Goodbye, great American road trip
My first real vacation memory was driving up the coast of California with my parents.
I remember a cooler full of cheese, crackers and apples we snacked on as we drove, windows down and playing probably the one and only country music station in the early '80s out there. We played the alphabet game a dozen times, even after getting stuck for hours on J, Q, and Z.
My first vacation memory as a mom of three was cramming booster seats in the back of the car and being armed with Cheerios and fruit snacks and milk sippy cups that eventually would roll under the seat and be lost until the smell gave it away.
There was one bluegrass song that mysteriously calmed one of our children (memories run together, don’t they?) so we played it over and over and over as we drove down the East Coast.
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I’m sure each of these memories has gotten sweeter with time — my parents probably enjoyed the alphabet game as much as I enjoyed crying kids and some twangy song about Virginia.
Freedom reigned on all those road trips
And even though I can’t go back in time and relive these days, it makes me a little sad that what I consider the ingredients of a great American road trip are long gone. Will people in the future ever know how good that feeling of freedom feels?
Gas prices surely have taken away some of that good feeling. I find myself brainstorming ways to minimize travel to save a few bucks every day. But even if you take away the pain at the pump, I’m not sure the rest of what makes a family road trip great can exist. For me, a good road trip needs to have food, games, music and adventure.
Sure, you can pack up cheese and crackers and hit the road, but where there were once little diners with 18 calendars on the wall now stand 18 fast-food places and everyone wants something different.
And what family or group is still out there playing the alphabet game? These handy phones and tablets have taken over entertainment in such an individual way that I’d venture that some people don’t know the glory that is finding a road named “Quail Hollow Drive."
Local radio stations of faraway places don’t even get the listening respect they once had, replaced by streamed music when you always know what song is going to play next. And adventure? Getting lost without a GPS was the way you stumbled upon the greatest treasures.
One of my goals this summer is to force my mostly adult children to take an old-style road trip with me. I feel like they just need a refresher lesson, no matter how much they complain. We won’t go far with these gas prices, just far enough to get through the alphabet. They’ll thank me someday.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Freedom reigned on all those road trip in years past
