Parents, Start Your Vacation

We decided to drive our Prius to Yellowstone. Our Honda Accord is bigger and has a luggage box on top, but there is something wrong with the starter. Every once in a while the key gets stuck in the ignition. I pictured us in a remote rest stop in Idaho, not being able to start the car, while a bear, or perhaps a group of irate locals incensed by our liberal bumper stickers, pounded on our back window. I decided I’d rather be crowded into our 2007 Prius. I pointed out to my spouse that we could go out for dinner at least twice while camping thanks to all the money we’d save on gas.

The kids moaned as we loaded sleeping bags where their legs could have stretched. I lost my legroom to the emergency snack bag, my backpack, and CD bag. The only person who had any legroom was my husband. Normally, he gets tired and wants me to take the wheel while he naps, but when he saw me sitting Indian style in the passenger seat, he decided to keep driving.

We stopped in Placerville, California. The air felt like an oven, but the kids still had the enthusiasm to pose in the gold pan of the giant 49er statue.

We drove on. I began to worry about seven days of continual family togetherness. I worried about not leaving enough water for the rabbits. I worried I wouldn’t be ready for work when I got back. I worried that my legs would remain in a permanent locked position.

We crested the Sierras, past the glom of Reno, and entered the desert emptiness: Sagebrush, blue sky, and big fluffy clouds. Every once in while, we drove past a prison, recognizable by the “No Hitchhiking” sign. I began to exhale more. We were listening to “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” by Mitch Albion. With audio books, everyone, including the driver, can connect with the story, and no one gets carsick from staring at a moving screen. My mind emptied, and I let the narrator’s voice fill it.

We stopped by a Motel 6 in Elko, Nevada. The desk clerk said that because the air conditioning was not working in many of the rooms, they would offer us a discounted rate: $25 for the night. My ever-thrifty husband was ecstatic, and suggested that we make sure to stop at the same Motel 6 on the way home.

We tried to walk to a restaurant from our motel. It was a challenge, because like most highway towns in Nevada, Elko has few sidewalks. After a few “blocks,” we noticed a sign for Dos Amigos Mexican Restaurant.

At first we were temporarily blinded as our eyes went from the bright desert afternoon to the windowless interior. Then, as our eyes adjusted, we saw a cavernous room filled with slot machines and cigarette smoke haze. The excess air conditioning made me shiver. My children began to walk towards the colorful pirates, mermaids, and buxom starlets on the video slot machines.

‘Where is the Mexican restaurant?’ I wondered. We were about to figure our way out when I remembered the line on the carpet. Many casinos, like the land of Oz, have a path. I looked down at a bleached blond woman who was either in her thirties and a drug abuser or in her fifties and suffering from years of sun exposure. At her feet, I saw a two-foot wide path in the solid black, interrupting the multi-patterned carpet. We followed it to Dos Amigos restaurant.

While we waited for our food, Walker, my son, suggested that we have a stare down. As every fourth grader knows, the loser is the one who blinks first. It took only one second of staring for my eyes to fill with tears, thanks to the smoke from the casino drifting into the restaurant. I felt guilty eating a cheese chile relleno, chicken enchilada, and all my rice and beans after sitting in the car all day not exercising, but then I told myself, I’m on vacation.

Our Motel 6 room was like all the others we stayed in: Thin white towels in the bathroom, white walls, with no art, a multicolor bed spreads showing Niagara Falls and people fishing, hangers that could not be stolen, and, best of all, a solid television with HBO.

“Big Love,” a show about a modern-day polygamist, was on. Unfortunately, so were our children. They jumped from bed to bed, loosening their cramped legs. I knew that there was no hope of them dozing off, so I gave up my one chance to watch Big Love all year and let the kids see Cartoon Network. We turned off the television at 10:30, but we could not turn off our children. Desperate, we used a technique devised by my parents called the silence rule. Basically, the kids can’t talk. I told them if they broke the silence, they would have to do a timeout outside our motel room door, in their pajamas. We turned off the lights, and in five minutes, the kids were snoring. I was torn between my desire to watch HBO and my fear of waking the kids. I decided to read on the wet bathroom floor, with the door shut.

We arrived at our campsite in Yellowstone just in time for an afternoon windstorm. The tent flapped as we tried to insert the poles. Once we got it assembled, it just about blew away like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz. We found a large rock to hammer our stakes in. After destroying two of our flimsy aluminum stakes, a camping neighbor lent us a mallet. Then, the rain started. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner in the car. We did not want to make our newly assembled tent a smell beacon for bears.

The next morning, we awoke to the sun streaming through the rain covered pine trees. Inspired from our homebrewed Peet’s coffee, we headed off for a wonderful day of exploring waterfalls, geysers, and mud pots. The kids were delighted when we saw buffalo, elk, grizzly and black bears.

Our vacation had finally begun.

By Beth Touchette