“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

  When I was about nine, my Dad started taking me on road trips. At first, it was a part of the every-other-weekend travel variety since he and my mother separated when I was eight. The “trips” were ones that he had to take for his own work, based primarily in West Springfield, Massachusetts, a three and a half hour ride from where I grew up. My Dad thought nothing of driving back and forth to get me in one day. He loved to drive, he took pride in his safety and knowledge of the open road. And he made a pretty pleasant travel companion.

I, too, loved (and still love) to be in motion. I packed in all the Sweet Valley Twins and Fear Street books I could and would read, read, read as my Dad sped along the highway. When he stopped to get gas, I asked for a Veryfine apple juice and Hostess banana walnut mini muffins. When we ate at IHOP, I liked the steak sandwich with no cheese. He knew all the watiresses names where he ate almost every day and got a special rate at the Super Eight Motel for when he lived there during the week. He was, without a doubt, the traveling kind. If the great affair was to move, my Dad was definitely having an affair.

My Dad would chastise me for having my nose in a book and not talking to him and would perk me up with pretending to be swerving to avoid an animal or person in the road that wasn’t there. We would listen to the single of Whitney Houston singing the Star Spangled Banner (one of his favorites), Randy Travis or the Judds. Our road trips included: New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Washington DC and I am sure many more. When I close my eyes at night, I can still hear him making business calls in the van (on one of the first “car phones” there ever was!) or ordering a fresh cup of coffee at a diner. When I think about all that time I had with him on those trips, I count myself truly blessed. My Dad made me a traveler, helped me look at the world with a purity and grace that I treasure. Gave me that same giddy-ness to get-on-the-road-and-get-going. My traveling bug came from him.

My Dad has been with me since the moment I became an RV owner. I heard his cheers of approval, his bursting chest with pride and even caught his eyeroll over it having a Chevy engine as opposed to a Ford. I even felt his reassurance when we found ourselves on the side of the road in our first mini breakdown. I started carrying an old Polaroid of us in my wallet. My fingers have brushed it more often lately, with all of the wallet toting that travel brings. Two days ago, in a traffic jam in Yosemite National Park, the song “You Are My Sunshine” came on the radio. It took my children a couple minutes to name that tune they knew was a song I sang in my own childhood (who has ever heard that song on the radio before?), but by the time they did, my eyes were filled with tears.

I lost my Dad in 2009 and don’t think I have ever missed him as much as the past two and a half weeks. There have been so many moments, so many blinks of my eyes where I have felt him on the road with us. But, one place I did not expect to find it was in the novel Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. I won’t bore you with my excitement over the release of this novel as an English Teacher and blah blah blah, but I will tell you, it’s basic premise is a grown woman confronting her father on something terrible she thinks he has become. It’s a coming of age novel for twenty-somethings. Like St. Elmo’s Fire as compared to the Breakfast Club. It’s poignant, it’s sweet and the adult relationship between Scout and Atticus reminds me so, so, so much of my Dad and myself.

When I was in my early twenties, I thought I had it figured out. I wrote a letter to my father outlining his transgressions and how I thought he had failed me. I looked at this action as a mature and adult-like putting my foot down. Now I see it was self-involved, petty and a bit over the top. That letter cost me from age 22-29 with my father. The last seven years of his life, we were for all intents and purposes– estranged. We saw each other only a handful of times in those seven years. By the time he died, I was a wife and a soon to be mother. I have never regretted anything more.

But sometimes when you travel, you find experiences, emotions and even some pretty spiritual moments that bring you— for lack of a better word: home. Tonight, I read Go Set a Watchman aloud in the RV (per Parker’s request) as the kids fell asleep. Even after I knew they were sleeping, I kept reading aloud as I knew I would soon finish the book and, ever a sucker for the dramatic reading, I liked how it heightened my experience with the text.

And when I reached this line, I buckled. Harper Lee’s language and ability to just yank with force on a reader’s heartstrings is what makes her a literary marvel.

“…now you, Miss, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father’s. As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart and a man’s failings– I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes few mistakes but he makes ’em like all of us” (265).

And on this trip of discovery, adventure and personal growth, I read that passage as a glaring message of forgiveness from my Dad. As he watches me hop from state to state with my family.

Sorry, this was a sappy one, but I had to write it.

  

We pulled into California around 12 midnight Thursday. We had a very quick stay in Death Valley, CA (a very hot and desolate place) and got on the road to Yosemite. We did cut out the Grabd Canyon on our trip but we are feeling like that was a good decision for quality of life and less time on the road. Mike starts teaching in San Jose on Monday so we will be slowing our travels a little bit the next two weeks (which is probably a great idea at this point to give all of us a little rest). 

We didn’t stay long enough in Yodemite but had to move on. Mike has to teach at San Jose State University for the next two weeks so we will not be gallivanting nearly as much! 

More posts to come with more words. We’ve been in the road so much, I’m having trouble thinking straight!  

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
 

It’s been a hot, beautiful week in the desert! Canyonlands, Arches and Zion in four days. #impooped #nationalparkninjas

    
   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   
    
    
    
   
 

  I love the passenger seat. I hate driving. Whether it’s in a car, a plane, a train or even my brand new RV, I would much rather be the passenger than ever the driver. I feel like you experience the trip much differently as a passenger, and I’ve really embraced this. Although, I know my commitment as a co-pilot must be much more involved, I am still human and make the eye roll-worthy snafu when it comes to riding shotgun.

1. “I’m tired.” (rubbing eyes and yawning and then drifting off again with sunglasses on so as not to be too obvious) 

Then wake up an hour later, “Wow, honey, you look exhausted.” (bounce to the back for a fresh beverage after my invigorating nap) 

2. “I’m hungry.” (With access to full kitchen steps away)

3. “I got to level 395 in Candy Crush! Yessss!”

4. (When asked to get driver a drink) “Can’t I just relax for a little while? I hate getting up and down a lot.”

5. “I think you just hit a construction sign with your mirror.” 

6. “Can’t you go faster? You’re not even keeping up with the pace of Greyhound. It will take 8 hours at this rate!”

7. “It’s so relaxing in the back bedroom, I almost took a nap.”

8. “No, I don’t know the next turn, what did  Siri say?”

9. “Can you deal with the kids for a while, I’ve really been doing it the whole trip.” 

“If at some point you don’t ask yourself, ‘what have I gotten myself into’ then you’re not doing it right.”

                               -Roland Gau

    

    
   

  

No one can predict how a two month cross country excursion will go. Will I like it? Will I hate it? Will I go without showering for days? Will I eat only S’mores and hot dogs? Will it better our family relationships? Will we drive each other crazy? Will I be exhausted and wish for home? Will I be one of “those” travelers that declares where I am from to every local in an effort to impress them? 

The answer to all of these questions is: “Yes, sometimes.”

My husband thinks big. His ideas are big, his dreams are big, his expectations are big and I’ve learned, even after trying to thwart his efforts on several occasions that Mike Gallagher’s ideas more often than not work out. This trip might be the best example of that fact. 

But that doesn’t mean we drive down the open road hand in hand, the children coloring pictures of our travels in the back of the RV  while our golden retriever chews on a bone. 

But yet, sometimes we do.

Life is messy. Vacations are stressful, kids are hard to parent where every day seems like a “what are we doing today” adventure. There are drinks spilled, important things lost or forgotten, harsh words exchanged and overtired fits by both adults and children alike. You can’t take on the challenge of two months on the road without hiccups, disappointments, snafus and “I don’t think I can take this” moments.

Sometimes we travel on little sleep, get stuck on the side of the road because of a “loose battery” and find the dog chewed up an entire container of orange mio on the carpet of the RV. We get stressed about things we need to manage at home and things we lrft unfinished. We argue over directions or the kids’ snacks or what who forgot to pack. 

But yet, we’ve become a better team, a better parenting unit, a closer family. We’ve learned our limits and our non-negotiables. We’ve seen that no experience is as sparkly and alluring unless it’s an experience we all have together. 

But as much as I said traveling is a classroom of humanity, it’s also a better way to get to know yourself. I’m by no means outdoorsy or super athletic or even that much of a nature lover, but pushing myself to do those things makes me realize that I can reinvent myself still in my own family. And we can break out of our comfort zones together.

Two weeks before we left, right about the time we bought the RV, I had a breakdown. I was overwhelmed, overextended at work, disorganized at home and—tired, tired, tired. I couldn’t picture what our life would be on the road. It seemed too hard, too big, too terrifying. And it is.

But then I stumbled upon the quote that I used as the epigraph for this post. I felt like we were in over our head, but really, we were just taking a chance worth taking. 

And so, even after a week I can tell you: it’s not always pretty, we’re not always clean, my kids aren’t always appreciative and I’m not always “stuffing my eyes with wonder.” But I try to remain humble, thoughtful and grateful to have this time as a family–and as individuals— on the road. 

   
    
    
    
    
    
    
   

We spent a very foggy rainy day at Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, CO.

   
    
    
    
    
   

  It’s incredibly American to road trip. There’s a sense that you are really living the American Dream when you are driving across the country. People are enthused (and yet, a little horrified) to hear that you have, in the past month, thrown your packed and loaded your very energetic family in a house on wheels and decided to just keep on driving.

Already I have seen that the traveling people are a sweet type of people. They give you rides in their golf cart as you try to trek your five year old and threenager across an expansive RV park for 4^th of July fireworks. They get your son to try apple butter on his biscuit at a diner not knowing they have just asked the pickiest eater on the planet to eat something new. They offer you advice at the dumping station while you do your first waste elimination ever (not a fun part of RV life and I would recommend you make yourself appear very busy the next time someone asks you to help out with that) and they give you maybe a little bit amused looks as you attempt to direct your husband into a gas station corral. Let’s just say that according to Michael, my next job WILL NOT be a traffic cop. Or a construction worker, or even one of those people that tell you where to park at amusement parks and festivals.

What has overwhelmed me the most so far on the trip is its purity. There’s nothing purer than rasting marshmallows on a fire that your husband and kids built with wood they collected. There’s nothing purer than a late night slathering of calimine lotion on your three year old’s back while she counts the Hello Kitty band aids you have applied to her knees over the past 48 hours. There’s nothing purer than your golden retriever drawing a crowd at the playground, children in wet bathing suits and dirty feet begging to pet her. There’s nothing purer than your family eating ice cream on a bench swing, or as Celia affectionately calls them, “family swings.” There’s nothing purer than mini golf, lightning bugs, dirty cereal bowls in the sink and rainbow mustaches of an ice cream flavor called “Super Kid” that you got at the little stand at the RV park.

As much as this is a family vacation, this is a classroom of humanity. Collecting the conversations, the exchanged smiles and the surprising good deeds that people pay you along your journey. An odyssey of good will and good deed.

This morning, we awoke in Colorado in the backyard of good friends of Mike’s. Here we can catch up on laundry, bathe the kids in a bathtub if they so insist, eat some good home cooked non-camp food and let Chewy chase some rabbits. Last night they helped us plan our next departure route to the Grand Canyon (not leaving for 6 days or so) and helped us choose where to make reservations for our trip to Yellowstone. Pure, sweet and wholesome road tripping. I could get used to this.

   

  

  

  

  

  

   
    
    
    
    
   

    
 

1. When are you going to wear all these clothes? You know you are wearing flip flops and dirty t-shirts all summer, when did you think you’d bust out this strapless maxi dress? 

2. Less is more. Just because you might need it doesn’t mean you should bring it. 

3. Organization is key but don’t get crazy and like package all the kids clothes in freezer bags or something like that. Oh, you already did it? Okay, then just leave it. I’m sure you thought it was necessary at the time. And plus, you will always have lots of available freezer bags. 

4. When will you be reading the 12 novels you brought? Just wondering.

5. I see you have 12 coloring books and 75 DVDs. Oh, you forgot soap? I see your priorities girl, I see.

6. 12 throw blankets for 4 people seems extreme, but since you used 3 just for fireworks last night, I guess you know what you are doing.

7. While I get that sunscreen is important, were 7 bottles really necessary? Are you going somewhere that they don’t have stores? 

8. Baby wipes were a good plan, maybe order 76 more packages to get you through the summer. They came in handy after you helped pump the waste out of the RV. (Gag)

9. The Advil was a good choice. Who knew the dog would walk you so hard. 

10. Your 27 pairs of earrings that made the trip are really psyched. But exactly what event on the road will require those dangly little numbers? It’s nice that you are so optimistic. 

11. No lollipops? Really? What the heck were your thinking?