouses and dipped our toes in the Atlantic Ocean.  Other families joined us along the way and we explored Central Park in New York, ate pizza on the steps of some brownstone apartments, and had our picture taken in front of the world’s largest guitar.  We watched Fourth of July Fireworks on the Mall in DC and walked for miles to find food.  We played board games, sang show tunes and listened to stories on tape.  We ate at the Pig Out Palace and the Cracker Barrel.  We saw Ground Zero and placed our hands on the memorial at Oklahoma City.  We visited Sky City in New Mexico and got caught in a terrible thunderstorm in Ohio - and in DC.   We played hide n seek in Totem Pole Park and the Bass Store – yes, we were entertained for hours in a Bass Store.  We drove through Memphis and Oklahoma City and even Roswell, not one of original the places on the itinerary.  But, as wonderful as the trip was, we had some disappointments too.

We missed New Orleans and didn’t get to see Bourbon Street.  We didn’t get to sip mint juleps on a terrace while watching southern belles stroll down the sidewalks.  We didn’t get to enjoy southern hospitality or see the French Quarter.  There was a hurricane that summer, and the motorhome just couldn’t take the winds, and we ended up having to travel home the same road that we had taken on our way out.  Oh well, we shrugged it off – no big deal, there’s always next year.  How were we to know, that just a few moments in time later the New Orleans that we had so casually postponed to another vacation was headed to a disaster?

Years have now passed, the children are nearly grown and haven’t much interest in driving across the country with mom and dad.  While we had a wonderful time, and we are all still friends, we never did make it to New Orleans, and the days of little kids crammed in a motorhome for long road trips are long since gone.  The vacations of old are beautiful memories to treasure and stories to be retold to friends around dining room tables.  And who knows, it might not be too long before one of our children find themselves sitting around a dining room table swapping stories with friends only to find themselves planning their vacation of a lifetime.