|
 Wait
for it…wait…At last, the day, June 18, 2007 arrived. Time to trek
across America! Of course, it’s all in the past now, but like my
childhood birthdays and Christmases, anticipating the arrival of the
18th was deliciously difficult. Our kids, Marguerite, 14, and Kevin,
11, got out of school two days before we were to leave, as did my
wife, Anne - a grammar school teacher. I had been packed and ready
to get on the
road since Saint Michael’s graduation in
7000-mile cross-country
route
mid-May. Actually, Anne and I had been
waiting to start our family cross-country trip for over a decade,
since the kids toddled and we first entertained vacation ideas.
(Perhaps at a time when you were enduring my General Psychology
class?) We wanted to time the venture to fall before the days a
teenaged Marguerite might find constantly being with her family, and
without her friends, for 32 days excruciating and 2½ year younger
Kevin had the stamina to tolerate the potential challenges of a 7000
mile trip. Yes, our plan was to drive over 7000 miles, through 18
states and one foreign country, Canada. (Of course, we New
Englanders might argue that some of the western states we traveled
through should qualify as foreign countries.) And after all the
waiting, the day to leave finally came.
 As
the cliché says, “It’s all in the preparation,” and this couldn’t
have been truer for the success of our trip. Knowing where we were
going, when we would be there, and what we could do when we arrived
might strike some as a bit rigid, but what we might have given up in
spontaneity was more than made up in stress relief, especially for
the kids. Our preparations for the trip started in earnest during
the previous Christmas vacation. We all put together our wish list
of places to visit, then Anne and I tossed out our lists and put
together a route that hit most of the kids’ choices. Well, okay, our
destinations overlapped quite a bit. But mom and dad’s hopes of
getting to the Canadian Rockies, visiting relatives in Seattle, and
driving through a Californian Redwood had to be shelved given the
Camping outside
Zion National Park in Utah extra time and 1500 miles they tacked
onto the already overly-extended trip. Next came the search for
suitable campgrounds, followed by reservations for campsites and
scheduled activities. “Wanna camp in Yellowstone, trek into the
Grand Canyon on mules, or ride the rapids on Angel River in Utah?
Make your reservations at least six months in advance,” is what we
were told. It was sound advice.
 The
remainder of our preparations consisted of acquiring stuff. Lots of
stuff. Boy, did the pile build fast. Tent, sleeping bags, sleeping
mats, pillows, Coleman stove, cookware, utensils, and on and on. I
feared it bordered on too much stuff. But since we were able to get
it all into a roof cargo box and the back of our RAV4, without
blocking the rear window, (one of my prouder accomplishments), we
must have exerted some purchasing restraint. We mostly bought
Cowpokes we're not, but the ride into
the Grand Canyon
necessities that we hope will
was spectacular!
see continued use in the coming
years. But there were some items we
waffled over due to their prices. Two of these items now fall into
the “Are we glad we spent the money on this!” category in hindsight
and we highly recommend them to anyone planning to travel. The first
is quality, self-inflating sleeping pads. They’re a mere three
inches of thickness that magically masks rocks, ruts, and rubble and
prevents the aching backs and poor sleep that quickly drain pleasure
from trips for aging professors, and anyone else no longer of
college age or younger. The second item is Sister Loraine Ignatius Nuvi. No, we didn’t buy a nun from the black market slave trade.
Sister Loraine is what we affectionately call our Garmin Nuvi 350
GPS. We named her Loraine simply because we happened to be driving
through Lorain, OH when we decided that our new family member, who
butted into conversations whenever it suited her, needed a name. We
gave her a calling because she conjured childhood memories from
Catholic grammar school: she was always authoritatively telling us
what to do, but 10 percent of the time what she had to say was no
help at all. “She wants me to turn there?! That’s not even a road!”
On the other hand, our travels would have been horrendously
stressful without her. Her guidance through congested cities and
across those wide-open plains where signs are sparse led us to
places we never would have attempted to visit with only a map in
hand.
 Had
the United States been created to suit our travel plans, all the
sites we wished to visit would have been accessible by short, easy
drives. However, since there’s pretty much a “marvels of nature”
wasteland between the east coast and the Rockies, a principle we
used to guide our destination and activity choices was to
strategically sprinkle points of relief following tedious travel
stretches. Nights in hotels here and there, a quick
Taking on the Snake River outside Jackson, Wyoming tour of the Louisville Slugger Bat
factory, a detour to the Mall of America and a Twins baseball game
(They’re not the Sox, but they only charge $29 each for great box
seats!), a day at Cedar Point Amusement Park (Nothing like going 120
mph straight up 40 stories and then back down again!), did wonders
to keep up everyone’s morale.
“What was your favorite part of the trip?” is a
question we’ve heard quite often since returning. The kids will tell
you it’s a tie between the aforementioned 7-hour mule ride down into
the Grand Canyon and white water rafting on the Snake River outside
of Jackson, Wyoming. Anne loved “walking the narrows,” a 10-mile
trek up and back in the Virgin River (Yes, you walk in the river!)
through a constricted slot canyon in Zion National Park. I, too,
greatly enjoyed these adventures and many others as well--the
Mammoth Caves in Kentucky were spectacular, as were the Colorado
Rockies, the Great Sand Dunes in southeastern Colorado, and the
drive through the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, and there was
nothing like the full moon rising over the Grand Canyon or having a
Buffalo herd cross the road in front of your car in Yellowstone. But
when I look back on our trip I’m mostly struck by how well we all
worked together and got along with each other. The trip gave us many
wonderful memories. It also reminded us of the gift of family.
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