OT: Talking Cars Tuesday - Family Roadtrips

My old man grew up in Iron Mountain, MI and I've lived in Ann Arbor my entire life - we'd spend a week or so up in the UP each summer.

He had a late 80s Daytona Shelby that was not known for it's spacious backseat accomodations.  For a four to five year stretch (when I was ~10-14) I would be plopped in the backseat of said vehicle for the trip up. (it's about 9 hours). 

Not the most enjoyable, but at least I had my trusty walkman and could try and zone out and ignore the fact that my knees were basically in my chest.

In 1979 we drove my dad's '76 Cadillac Eldorado (white with red leather seats) from suburban Detroit to Florida at spring break to see my grandparents. 2 1/2 days, 8-10 MPG, and a red leather backseat with acres of space for a 7 and 5 year old. 

These were the days of independent motels, restaurants, and tourist traps the entire length of I-75. No mobile phones, no reservations, pull off at an exit and try and find a motel room and edible food. Good times.

Off-season already.

Growing up, my family unfortunately was never one for road trips. I think the longest we ever spent in a car was driving from our house in SE Michigan to some family living in Pittsburgh.

My wife and I are in the planning phase of a road trip from our home in Oregon to Denver in late June/early July next year.  I'm pretty excited, it'll be about 10 total days, first heading up through the Spokane area, most of the way through Montana, and then heading south on I-25 through Wyoming. We're staying in Colorado for 5 days, then heading back through the heart of the Rockies to Salt Lake City, visiting a friend in northern Nevada, and then back to Oregon.

Family?

When I was nine, he loaded us into the car and we drove from the Detroit area to New Orleans and then from there to see family in Maryland and then back home.  I must have been locked in the back seat of a 1967 Mercury Park Lane for two weeks.  This was our first car with air conditioning, so strictly a "windows up" trip.  At the time, my dad was a 2 pack a day smoker.  The back seat was a fog bank at times.  I'm surprised I'm still here on the planet.

for my dad’s 60th birthday. We started in Germany, stayed with my mom’s distant cousin near Munich. My great grandfather left Germany to become a farmer in Wisconsin, but all his brothers stayed and that side of the family ended up fighting for the Nazis. My mom’s cousin was really into family history, so it was kind of weird seeing all these Nazi connections...
We picked up our rental car after that stay. It was a tiny Mercedes sedan. The four of us drove in that small ass car, with luggage on our laps, for 15 days through 11 countries. Stopped in Zurich for my dad’s birthday. Ended up in Portoroz, Slovenia, where my dad had a conference. It was a great trip, all things considered, but that cramped car was hell.

My parents surprised me one year by picking me up from camp in a brand-new minivan and announcing we were road-tripping starting tomorrow.  Two-week trip out west - CO, UT, Yellowstone, SD, and various places in between.  Really opened up the horizons since the furthest I'd been away from home was Florida.

That minivan was spectacular because it didn't have a driver's side rear door - instead you had cubbies up the wazoo to store all your crap.  Naturally, my brothers and I fought over that seat the whole trip.  Being the biggest, oldest, and most cunning, I usually snagged it.

One of my earliest memories is a long Easter trip to New Jersey from Michigan in a large domestic sedan. (No idea which company or model ...) I was probably about four years old.

With ample encouragement from our older cousins, my younger sister and I gorged ourselves on leftover Easter candy. We had a bad case of the skitters and had to stop multiple times on the way back.

To make matters worse, I apparently refused to drop anchor in unfamiliar places without a special toilet seat, so that had to get hauled in every time. (I'd forgotten that detail.)

I was 14 and my family of six all piled into my dad's suburban to drive from Metro Detroit to Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a baseball tournament. We took about 4 days to get out to there and made a bunch of pit stops on the way. My favorite being in Omaha, NE where we toured the old Rosenblatt Stadium.

What a wonderful memory.

I grew up in the Detroit Metro area.  I had two sets of grandparents who wintered in Florida, so every Christmas we would pile in the car and head south.  It was never important what car we had at the time, as I was an only child.  I had the backseat to myself. 

During that period I suffered pretty badly from motion sickness.  It took me years to figure out the problem - I can't read when traveling unless in an upright position, I have to face the direction of travel, and I absolutely can't live with two parents smoking in the front seat.  At least once a day during the trip I would get carsick.  It wasn't until much later, living in the Chicago area that I discovered on the commuter trains the secret to facing forward and the effects of not facing forward.

Me and the wife just took our first road trip longer than 2 hours together. Took 12.5 hours to get back home for Thanksgiving and we managed not to kill eachother. Might be a keeper.

tormenting family members with lengthy educational trips. My wife almost divorced me after we got up really early starting in Phoenix, drove to the Grand Canyon, then to the Painted Desert, south to Globe, and arriving early the next morning back in Phoenix going through some scary mountains. After the Painted Desert I was looking for hotels but could find none until we got back to Phoenix. It was during Spring training, so needless to say I could only find a crappy room. When I don't make reservations for anything, I hear about " seeing the entire state of Arizona in 24 hours".

My role model dad took the family in an unairconditioned, leather bucket seats, no seat belts in the back, a bad ass 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix, doing the entire Route 66 during the summer, with a detour into Mexico.  I remember sitting in the back seat for days, going 90 MPH, no belts, upside down, feet in the rear window. If there was a sudden stop my dad would throw has arm out so I wouldn't fly into the front windshield. Once we were in NM, we had to hang a desert water bag on the front bumper that would cool the engine. I really want to that again (as much as can be done) with air conditioning though and probably no Mexico.

A weird UM football trip as a student... going to West Lafayette ALL on highway 24 (which is really stupid) Telegraph road south to Toledo and then southwest to Indiana. Making a four hour trip into an 11 hour trip on backroads. Purdue upset us (#1 1978 Rick Leach team) and we were so pissed we blew off our Purdue friends and drove straight back to A2... by the fastest route.

I think in retirement I will be a trucker.

and it was a gas both times.  i have been blessed with more children than most of you, so we go in our stolen 15 passenger 4x4 van.  mgobride and oldest daughter organized and packed the van wonderfully, the kids were easy to travel with, no whining and everybody knows the rules:  if the van needs gas, we can stop, if it doesn't, we don't.  singing and in-seat dancing do break out, with wife and daughter managing the tunes.  coolers packed with road trip food and a few surprises.  a couple of lap tops so the kids could do school and a video here and there. 

the only bad part of the one trip is that stretch of the I-80 as you swing by chicago.  unending miles of lanes closed for......nothing.  there's no work, no workers, not even pieces of equipment or materials like work could happen, just closed lanes.  there should be a public shaming for those in charge of that mess. 

Drove overnight this past April from SE Michigan to visit Mickey Mouse in a new Ford Explorer with the wife and 2 kids (4 and 6).  Was sort of a last minute trip as we had park passes that were expiring.  Airfare was laughable at that point so we piled in the Explorer and hit the road at about 5 pm on a Friday and pulled into our resort around 10:30-11 the next morning.  The kids slept about 7 hours, the wife less than that, me only about 30 minutes.  After an early afternoon poolside snooze I was ready to booze around Epcot that evening.

You really get to know the car you're driving when you're going long distances and the Explorer was a champ.  Comfortable, great night-time visibility-- particularly to the sides, plenty of space  with the 2nd row bucket seats, and managed 23.5 mpg-- keeping the speed between 65 and 78 and with the car loaded to the top.

To make things MGoRelevant, this was most of Michigan's spring break week so I-75 south was filled with "M" plates.  Shared more than a few Go Blue's along the way, even running into the same M family a few times hundreds of miles apart on the road and at the first damn McDonalds you hit when you cross into Florida.

Those things were tanks. 

was from Cleveland, OH to Jackson Hole WY in 1986. We left CLE on Friday night about 9PM (Mom worked split-shift) and made it to our campground in Jackson by mid-afternoon Sunday.  Our first night we slept in our van in a rest stop just outside Joliet, IL. The second night we stayed in Cheyenne,WY. 

So many memories from that trip, from rafting the Snake River, horseback riding in the Tetons, to spelunking in the Black Hills, to visiting Mount Rushmore (if you go, go at night), to spending a day in Yellowstone...looking back and knowing how hard my Dad worked (2 jobs, with weekend side gigis) to save the money for that journey, I appreciate it more with each passing year  

trip we took from Denver to El Paso TX, in the summer. My Dad had been based in El Paso when he was in the Army and wanted to show his family where he was. We had a 1966 Ford "woody" Station wagon and the air conditioning was the old 4-40. It was over a hunderd degrees for most of that trip and with my two sisters in the back seat I think we pretty much just roasted.

We did stop at Carlsbad Cavern and it was cool to see the base my Dad was at, but don't think it lived up what he was hoping for when we piled into that car and made that drive.

I grew up in the Atlanta area and we drove EVERYWHERE in our 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass wagon. 

Best road trip: 

In third grade, drove from Atlanta to Batlmore to visit our cousins; then up to NYC to visit my uncle; then up to Utica to visit our childhood friends (mom's friend, recently divorced, and her son - my age - and daughter - my sister's age); and then to Niagara Falls with our friends. We had blue crab and went to the aquarium in Maryland, went up the statue of liberty and world trade center in NYC, and rode the maid of the mists at Niagara. We really packed it in. 

Longest road trip: 

In 2nd grade, drove to Denver to visit my uncle, along with a drive into the mountains and the continental divide. First time in the mountains, so I wasn't prepared for how cold it is up there in the middle of summer. 

Most frequent trips:

We drove to Florida so many times... Panama City a few times,Orlando several times, Miami and Key West once, Daytona once, Tampa/Clearwater once. 

Random note about the Olds:

So my sister and I could sleep on these long trips, my mom sewed fabric into drapes and my dad put them up on the side windows in the cargo area to block the sun with some eyelet screws and twine. He wisely kept the back window clear. 

When I was 18, my parents bought use of a ski condo in Montana for a week in a charity auction.  Since we didn't ski, we did the trip in the summer.  Car was a 1989 Cadillac Broughm (a massive sedan).  Silver with red leather seats and turn signal/high beam indicators at the corners of the hood.

Awesome three week road trip that opened my eyes to the wonder of travel and included:

• First visit to Wrigley Field
• Field of Dreams in Iowa
• Wall Drug and Corn Palace in SD
• Badlands and Mt. Rushmore
• Glacier National Park
• Banff and Lake Louise

My dad had a minor heart attack in Wyoming on the way out there (we thought it was the flu or a virus at the time), so he wasn't up to driving and my Mom hated driving in the mountains.  I ferried that behemoth across the great west, up and down the Road to the Sun in Glacier, and all the way across the flat lands of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  I loved every minute of it.

We must have listened to OMD's Greatest Hits double cassette at least 30 times during that trip.  Driver's choice!

My other memorable road trips:

• Rochester to Myrtle Beach multiple times (84 Buick LeSabre and Cadillac Broughm)
• Philadelphia to Key West (20 hours straight through) (Mitsubishi Diamante)
• Philadelphia to Boca Raton twice (friend's '94 BMW 540i - which was an incredible road trip car)
• Philadelphia to Atlanta (30 hour round trip for second round game of 1998 NCAA Tournament) (girlfriends '96 Volvo 850)
• Ann Arbor to New Orleans (rented Chrysler/Dodge minivan)

This past summer I borrowed a 15 passenger van and hauled my family of four, my aged parents and 2 sisters to Michigan from Iowa. 1 sister got picked up in at Ohare. You haven't lived until you've driven a 15 passenger van through Chicago. I didn't think everyone was scared when they were screaming, when it got deathly quiet I figured they were scared. Sis got diverted to South Bend so we got off the interstate and looked for food. I sent a selfie of a memorable moment in Chicago to the van owner and he called me the bravest man he ever met. It was an awesome trip.

I took a road trip back in 2003 out west to Colorado with some friends.  One of my buddies took the graveyard shift driving and kept guzzling Red Bulls and Mt. Dew to keep him awake.

When I woke up from sleeping in the back of the car, he was driving with no shirt on and was peeled down to his boxers.  He said he was incredibally warm and his speech was going at a mile a minute to where it almost seemed like he was inebriated.  I told him immediately to pull over and that I would be taking over the driving.  

To this day I still kid him about that incident and he said he learned to never drink Red Bulls and Mt. Dew at that rate ever again.

I took a Spring Break road trip to Florida in 1999 with some friends.  The car that we drove in (1986 Cutlass Cierra) was giving us issues the whole ride down.  If we turned the vehicle off it would not start back up.  We finally made it down and had it looked at by a mechanic.  

He said something to the effect that the car was running on like1 cylinder and that he advised us not to drive it back to Michigan, because it would never make it.

On the way home we decided not to turn the car off for any reason.  Turning the car off would probably mean it would not start again.  So on the return trip from Florida to Michigan we drove with the car on for 24 hours and even kept it running while filling it up at gas stations.

We made it home and the car died a hero, but I never thought the car would ever make it, especially keeping it running for 24 hours straight.

was looking at ford flex's over the last month- we take trips form NY to MI on occasion and the kids are getting into travel softball, etc. Seems like a good family roadster that's not a minivan.

My family road trips were old Fords to TN.  No air, but all of the windows down. 

My kids had it easy with a Honda mini van.  It was a great traveling van.   

 

It is a great drive.  The views are spectacular. We started in San Diego, and I was ready to move there (despite stepping on a stingray and getting stun). We lost our camera somewhere between when we dropped off the car and when we got on the plane.  Good excuse to do it again, next time with the kids. 

For Jeepin, growing up we took a camping trip to the UP in a CJ5. two parents, 3 boys, and a dog.