Summer and travel make me think of car trips. When I was growing up all of our travel was in a car. My sister and I jousted for position in the backseat. In the era of enormous cars and no seat belts we divided the space either down the middle or floor versus seat. I remember the comfort of a nearly hot floor on a long trip, the purr of the engine, and the sense of traveling inside a cocoon. Thankfully, I was never car sick and could read and read and read. As an adult, I have driven across the entire country from west to east and then east to west. Each time I was passenger-less in a very large truck (once transporting advance items, another time items the moving company wouldn’t take – mainly plants – and the other time our books). Each experience was just that, a unique chance to see the open countryside, the changing landscape, the distant storms. (There was also the fear of being picked up by a tornado…..of backing into a pole while reversing….) Twice I had a ‘chase’ car which gave us the freedom to park the big truck and explore towns and cities along the way. As the miles progressed we threw an assortment of things into the back of the truck – antiques globes from Arkansas, grass floor cloths from Arizona, and many other items we clearly couldn’t live without. This recent 4th of July weekend my husband and I drove a few hours south to North Carolina. We took back roads and enjoyed the scenery, stopping in small towns for lunch and to visit tiny local museums (the Pearl Harbor exhibit in the county museum in Martinsville was particularly good). Today I’m alone in the car, driving to my parents for my mother’s birthday. It will work out to be about a 10-hour trip including a short stop in my old stomping ground of Lexington, Kentucky. Driving alone means audio books, so I confess I’m looking forward to it. On a recent trip, I complained about the drive right up until the moment I arrived and had fifteen minutes left on the audio version of Hank Phillippe Ryan’s What You See. I sat in the car until it was over. (Thanks Hank for the hours of entertainment!) What are your favorite driving trip memories?
