Road trip survival

[thistlebloom]

DigitS post got me thinking along these lines: Games we played on long road trips.

Every summer we drove from San Diego to eastern Idaho to visit our grandparents and other relatives. My dad did all the driving, and he did it straight through, all 18 hours of it. Bathroom breaks were rushed affairs at gas stations and meals were provided by my mom who packed it all up at home before leaving.

Four kids and a dog packed into a station wagon, we entertained ourselves reasonably well, and with a minimum of squabbles.
( My parents may remember it differently ).

Usually we read, or doodled on a note pad, when that got old we played hangman, tic tac toe, the alphabet game ( finding the alphabet consecutively on billboards or other roadside signs ) or seeing who could collect the most states from license plates.

We also looked out the windows at the scenery, ate cherries by the gallon from roadside fruit stands and asked" how much farther?" .

How did we manage without dvd movies and other electronic entertainment?

 

[897tgigvib]

During the middle stone age when I was young, all 5 of us neanderthal kids loaded into the '55 ford station wagon to go from Santa Rosa California to Twin Bridges Montana, a cool thousand 100 miles that got shorter each year as they used straighteners on the Nevada Highways section by section.
Us kids indeed were noisy and rambunctious. We were the "loud family". LOL!!! I was the quiet one...NOT! We did the license plate games and hide and seek each other's shoes...course, Heather never found her shoes...They are embedded in some wet concrete along the highway near Auburn! Somehow my parents always survived and we repeated the trip the next summer. There was also the burma shave signs.....who could spot the first one of the series...I instigated the guess exactly what direction are we going game. One time at night I was exactly 180 degrees off and we stopped the car so I could see the north star. hmmm. That was the day they changed the laws of physics.

 

[thistlebloom]

Heh, that's funny about your sisters shoes!
We experienced the Burma Shave signs too of course, and I was always so impressed with my dads incredible visual powers. He could actually read those signs when they not much more than a speck!

It was a few years before I realized that he had them all memorized.

 

[digitS']

We had cows.

We stayed home.

This lack of experience may have been why I had no idea why looking out the window of the car wasn't fun for kids. I wasn't quite an adult before I went anywhere but . . . Well, maybe I was.

I can also remember our small family of 4, all fitting in the truck. That's how we moved from California to Oregon. Ugh!

Sure, there was always the possibility of sitting in the back. Heck, there wasn't any law against it or if there was, we didn't know anything about it. I can also remember sitting on the floorboard at Mom's feet. I must have been fairly small then, don't you think?

Steve

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Myself and my two siblings rode all the way from Maine to Hershey Penn in the back of a truck with a cap on it. (back when you could do that sort of thing!) Sleeping bags in tow and a hand made, wood bench to sit on. (It wasn't comfortable even then) We had fun, had a few squables, but we made it.

Just a bit of advice to any of you planning such a trip. Don't encourage a 4 year old to eat an entire 1 lb Hershey kiss while riding in the back of an enclosed pick up. It doesn't end well. YUCK!

 

[thistlebloom]

Myself and my two siblings rode all the way from Maine to Hershey Penn in the back of a truck with a cap on it. (back when you could do that sort of thing!) Sleeping bags in tow and a hand made, wood bench to sit on. (It wasn't comfortable even then) We had fun, had a few squables, but we made it.

Just a bit of advice to any of you planning such a trip. Don't encourage a 4 year old to eat an entire 1 lb Hershey kiss while riding in the back of an enclosed pick up. It doesn't end well. YUCK!

Was the Kiss a warmup for visiting Hershey or was that saved for the trip home?
What did you do to pass the time ( other than getting sick on chocolate! ) ?

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Myself and my two siblings rode all the way from Maine to Hershey Penn in the back of a truck with a cap on it. (back when you could do that sort of thing!) Sleeping bags in tow and a hand made, wood bench to sit on. (It wasn't comfortable even then) We had fun, had a few squables, but we made it.

Just a bit of advice to any of you planning such a trip. Don't encourage a 4 year old to eat an entire 1 lb Hershey kiss while riding in the back of an enclosed pick up. It doesn't end well. YUCK!

Was the Kiss a warmup for visiting Hershey or was that saved for the trip home?
What did you do to pass the time ( other than getting sick on chocolate! ) ?

Oh no. We each got one at Hershey Park. For some reason we thought it would be a great idea to see who could eat theirs first. Apparently my little sister won! Well, so to speak. We all lost on that one...yuck! Just use your imagination.

My father wired two speakers into the back of the cab so that we could hear the radio. He also had a system set up so that he and my mother could talk to us through the speakers, but we could not speak back. (yeah, I don't know, don't ask) So when we needed them, we had to pound on the window of the cap. We could see each other through the windows. A lot of yelling, reading lips and hand signals going on.

We had coloring books. We had those games that had water in them and you pushed buttons and the air would push rings or balls up in the water and you had to get them on the pegs or in the spots for the balls. That is all I can remember. I am sure we had some my little ponies or barbies in there too.

 

[digitS']

Toys??!

I can remember standing beside the gear shift and looking out the truck's windshield. That was kind of tough tho' - traveling by truck while standing up. Besides, my brother would be busy kicking me in the back when he pretended to be dodging the gear shift.

On the floorboard of the truck, I probably had a couple marbles from my jean's pocket . . . maybe a stick or 2.

Of course, I could always tie Mom's shoelaces together when she wasn't looking. That was always fun when she got out of the truck! Once.

Steve

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Toys??!

I can remember standing beside the gear shift and looking out the truck's windshield. That was kind of tough tho' - traveling by truck while standing up. Besides, my brother would be busy kicking me in the back when he pretended to be dodging the gear shift.

On the floorboard of the truck, I probably had a couple marbles from my jean's pocket . . . maybe a stick or 2.

Of course, I could always tie Mom's shoelaces together when she wasn't looking. That was always fun when she got out of the truck! Once.Steve

Naughty, naughty!

 

[thistlebloom]

Toys??!

I can remember standing beside the gear shift and looking out the truck's windshield. That was kind of tough tho' - traveling by truck while standing up. Besides, my brother would be busy kicking me in the back when he pretended to be dodging the gear shift.

On the floorboard of the truck, I probably had a couple marbles from my jean's pocket . . . maybe a stick or 2.

Of course, I could always tie Mom's shoelaces together when she wasn't looking. That was always fun when she got out of the truck! Once.Steve

Naughty, naughty!

X2!!