Saturday, June 20, 2009

Road Trippin


My family and I are heading out tomorrow morning for a vacay in sunny (we hope) So. Cal.


I’ve often fantasized about doing the cross-country road trip, stopping at all the kitschy places like the biggest ball of twine, world’s largest McDonalds, and similar. I still hope to someday. There is bound to inspiration for some great characters at these types of places.


Embarking on a road trip always elicits memories of my childhood, with five of us kids packed into a VW Bug in the era before mandatory car seats and seatbelt laws. We played round after round of the “license plate game” and “I Spy” and tried not to kill each other. My dad would drive fast over dips to tickle our tummies. Although we could never get to our destination fast enough, looking back there were good times.


My husband and I have established some traditions of our own, mainly centered around food. Required snacks include Cool Ranch Doritos, beef jerky, orange slices – the candy, trail mix or salted nut bars, and some kind of Sobe beverage. When in Vegas or California we also make sure to stop at any restaurants we miss dearly that are not in Utah, such as In-N-Out (coming soon!), Baja Fresh, and Oh Nigiri. I’m also trying to teach the road trip games of old to my four year old in between DVDs.


I plan to keep a notebook close to me throughout the trip and record observations of any interesting people or scenes I observe to build a database for future writing projects. California is never boring.

2 comments:

  1. You got THAT right!

    I don't know the "license plate game". How do you play?

    ReplyDelete
  2. We used to play two versions of the license plate game. 1. you have to find all the letters of the alphatbet off the license plates of other cars or 2. find as many different state license plates at possible. The person with the most different states won or the farthest away. Like an alaskan plate in Florida was always a shoo in for farthest plate.

    Have fun in CA. Hope you get to relax a little while you're there.

    ReplyDelete