Togetherness Is a Roadside Attraction

Over the years, my wife and I have found summer road trips to be a good time to measure our children’s progress. Away from the pressures of school and friends, our kids let their hair down and their real personalities emerge. The bickering ceases and they slow down, think more and talk in paragraphs.

On a recent long-weekend trip to Mammoth Lakes, we took Highway 395 and went through Kramer Junction and Lone Pine. We stopped at what seemed to be every beef jerky shop along the way in an effort to find the world’s finest. The winner and still champion--at least until our upcoming trip to San Francisco--is the shop on the north end of Bishop.

We enjoy Highway 395 for the roller-coaster section and because there is so much to see. The return from Mammoth included a planned stop at the Manzanar site. It’s hard to believe that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually put his hand to the document that sent U.S. citizens to concentration camps, but he did. When my son asked me why people were taken away, all I could think was, “There weren’t enough people who cared.”

That trip gave us a lesson not only in history but also in civic responsibility.

Stopping along the way is important, not just for the sake of the kids but also because it throws off the fast, city rhythm.

A couple of years ago, we were passing through Oakhurst on the way to Yosemite Valley. We spied a group of kids selling root beer floats for a dollar. I bought one for each of us, not realizing that these were to be our kids’ first root beer floats. Those Oakhurst floats rank as the best we’ve had.

Yosemite is magical and, we believe, the most beautiful place on Earth, or at least what we’ve seen of Earth.

We become speechless each time we emerge from the Wawona tunnel to enjoy the appearance of Half Dome, Bridalveil Fall and El Capitan.

TVs, VCRs, DVD players and personal audio equipment are not allowed on our road trips.

Instead, we listen to books on tape and music, ranging from the Beatles to Beethoven, that we all enjoy.

On our Mammoth trip we listened to six hours of the old “Superman” radio series, which was lent to me by a friend.

Road trips are a time for bonding and for communicating. Families discuss what is seen on the road, they eat fresh fruit from roadside stands, and they discover what makes one another tick. It’s hard to chat with a child when pro wrestlers Undertaker and Kane are slamming opponents into the canvas or Crash Bandicoot is acting squirrelly.

Thirty-five years ago, my family took the first of many camping trips. My mother’s reason was that we needed to explore this great state, but we all knew it was because she was deathly afraid of flying. No matter, those trips rank as my best childhood memories. My brother and I would sit for hours singing songs, playing cards and games, reading or just looking out the window. And yes, we occasionally asked, “Are we there yet?”

Today, however, it seems as though families just want to separate until the nasty driving part of the trip is done. It is those same parents who insist on filling every spare moment of their child’s life with some sort of activity, lest they use that extra 20 minutes to hold up a convenience store or get hooked on heroin. That’s too bad; those miles are an excellent opportunity to learn and love. I am sorry that the video families won’t discover the bonding a road trip brings.

So here are our summer travel tips:

Start your vacation when you leave your front door; break up your trip into two- or three-hour segments so you have time to stop and smell the Joshua trees; leave the home theater at home; and, if you believe you’ve found the perfect beef jerky, please let us know--we’ll use any excuse to hit the road.