By Dorothy Brush / dcb1@frontier.net
July 30, 2008 04:15 pm
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Today the word “staycation” is new but in earlier years it would have been a good word to describe the three-month period from the end of one school year till the beginning of the new year. In my youth summers meant no school, hot weather and keeping busy at home. Vacations were not on my family’s calendar. My parents were too busy running a milk route to even think about taking time away.
When I married there was a war and I traveled to be with my husband. I enjoyed seeing new scenery but it was not a vacation. After the war our family grew to four youngsters in ten years. Eventually, our summer included a week at a lake about an hour away from our home. The rented cottage was a change and fun for the kids but the change for me was doing the same thing every day without all the helpful household equipment.
Then came the year when the three boys were all in high school and working at summer jobs. Their sister was in junior high and was invited to visit a close friend whose family had moved to Arizona. That gave my sister a great idea. She and her husband would drive us to Arizona and on the way we would take a grand tour of the west.
She made all the arrangements and reservations well ahead of time. Travel consultants provided sectional maps, well marked with red ink to show our routes. Our projected 6000 mile journey would cover fourteen days.
In Minnesota from the car window we saw a huge Green Giant sign pointing to their plant. In North Dakota we stopped at the Corn Palace before heading on through the Badlands. We were all anticipating a night at the lodge in Yellowstone Park.
It was dark when we arrived at the gate to the park and learned we still had miles to go before we arrived at the lodge. It was midnight when we pulled up to the grand old hotel. At the front desk the clerk said our reservations had been given away! We ended up in a tiny outbuilding because there was no other place available.
Next morning the manager apologized profusely and explained it was a new crew and they misunderstood when he told them to pull our reservations until we arrived. They did pull them and gave them to the first lucky person looking for a room. He begged us to stay that night as his guest but we had miles to go. We did watch Old Faithful before we headed to Utah.
By early evening we reached Salt Lake City and my sister and I rushed into the temple to hear a few bars of the Mormon Choir rehearsing their music while brother-in-law drove around and around the square. Our hotel for that night was still miles away so we made a stop to call and assure them we would be there late. Cell phones were unknown then.
The Grand Canyon was our next stop and then we headed to Disneyland. After that day we traveled back to Apache Junction on the eastern edge of Phoenix. For a few days we could forget travel after we delivered daughter to her friend’s home in Payson.
The last leg of the grand tour included crossing New Mexico during a night filled with lightning. In Texas we spent a day in San Antonio at the HemisFair and then back to Ohio and work.
As I remember that vacation of 1968 it amazes me that all those hours closed in a car tempers remained calm and we were still not only family but friends at journey’s end. So much so that in following years we took our parents too. In those trips we saw an America through the eyes of this couple who had never ventured any distance from home. All during their long marriage they had enjoyed “staycations,” not vacations.
Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday. She may be reached at dcb1@frontiernet.net.
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