As a child, I spent many summer vacations driving across our great country to Utah and Wyoming to visit our cousins, aunts and uncles and of course, Grandparents! Those long car rides in the back of the family station wagon were fun and challenging at the same time. Try to imagine three rowdy boys and a girl cooped up in a car packed to the roof with suitcases, pillows, and a huge red and white cooler cruising at the amazing speed of 55 mph from Connecticut to Wyoming. We didn't have video games, ipads, tablets, laptops and dvds. I feel sorry for us! We passed the time playing the ABC game, looking out the window at signs trying to find all the letters of the alphabet or playing with our travel bingo cards. We always brought crayons and new coloring books. You started at the beginning of the coloring book and colored every page from front to back. You never skipped a page, even if the picture you had to color was dumb. We played games....Yahtzee, cards, and backgammon were some of our favorites. I crocheted blankets. The whole family sang every song we could think of to sing, sometimes adding harmonies and parts. Songs like My Brother Bill was a fireman, When Sammy put the paper on the wall, Oh the deacon went down, White Coral Bells, and Sippin' Cider through a Straw were some of my favorites. When we saw a heard of cows along the highway my Dad would always make his unique super low cow mooing sound. When moving trains were spotted we sang, Choo, choo choo, It's coming down the track. I wonder how many times we sang that song on our trips. I enjoyed helping my Dad navigate and would follow our progress on the map. I would tell my dad which towns were coming up and how many miles to each large city. I watched the signs and for mileage markers. We especially loved it when we would stop early for the night and got to go swimming at the hotel! Because we took this cross country trip so many times, we had special places we liked to stop at every year. I loved the Buffalo Bill trading center in North Platte, Nebraska. We would often make stops at various church history sites, Independence, Liberty, Carthage, and Independence Rock. These stops were nice diversions from the monotony of our drive. We ate picnic lunches at rest stops with food that my Mother prepared from home and kept in the big red and white cooler. Keith and I had many adventures in the hotels trying to find the ice machine so we could add fresh ice to the cooler each night. Our meals were wonderful, healthy well balanced meals with cold fried chicken, grapes, ice cold carrot and celery sticks, chips, and various cookies. We always had a batch of homemade cookies in a Tupperware to nibble on and there was always a thermos full of ice cold water that we could access at any time. When we were thirsty and would say we needed a drink my dad would say, "Just turn your ear" as he demonstrated a twisting motion on his own ear. Naps helped pass the time and we were fortunate to live in the age of no seat belts. As a matter of fact, my dad actually cut all of the seat belts out of our cars because they got it the way. We could roam anywhere in the car. We often slept on the floor or in the back of the station wagon so that we could stretch out. Everyone had their pillow and a blanket and a bag of their "activities" that would keep them occupied. My favorite landmarks along the way were kissing rock in Wyoming and going through the tunnels by Green River. It was always a challenge to see if you could hold your breath through the entire tunnel. My dad would honk the horn all the way through the tunnel adding to the excitement of the dark tunnel. I also enjoyed seeing the Lincoln monument in Wyoming. We always ate a meal there, usually lunch. Getting an ice cream cone at the Little America was also a favorite stop. We would count the cute billboard advertisements with the black and white penguin for Little America all through Wyoming. There seemed to be hundreds of them and that helped us pass the time. After days in the car with the family and having some serious family bonding time we would arrive at our destination and begin the fun time with our relatives. I am grateful that my parents made the sacrifice with time and resources to provide us with memories by taking us on these vacation adventures. We drove for miles, but it was worth it to keep our family ties strong.
