on the road again...again

When I was nine years old my grandmother took me on a Greyhound bus tour from Chicago to California and back…twenty-one days on the same bus with the same passengers, our own tour guide and driver, and I was the only child.  The experience of being doted on and exposed to this big beautiful country is one that I have replicated with my own children.  When Court was eight, I drove with him from LA to Michigan.  We took eleven days and saw the lights of the Vegas strip, the Great Salt Lake, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore and several Laura Ingalls Wilder stops.  With my daughter we covered much of Route 66, stopping at many antique stores along the way.

Now I have committed my husband and myself to taking each of the grandkids on a solo adventure.  When our oldest grandson was seven, we drove him through the Four Corners area and Mesa Verde National Park, Santa Fe and Hannibal, Missouri for a riverboat ride.  Last year we took Charlotte from Michigan to Indianapolis for a week.  We will do that again with Campbell’s brother Warren in July.  That is a much more manageable distance to travel because there are so many fun things to do in Indy, and there are much fewer hours spent in a car.

Therefore, imagine my surprise when, given the choice between trying out for tournament baseball or driving across the country again, Campbell, now ten, chose to go with Dave and me again.  Meredith and I have taken Campbell and Warren to the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore.  We’ve stayed in the beautiful Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.  So, after consultation with Campbell we decided to follow the old Route 66, this time stopping to take in the roadside diners, Googie and Roadside architecture that is slowly deteriorating.  In the weeks to come I will share with you some of the high points. 

We began our journey in the way that any good car trip begins by cataloguing all the state license plates that we could find along the way.  Here is Campbell’s magnetic map after just the first day.  The Mother Road is still one that attracts travelers and truckers from all over the United States, in fact, from all over the world.  We also saw license plates from three Canadian provinces and met some French tourists checking out the ruins of an Indian trading post called Twin Arrows (only one arrow still stands). 

I hope you enjoy our little travelogue.  And, yes, we are plenty good grandparents!

Love, Liz