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My wife and I under the Burr Trail sign on a trip to Kayenta.

Courtesy Lynn R. Blamires

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This is a picture of an art car from a museum in Houston, Texas. My first thought was that I wouldn't be caught dead in that car. Then, considering my personality, yeah, I would probably enjoy the attention.

Courtesy Lynn R. Blamires

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My wife and I at a mountain overlook on a road trip.

Courtesy Lynn R. Blamires

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My wife, Gayle, and I stopped at Rick's Spring, a spring with a grotto in Logan Canyon, on a trip to Yellowstone.

Courtesy Lynn R. Blamires

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I really didn’t see this day coming. I am writing this while on a road trip with my wife, Gayle. We have been road tripping since our marriage in 1969. My family lives in Oklahoma, and hers in Utah. The next year, we were on the road to see my family after our first child was born. We figured that if we could scrape up enough money for gas, my parents would feed us and give us a place to sleep.

When I was a boy, my family took road trips from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to see grandparents in Utah and Oregon. My parents helped me develop a love of history in those early years. They would stop at points of interest, usually historical markers, and learn about some event that happened at that spot. It made the trip more meaningful to know something about the country we were traveling through. My wife and I still stop to read those markers.

My family loved to play with words, especially those with double meanings or that sounded similar. Thus, those ‘historic markers’ were labeled ‘hysterical markers’. That gave us even more reason to stop at those places, to see something “hysterical.” I don’t think anyone else saw the humor in it.

It was a half-hour drive to and from church every Sunday. Without cell phones and electronic games, we found our own entertainment in the panorama from the car’s windows. There was a lot to see.

Like a scene in the movie Napoleon Dynamite, when he tied a string to a little Superman figure and dragged it behind the bus, I remember tying little plastic Army men on a long string. As we made our trips back and forth to church, I would sometimes toss the Army guy out the window and play out the string, watching as it bounced along behind the car from the rear window. I would see how close I could get to the wheels of the car behind us. I lost many Army guys playing that game.

I remember one game that my brother and I played called “I get it.” It consisted of claiming items of value by pointing at them and yelling, “I get it!” It could be a fancy sports car or that big boat. If I called it first, it was mine and not his. We didn’t keep track of what we got, only in getting it first. I remember how disappointed I was when I didn’t call out a fancy sports car before he did. We were easily entertained.

Mom tried to make the annual trips more interesting by planning different routes to Utah and Oregon. One year, we stopped at Mt. Capulin, a perfectly formed extinct volcano in New Mexico, and explored the National Monument. I was thrilled that fall when my elementary teacher focused on volcanoes, using Mt. Capulin as an example. I had been there – I knew what she was talking about!

Our family trips were made on a shoestring. We would get an early start, and as the sun came up, we would find a place to stop for breakfast. Not a restaurant, no, we would eat cold cereal from a paper cup standing around the front of the car, using the hood for a table. Fruit was also on the menu.

Mom liked to mix raisins and salted nuts for an in-car or anytime snack. We were enjoying this treat when we approached a long bridge on one trip. The alert went up, and we all knew we had to hold our breath while crossing the bridge or we would be cursed with bad luck. On one occasion, my sister, Kat, chomped on her cup of nuts and claimed that she had held her breath all the way across the bridge. There were no believers among the other four family members. To this day, she claims she can eat while holding her breath.

Taking a nap on the road was done at great risk in our family. My brother, Gary, tried one time. Mom was big on S&H Green Stamps. She had received a supply of another brand of savings stamps at a recent grocery stop. Gary woke up with his face covered with stamps.

I was not immune to my mom’s pranks on sleeping people. I fell asleep in the back seat, with my sleep deep enough for my mouth to drop open. My siblings called for mom’s attention. She took a knife full of crunchy peanut butter and scraped it off on my bottom teeth, into my mouth. I woke up to a car full of snickering people after dreaming I was eating peanuts.

Later, with my own children, we created next-generation vacation memories. It was 24 hours to Tulsa, and while we had gas money, a motel was out of the question. That was in the olden days before we had a car with cruise control. A tired right foot often forced me to stop and take breaks. We did a lot of camping on those trips.

We came into Hays, Kansas, on one trip to Oklahoma late at night. The kids were asleep, and I needed sleep badly. We stopped at a convenience store to ask if there was a place to throw out a sleeping bag. A local policeman overheard my conversation with the clerk and came over. He said that I could throw out a sleeping bag in the city park and he would check on us from time to time during the night. I was so grateful for that offer.

Our family trips were full of adventure. On one trip across Wyoming, we noticed the kids were getting a little restless. That is a sure sign of trouble brewing. At the next town, we found a grocery store, where we bought a large pail of ice cream. Agreeing on a flavor everyone liked was a miracle in and of itself. I don’t remember the flavor, but I am sure it had chocolate in it. Everyone was armed with a plastic spoon, and we passed it around among the six of us. It was gone in less than an hour.

On another trip, everyone was getting a little hungry. We didn’t like the thought of feeding that hoard at a restaurant, so we stopped at a grocery store and picked up a bunch of individually wrapped burritos. I brought them out to where we were parked and raised the hood on the family car. After safely placing them on the engine, we loaded up and continued our trip. We stopped to check on them after about an hour. When they were done, we found a roadside park and ate our hot burritos.

As we neared the end of another trip, we all felt we needed a break. We found a quiet little café outside of town and ventured in. Three of the boys went right to a counter with seats that twirled around. Our youngest joined mom and dad at a booth.

We hadn’t been sitting for more than a couple of minutes when #4 knocked over a large glass of water at our booth. While we were drying out, I glanced up to see #1, 2, and 3, twirling around on the stools at the counter. I got up to settle them down, and we ordered.

We all ordered burgers, fries, and drinks. My talented older boys were able to eat their lunches while twirling on the stools. The burgers came with a fancy toothpick holding the sandwich together. #3 liked the idea and found the restaurant’s supply of toothpicks. He stuck about eight of them in his sandwich and tried to eat around them.

I intervened and got the boys back to focusing on their food. #3 finished quickly after I took all of the toothpicks out of his burger. As we were rounding everyone up to leave, we found #3 going around to the other tables, telling them they shouldn’t drink coffee because it is against the Word of Wisdom. Refreshed, we got back on the road.

We got a late start on a trip to Yellowstone one summer. It was getting dark in Star Valley, and we were looking for a place to camp. We found one about 10 p.m. I pulled out the tent, and in the light of the car’s headlights, I spread it on the ground.

It had four walls, so each corner required a pole that attached to a cap connecting the four corners. When I pulled out the aluminum poles, I was shocked at their battered condition – they were bent and dented, and one was missing. Some cursory research revealed that the kids had been using them to swordfight!

I did my best to straighten them, and then whittled a stick to replace the missing pole. The desire for rest overcame the need for perfection, and I declared it ready for the night. The morning light revealed just how imperfect it was.

One year, when I didn’t think I could take any time away from work for a vacation, my wife put her foot down and said, “We are going!” I found the time. It turned out to be a very memorable trip to Yellowstone.

The purpose of our trip took an unforeseen turn when the kids learned they could get a nickel for every aluminum can they turned in at the park’s general store. Their can-finding skills developed to the point that they could spot the glint of one from across a parking lot.

The kids’ memory of that trip was more than geysers, hot pools, and mud pots – it was the money they had to spend from the bags of cans they redeemed at the general store. They found a lot of cans. They still talk about the memories we made on that trip.

We felt that our family trips were all about the kids and the memories we made on those adventures. It is a big reason we love to get together around a dinner table. We talk about those memories.

Now it has come down to just us, and as I said, when we were in the middle of it, we didn’t see this day coming. As we take stock of our lives, we still love road trips together, not only for the “hysterical markers,” lunches at roadside tables, and the memories we are still creating, but for the time we get to spend together. The fun of it is that we are still kids at heart.

Lynn R. Blamires can be reached at quadmanone@gmail.com.