Get Your Kicks on Route 66

Nye County, NV, United States, photo by Quintin Gellar

When we were growing up, vacations meant road trips. Sometimes we camped, cooking over a Coleman stove or in a campfire; sometimes we sought out quirky roadside hotels, ideally with a pool, or found out-of-the-way bed and breakfasts. These trips were peppered with long stretches of nothingness, watching the landscape slowly morph with time, from hills and trees to deserts, prairies to beaches. We spent these hours with out noses buried in books, singing loudly to the radio, or playing the license plate game.

There was something freeing about tuning in and out of different radio stations as we left one city and entered another. We were at the mercy of local hosts and tastes, and we found joy in encountering the familiar unexpectedly when a favorite song would play.

Historical markers were always worth a stop, no matter how obscure (in fact, the more obscure the better). We found it thrilling to discover new restaurants—even other states’ convenience stores were like museums, offering exotic local delicacies.

These road trips happened in the era before mobile phones, which meant that our entertainment and connection had to happen in or around our vehicle. When we tired of one another, we took a nap or read a book or “I’m not touching you”ed each other until one of my parents stopped the car and made us run around a parking lot until our tense energy was spent.

However much we snapped at each other after hours upon hours confined in a tiny moving box, I still look back on those trips fondly. There is something about being hot and tired and cramped and fussy that really brought our family together in a way we never would have experienced otherwise. While we have been on many more trips together, it’s our summer roadtrips together that linger most often in my mind.