We just got back from a trip to Arizona for Thanksgiving to spend time with family for the holiday. This week I have been reading a book called, “Don’t Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the Family Road Trip.” by Richard Ratay. The book chronicles the events of how family road trips came into being and what happened to them. It discusses the inventions useful for road trips like that of the car, seat belts, entertainment consoles in cars, handheld gaming devices etc, as well as the history behind roads, highways, fast food restaurants, and motels. The author fondly remembers his trips in the family station wagon in the seventies and eighties and in the final chapters he writes about the first time his family flew on a plane to their destination instead of drove. I love what he wrote because I feel the same way about driving places. This is what he wrote:
“The plain fact was that other than purchasing our plane tickets, we’d made no real effort to reach our objective, as those men had – or even we’d always had in the past. There’d been no hardships, no squabbles, no hours of tedium, not even a worry that we’d missed a turn…Our flight had allowed us to soar over all the things that once made a family vacation…a family vacation. We’d taken a trip but we’d made no journey. And somehow it felt as though we hadn’t earned the right to enjoy our final destination.”
Another quote:
“More than anything else what made the family road trip so special was the feeling of being inextricably bound together in a great adventure. An adventure based less on where we were headed, and more in the moments we shared along the way.”
I love the joy of the journey. That is why we drive places. That is why we drove 8,500 miles this summer to Alaska and back or toured the southeast last summer. My kids are champion road warriors who barely blink at a trip of a mere 10 hours like we took yesterday. We love what we see on the journey. Truthfully though, if you gave me a plane ticket anywhere I wouldn’t complain! I love to fly too. I guess the heart of it all is that I simply love going places.
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