Are We There Yet?

In 1985, we refinanced the house and decided to take a well-deserved family vacation, the first one ever.  (And ever after.)  We had four boys and one girl at the time, ages 4, 8, 9, 12, and 14.  My parents had always talked about how beautiful their trip was to Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada.  See us go.

We rented a 32-ft trailer for $300, an extreme splurge.  Our truck had dual gas tanks plus one of those campers you put in the back of your truck.  The truck had a sliding back window, but the camper window was set  We could take one child at a time in the front seat so took along some paper and pencils for communication with the others.  It's no doubt wildly unsafe and illegal now, but seat belts weren't even used back then, let alone mandatory. It is not unusual even now for drivers over 55 to throw their arms out in front of passengers (or even empty seats) to try to stop them from hitting their heads on the dash.  I do it myself.

Even though there were no freeways along the route at this time, we decided to avoid the "traffic" in western Montana and take the back roads.  We made it to Idaho Falls and stopped for lunch.  The kids were messing around and Jared chipped a big hunk out of his front tooth on the propane tank.  Luckily, it didn't seem to cause him pain, and we'd already paid for the trailer, you know, so on we went.

Montana is not overstating things when they call themselves "Big Sky Country".  We finally had to pull over literally in the middle of nowhere to camp for the night.  When we woke the next morning, we discovered that a big spider or bug of some kind had bitten Nik's face and his eye was almost swollen shut.

For some reason, I ended up doing most of the driving.  We finally pulled into a town whose name I have forgotten, though the fields approaching the town were the most beautiful I'd ever seen.  We ate, gassed up both tanks that were nearly empty, and were just pulling the convoy out of town when a tire blew.  You ask how one can be grateful for a flat tire?  It helps to remember that you have just driven for hours without seeing one single vehicle going or coming.

Meanwhile, back in the camper, notes were flying.  "He's being mean to me!" "Sherry spilled her drink."  "I need to go to the bathroom."  We need to stop and fish." Jason had gotten ahold of some cherry bomb firecrackers and a lighter.  I don't know how many times he scared us to death while promising it was the last one.

We naively thought that you could just pull over and camp anywhere in Yellowstone Park.  Some trickster had put up barriers on the sides of the roads so you couldn't even stop at all until Old Faithful.  We were surprised to see our neighbor's vehicle, though we didn't see them.

We had stopped somewhere in Wyoming to buy fireworks (not my idea).  The guy at the border said we could either leave them with him and return that day or forfeit them and continue on our trip.  He also mentioned that another vehicle from  Vernal had just crossed, quite the coincidence.

No way would we forfeit the fireworks so left them temporarily and drove to Waterton Park, ate by St. Mary Lake, bought a plaque with an elk on it that said Waterton Park (stamped "Made in China" on the back as we discovered later), gave a wave in the direction of Lake Louise, and swung back to pick up our fireworks. After climbing to St. Mary Lake with the gas pedal all the way to the floor and feeling as if at any moment we might start sliding backwards, I was ready to head home anyway.  It had begun to feel like Lucy & Ricky's "The Long Trailer".

A few days later our neighbors came over to tell us about their spontaneous trip to Canada. They had a great time. We totaled up the cost of our trip...$1200, probably about the same price as a trip to Hawaii, but oh, the memories we had, right?

Do you know how big your house can seem after spending a week in a trailer with five children? BIG.  Home Sweet Home!

Trip of a lifetime...hopefully.