Bring Back the Family Road Trip

LENELL

We’ve all seen Family Vacation with the kids stuck in the backseat bickering and the parents cajoling them to be interested in every stop along the way to the ultimate destination. Yes, you’re trapped in the car for hours, but it actually may be time well invested.

In the days of navigating travel with COVID, car trips have seen a comeback. Recently I packed my teenage daughter, our dog, and a ton of luggage into our car and embarked on a 12 hour by map time (aka 30 hour in real time) road trip to the beach.

Before leaving, we talked about what to do in the car, planned playlists, chose an audio book, and podcasts. We spent time planning (me offering ideas that she accepted or vetoed) about what we would or would not do on our vacation.

We had a great time and made some good memories, but the vacation part was going and doing while the car ride was just us and time to talk, share, laugh, and learn. Mom got a speeding ticket and used the mistake to create a teachable moment about safety, money, and the process of being pulled over by the police. She edited our playlists as we drove and thought of new songs to add.

There was no one to interrupt us, no place to be... just the road ahead. As a person, my daughter is quiet and introspective by nature which means as a teen, she is not always forthcoming. The time we had just her and I in the car eased us into shared discussions. We listened to 80s music as it’s had a recent revival with kids her age. I told her stories about me and my friends listening to this music and things we did, which led to her sharing moments with her friends. We stopped every two to three hours at a location selected ahead of time for the novelty the stop offered - first settlement in Missouri, a battleship, an art gallery, a lookout etc. All offered an opportunity to stretch our legs and exchange the pros and/or cons which led on to other discussions.

We listened to our book which her grandfather read from his home in tandem with us. This necessitated phone call discussions and input from all three generations perspectives as we held our on the road book club check-ins.

While a plane trip may have given us a couple more days at the beach, we would have had the stress of the airport that typically leads to everyone settling into their plane seat with headphones to watch an inflight movie or read a book with not much said. The road trip offered us experiences where we got back into the car and talked. I always say she grows so fast that I never really get to spend enough time soaking up who she is at each age. The car trip gave us time just to know each other.

As we headed back home, our first stop was a repeat from our previous drive. The stop was at a local coastal art gallery where we purchased a painting chosen to bring a little bit of the trip back with us. The image is of sail boats out in the water from a garden behind an arts center we visited. I pass it everyday in the upstairs hallway, but it’s not the boats or the water that come to mind, it’s the ride.