Prelude -- An Epic Family Vacation or a Disaster in the Making?

We are going on a family adventure during the summer of 2013.  My wife thinks I am crazy for a number of reasons, but I am convinced that this is the perfect time for an epic journey. 

I am between jobs so there is a window of opportunity available for me to do this with my family that is unlikely to present itself again.  With kids aged 13, 8, and 6 I have the perfect chance to give them (i.e., “impose upon them”) a memorable life experience.

I have many memories of the trips my family took when I was a kid.  These were mostly in California and Mexico (the northern part of Baja California).  We would go camping along the coast in Southern California, in the eastern Sierras, or for a few summers, at Lake Comanche, east of Lodi in the foothills of the western Sierras.  We covered most of the state over my childhood – from the Anza Borrego desert in the south to Mount Shasta in the north.    

I remember trips to Yosemite as a kid where children chased bears through the campgrounds in the Valley and there were fire fall shows in the evening when embers were pushed over the cliffs from Glacier Point into the valley below. 

Firefalls in Yosemite Valley in the 1960's

According to Wikipedia, these fire falls ended in 1968.  Since they left an impression on me, I am hopeful this trip will leave an impression on the younger kids.  For some some interesting memories from people who witnessed these events (click this link).

Another trip that left an indelible impression on my young mind was a 1971 trip to my father’s family reunion in southeastern Idaho, which included ventures into Yellowstone and through Utah and the National Parks there as well.  Yellowstone had the ultimate cool things – boiling mud, spewing geysers of hot water, dangerous wild animals on the loose, clear and beautiful pools, rafting trip down the Snake River, bison, elk, bears, etc.  The beauty of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, fishing in the Beaver Mountains of Utah, swimming in the Great Salt Lake all left impressions. 

I have traveled across the country a number of times.  The first was when I was twelve and was with my mother’s sister and her husband, who after having finished graduate school at Yale, were moving west to Northern California.  

The second time was in 1983, after having graduated from college and having driven from my parents’ home in Southern California to Washington, D.C. where I had taken a job with the Federal Reserve.  During that trip, in January, my brother and I took a very southern route through Arizona, El Paso, Jackson, MS; Birmingham, AL; Lynchburg, TN; the Blue Mountains of Virginia, etc.  This was in a 1971 Volkswagen beetle.  I remember having to lean out the window somewhere near El Paso and scraping the ice off the window with a credit card every time a truck would pass us as the flat window provided a perfect catch for snow melt that would freeze immediately upon hitting the glass in the cold weather. 

The third trip was again from Southern California to Hanover, NH in 1986 where I was attending my second year of graduate school.  I don’t remember much about that trip other than a quick breeze through Yellowstone and exiting the east side of the park and coming down into Cody, WY and an archway of elk antlers.  It must have been during this trip that I got imbedded with the first impression of “Wall Drug” the ubiquitous signs in what seems like every ¼ mile for 1000 miles in the mid west. 

The fourth trip was coming back from grad school to California in the early summer of 1987.  This trip was more of a simple get from point A to point B trip, but I had in mind to see a few of the more notable landmarks, including Mount Rushmore.  Unfortunately the thing I remember most is the thing I failed to see – after careful planning and a scenic drive through the Badlands, I pulled into the Mt. Rushmore National Park parking lot in a thick fog.  I waited a couple of hours, toured the Visitors’ Center, saw the film (as I remember it, narrated by Tom Brokaw), and waited for the fog to lift.  It never did and I, pressed for time, moved on without having actually ever laid eyes on the actual mountain. 

The fifth trip was in 2007.  Prior to June 2007, we were living in Manhattan.  Given the birth of our third child, we realized that it no longer made economical sense, nor practical sense to have three kids in the City.  So we had decided to move out to the suburbs to Rye in Westchester County.  Both my wife’s and my families are from the West Coast and she generally spends a fair amount of time in California with the kids visiting family during the summer.  We also realized that we needed another car when we moved to the suburbs.  With the expense of renting a car for the month or so she would be spending on the West Coast, and with the expense of our apartment in New York for one more month, we decided to move out of our apartment one month early, buy a car out west and, after seeing family in California and Reno, drive it back across country along the old Route 66.  

Signs in Barstow, CA

The kids were too young for that trip to have left much of an impression, but Twiggy and I enjoyed it very much.  However, some of the memorable sights of my previous journeys seemed tarnished this time around – particularly St. Louis where, after having toured the Gateway Arch and the Museum of Westward Expansion in its basement, we were struggling for safe and interesting places to explore with young kids.

The better parts of the family at the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, TX in 2007

The point is that I don't remember most of the trips I took, even those I took as an adult.  But I do remember parts of all of them, even those I took as a kid.  I hope the trip will leave snapshots in my children's minds just as I have snapshots in mine of the trips I took both as a child and as an adult.

My children live in an environment where many families that do travel tend to stay east of the Mississippi unless they are going to a large city on the West Coast or high-end skiing in the Rockies.  (Europe sure, but anything in the middle of the North American continent is just “fly over country”).  I want to leave them with the realization that real cowboys do exist and our nation is more than East and West Coast cities.  My girls scream at the sight of a bug, yet ask to go fishing.  I am more than willing – in fact, I am anxious -- to get them to bait a hook with a live worm and to gut a fish after reeling it in.  I want to broaden their experiences beyond that which they can get living a quite normal and broad life in the area in which we live.  I want to leave the impressions on their brain of the natural beauty of America that my family left on mine. 

Thus, given the window I have available with my employment situation and my kids’ ages, I decided that this summer would be the perfect opportunity for an epic road trip.  I also want to see Mt. Rushmore with my own eyes. 

This trip is likely to have a binary outcome.  We will either be a close-knit family upon our return or we will be fighting like cats and dogs.  We will be traveling in a minivan and staying in reasonably priced hotels/motels.  There will be times when we each have plenty of space and there will be times when it will be cramped.  There will be short driving days with lots to see and there will be long driving days with the primary goal of covering distance in the car.

The reason I decided to create this blog is many fold.  First, I wanted to chronicle our adventures.  Second, I want a reason for the kids to contribute and to think about what they see and what they like and what made an impression on them.  The electronics available to kids these days (DVD video in the car, iTouch and Nintendo DS games) provide them with entertainment during the inevitable long boring stretches of drive and keep them from squabbling too much which is good for everybody in the car.  But they also provide a distraction from interesting things that might catch their eyes otherwise.  So I would like to have them contribute on a basis on which they are capable.  This will also allow family and friends to keep up with our adventure.  It is likely to be part Family Vacation, part Modern Family….and hopefully not too much War of the Roses.