Summers on Wheels: part two

When I had my own family, summer car vacations were more about the journey than the destination. We stopped often along the way and discovered all sorts of surprises. But another reason for long meandering car trips was the many lemon cars we owned. The kids will never forget our “Fred Flintstone” VW 411 – they had to keep their legs up on the seat in the back because there was a hole in the floor, where they watched the road roll by.

Once my husband and I visited the Montreal Worlds Fair in a car that barely did 20 mph on hills – and we had to drive through the Adirondacks! On the way home on a Sunday night, we couldn’t find an open gas station. We ran out of gas on the Northway near midnight as huge tractor-trailers whizzed by. A kindly truck driver stopped and drove us to a small town gas station he knew, then proceeded to wake up the proprietor to pump us gas, which was probably under $1/gallon back then.

But our most memorable adventure was spending a night sleeping in one of our junkier cars in an upstate New York gas station. After the mechanic got it running and we were on the way home, the car conked out for good and we hitched hiked on Route 17 with the three little ones. A man who was moving from Binghamton to Poughkeepsie – his car packed with possessions – picked us up. Enroute we witnessed a nasty motorcycle accident and just avoided running over the victims. After stopping to help, we barely made it to Poughkeepsie in time to catch the last train to NYC. We arrived in Harlem at midnight and walked across 125th Street to get the subway home.

Still later, I took many trips on wheels with my daughter Lisa. We traveled back from the Florida Keys along Route 1 - stopping at Cape Kennedy; driving through rice paddies, sometimes via ferries, in the Carolinas; and discovering the outerbanks and Kitty Hawk along the way. When we explored the back roads of Maine, we came across a Mama moose and her baby. Lisa and I had many wonderful California adventures on wheels. Each road presents a more magnificent vista - earthquake tortured rock formations; Dr. Seuss-like Joshua Trees in the desert; breathtaking mountain views; tarantulas crossing the road on a back route out of Death Valley; and of course, the Pacific Coast Highway PCH 1, with its unobstructed view of the Pacific.

For us, it’s all about the journey.