Family Vacation (Cica 1975)

A co-worker and I recently had a discussion about old school family vacations. The kind where you take to the open road with the family and drive to a destination, perhaps the long way. I started feeling very nostalgic for this type of vacation.

When I was a kid, my father would take every minute of vacation time and spend six weeks in the summer driving his "camping rig" to Ohio from San Diego, CA. We would take 14 days to get there, spend a week visiting the grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles then drive back.

We roamed all over the western U.S. and saw many of the major sites between the west coast and Ohio. The week before the big trip, dad would crank the old camper onto the truck and prepare the equipment for the long ride. Good tires, belts, hoses, secure hardware for the camper etc. The day before the trip was spent loading food, clothing, toys, games, all the things one would need for an extended stay in a camper. Potable water was pumped into the holding tanks and ice for the "ice box" (needed block ice, try finding that these days) was secured. My two sisters and me would spend the night in the camper that night, high adventure for a bunch of kids, and by the time we awoke in the morning we would be watching the sunrise through the camper window over the California desert, heading east.

This was way before cell phones, so we had the ubiquitous CB radio fired up and tuned to channel "one nine" to monitor road conditions or call for help if needed. Dad had an 8 track player but it only played through the one speaker in the dash, AM radio was the only other form of entertainment. Dad drove, mom sat in the "navigator seat" and three kids rode in back. The rear window of the truck popped out and was connected to the camper with a "boot" a vinyl pass through that served to allow access from the cab to the rest of the camper. I recall countless boring miles perched facing forward on the dinette seat of the camper watching the western landscape roll by.

Us kids would play games, sleep, fight (but only till dad threatened to pull over). I remember spending a great deal of time being motion sick from the ride. I can even recall great sites we visited based on how sick I was when we got there. For instance, Meteor Crater in Winslow Arizona, sick, threw up in the visitor parking lot, Mt. Rushmore SD. same thing, only I made it to the bathroom at the visitor center that time (ahh air conditioning). I remember hearing rattlesnakes along the path to the restrooms at a rest stop in Gila Bend Arizona and countless summer evenings at "KOA Kampgrounds" along the interstate, hoping for a pool and praying dad would let us swim.

These summer trips in the '70's were the ultimate adventure. I saw mountains and desert, plains and canyons, sea and sky. When finally we arrived at our destination in southwest Ohio it was like visiting mars. These were my dads brothers and sisters, my grandparents, and they lived in a culture that was very different than the suburban life I lived in San Diego. Dad eventually moved us all back to Ohio permanently, but these expeditionary missions across the country gave me not only a taste of what our lives would someday be, but exposed me to the concept that the world did not end at the county line.

Today, vacation means driving to the North Carolina beaches, only 11 hours or flying to a destination and staying in a hotel. I wouldn't dream of driving across the western deserts and mountains without a cell phone, nor would I be able to take an entire month off work and spend a large portion of it driving. All those years ago however, what we did was fairly normal and the experience and lessons have stayed with me all this time. The next time I am 30,000 feet in the air, going west in a flying silver tube, I will look down at the roads I once traveled, in a hot camper, motion sick as hell and remember feeling excited to be moving, going somewhere surrounded by my family and enjoying the most American of vacations.