5-21-09

Summer road trip adventures are just around the corner, just add 1 large car

Summer is coming, it’s just around the corner. How do I know this? It says so up top.
This is the time that the outside air smells the best. Fresh cut grass can be smelled all over. Flowering trees permeate the air, and during the first five minutes of a summer rain, the pavement expels a distinct aroma that makes me think of driving long distances.
Yes, folks, it’s road trip season.
About this time every year, I start to think about the joys of hopping into a large vehicle and hitting the highway.
There is something soothing about the sound of the road when you know that you have nine hundred miles and two days ahead of you. Add in all of the truck stop drink and bathroom breaks and the “scenic route” detour that adds 2 hours to the trip and a lifetime of memories and stories to tell.
When I was in first grade, I went on my first memorable road trip. For five weeks or more, dad, mom my sister, Jess (who was about 1 1/2 years old at the time) and myself, drove from our home in Maryland and ended up in San Diego, California.
My father was in the Navy at the time and had active duty in Gulf Port, Mississippi. This was going to be our midway destination and our home for two weeks where we stayed with my grandparents.
I remember being young and thinking that it was strange but exciting to be temporarily living in a different house for two weeks. I went grocery shopping in different stores, went out to eat in different restaurants, went to different parks, flew a kite with my dad and uncle on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and even made it to New Orleans for the day and kicked pigeons and wandered into a strip club when my parents weren’t looking. Don’t worry, the bouncer shooed me back out the door laughing before I could see anything bad, or good.
When Dad was done with his “Ac-Dutra”, we continued west. From Mississippi we traveled to my father’s uncle’s house in Oklahoma. We only stayed the night, there but I vividly remember wearing an authentic Indian Chief’s head dress that he had hanging beside his fireplace.
We then visited the Grand Canyon. I ended up back there three more times on three different road trips after this trip. It’s that amazing.
There are pictures of me, somewhere, running with a Navajo Indian boy that was the same age as me. Mom said that I told everyone that “I played with a ‘Hobo’ Indian.”
Close enough.
His mother was selling turquoise jewelry on the side of the road at a scenic pull off. We didn’t speak the same language but we both knew how to play and laugh.
San Diego. We made it. Dry, beautiful weather and a huge beautiful zoo.
Aunt Nora took us in for I can’t remember how long. What I do remember is that we were sitting in a hot tub one night and hearing that a blizzard hit the DC area with four feet of snow. My parents thought it was great to be in the warmth of California while everyone back home was freezing and running out of power. I, on the other hand, was mad. All of my friends were at home playing in an unimaginable amount of white powder.
I have now turned a short story into a long one. I think what I am trying to say is that this is the time to pack the family up, pick a destination and hop in the truck.
Smell the smells of different states. Buy groceries in a different store. Collect rubber magnets that are in the shape of each state that you pass through. Eat lunch at roadside diners in the middle of nowhere... and get someone to take a picture of you all standing out front.
Make it an adventure. The memories that can be made from even a three-day weekend will live with you for a lifetime.
Believe me, I still look through my photo album of the time that I bought a ‘78 Caddy and drove across country by myself when I was 22. My family and I still look at the slides from our San Diego trip on a large projector screen when the mood hits us. My friend Steve and I still talk about driving from Arizona back to Maryland in two days. Leigh and I talk about all of our trips from Boston to Maryland and North Carolina.
A lifetime of memories, I tell you. A lifetime.
Bryan Pinkey can be found mapping out his next trip and searching for that next Caddy or at bpinkey@nccox.com.