I believe in an earlier post I referred to “the family idiot trip”.  A vacation, road trip, or travel plan in which anything can and will happen.  This is my favorite kind of travel. It   normally involves a destination of some sort (though that is not a necessity), a map, a vehicle, and the right frame of mind.  The right frame of mind means not too many plans.  Any plans in the offing must be flexible and subject to change at a moment’s notice. (A good sense of humor is very valuable if you wish to have a successful idiot trip-actually more than valuable, it is a requirement.)

  The model for the family idiot trip was developed by my birth family.  As we never had enough money my father, a college professor, supplemented his income by teaching summer school.  However, for one reason or another, he chose to teach summer school at institutions other than the one that employed him during the school year.  So most every summer we headed out into the great unknown, two parents, three kids, a 1960 Rambler American, a trailer, a luggage carrier on top and oh yes, the family dog.  I am sure we resembled Okies right out of the Grapes of Wrath as we traipsed across the countryside.  We were never headed for anywhere close.  If Texas was good, California was better, and since 200 miles a day was all  that my mother could tolerate in a slow moving vehicle of her three kids, husband and dog, these trips took a loooooongggg time. 

  What I liked then and still like now about the family idiot trip is that you actually see the United States.  Fly over country becomes a real place when you stop to read every historic marker along the route, ramble through the homes of Presidents leaving chocolate finger prints on the Victorian upholstery, splash in swimming holes in small town parks, stop to view the Conestoga wagon ruts still evident on the plains in Nebraska, and marvel at the stupidity of George Armstrong Custer as one stands in the same place that all the Indians in the world rode down on him. .  (After seeing the Little Big Horn, a rather concave valley, one can’t help but wonder, what was the man thinking?)

    Oh, one other rule I forgot to mention about family idiot trips is that it really helps if you pack a lunch.  It not only saves money, but you have the opportunity to drive away from a roadside park leaving the family dog behind, or your sister, and not discover the absence until you are one hundred miles down the road.  This is totally true-though we did discover my sister’s absence a few miles down the road, not 100.  The dog…it was 100.  But the good news is that he was a loyal and faithful dog and completely certain we would be back. So he waited patiently at our picnic spot. What my sister was thinking I am not so sure about…she may have been thinking it would be a good time to find a new family. 

  During my growing up years we camped in places that boasted mosquitoes so large they could carry off a small horse (I guess that would be a pony), drove over the Rocky Mountains in the days before carburetors adjusted themselves to high altitudes, meaning we crawled over the Continental Divide.  A giant land tortoise would have made better time. But the view was great, looking thousands of feet down gorges that at that time had no guardrails. And yes, traffic was stacking up behind us, but since the road had been blasted out of shelf rock, oops, too bad, no place to pass. Flatlanders! Sigh…

So when I became a single parent I began instituting my own version of idiot trips. (Being married to the man to whom I was married was not conducive to the idiot trip mentality. This was a man who would ask me what time I wanted to leave on vacation in the morning; to which I would randomly assign a time.  If we weren’t packed loaded and on the road at the appointed time that I had pulled out of my ass the night before, it ruined his day.  Not at all what the idiot trip is all about.) Our trips, meaning those of myself and my kids, began with a cross country excursion to the coast of North Carolina.  During this trip my children learned all about seeing fireworks on the beach and adventures during one of my shortcuts.  It was tough on them at first as I had to convince them that all roads lead to somewhere, and just because I had taken the wrong exit, it didn’t necessarily mean we would up in the Twilight Zone. (Of course we could have ended up there too.  West Virginia, though a beautiful state does have some surreal aspects to it.) And that I really did know about where I was going, we were just taking the ‘scenic route’.  The scenic route becoming our euphemism for, “mom is totally clueless and she really needs to stop and take out the map or ask  for directions.”

 After that summer we began traveling with my older daughter’s travel softball team to destinations near and far.  While there always was a definite destination and time frame during those eight or nine years of weekly trips, I usually managed to get us to some unscheduled spot of interest, be it a lake where we picnicked just east of St. Louis or taking pictures in front of a giant wedge of cheese somewhere in Wisconsin.

 Our most recent destination this summer was to Cleveland, Ohio to take in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Having been there some years back I decided that my children could not survive without seeing the note paper that John Lennon scribbled ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ on.  And as so often happens when events are only generally planned we stumbled onto the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame grounds just in time to enjoy a sound check provided by the country band Lone Star. My oldest daughter was totally giddy about being so close to all that star power.  The music was pretty cool too.

  I have put over 150,000 miles on two vehicles during these joyrides.  There is something about long car trips that invites intimacy.  Some of my best times with my kids have been spent in my car. Talking about nothing and everything; arguing about radio stations and how long to go with the Christian Music channel before all three of us shriek, “JESUS” in unison at the top of our lungs and switch to another.  Debating how many milkshakes are enough when you are “on vacation”?  Arguments so silly that they have left me laughing until I could hardly keep the car on the road or from swerving into oncoming traffic. Leaning out the car window yelling, “Hey Cow!” at livestock in the fields.  (If one looks at you, you win.)  I wouldn’t trade these times for anything and I have a sneaking feeling that had my marriage held together we wouldn’t have been doing any of this.

 Which I guess brings me around to another point. Every heart break has an upside. One just has to be patient enough to wait it out and find it.  I am not sure how many more family idiot trips the future has in store for us.  My kids are all but grown-maybe a couple of more summers? Who knows? But  I can be packed and ready by morning.