Summer trips to the west

Sometime during the summer of 1970, my parents loaded my sister and I up in our old car, drove the 70 miles to Fargo, traded for a brand new Ford LTD station wagon with faux wood side panels and, without even returning to the farm to show off the new car, headed for the West Coast.

Thus started a family tradition. For the next ten years, every summer of my childhood, an epic trip was an expected ritual.

Each trip took a different twist. Sometimes we stopped to see relatives and friends, but most of the time we avoided them like the plague. Sometimes we planned ahead, other times we flew by the seat of our pants. Sometimes we got along, other times we fought like cats and dogs.

Back then, there were few chain hotels. Ramada Inn was too expensive, Motel 6 too risky. Ma and Pa motels varied in quality so drastically that Mom and Dad, much to my embarrassment, insisted on checking out the rooms before checking in.

There were no non-smoking rooms. You knew the room would stink. The question was what was the acceptable stink level.

Every few nights, Mom and Dad would splurge and choose a hotel with a heated pool. I didn’t swim. In fact, I hated the water. But a heated pool was a luxury, and I enjoyed the feeling of wealth.

The quality of restaurants on the road was spotty, too. Again, Mom and Dad would walk in to check out the quality of food already on the tables. If the joint wasn’t up to snuff, we drove on.

I was so embarrassed by my parents’ fussy behavior that I hid below the seat level of the LTD and waited for them to come and get us before showing my face.

Meanwhile, my little sister embarrassed me daily by requesting that the waitress list all of the cold cereals available before she finally ordered oatmeal. She knew from the start she was going to order oatmeal, why did she have to hear the entire list of cold cereals?

Yes, I lived through a childhood filled with embarrassments and trauma.

Dad loved to take the back roads, even unpaved ones. That got us in trouble when we found ourself on a one-lane gravel road face to face with a logging truck. A none-too-happy driver radioed his foreman, who stopped all truck traffic so we could return to the pavement at the bottom of the mountain.

I was mortified, but what were they going to do, take a naive Midwestern family into custody?

Now that I think back, Dad used his wife and children as cover to get us out of several predicaments unscathed.

Along with the adventures in heated pools and the misadventures on narrow logging roads, the long summer vacations filled my little head with vivid memories and made my world a bigger place.

I still long to return to Bryce Canyon. The last time I was there, I had just lost my two front baby teeth. Yet, my memory of the beautiful scenery at Bryce is as fresh as if I’d been there yesterday.

Glacier Park. The Grand Canyon. Mount Rainier. Mount Hood. The Snake River Canyon. Mt. Rushmore. Old Faithful. Bear Tooth Pass. Death Valley.

When you etch the grand vistas of the American West in the mind of a child, you pretty much guarantee he’s going to have wanderlust the rest of his days.