My brother debuted his new life as a Knight of the Open Road just in time to marvel at spring’s arrival in the Southwest and the Rockies.
With sunbeams bouncing off his Airstream trailer’s chrome skin, he has made a home-away-from-home on America’s highways and in campgrounds with his wife and their dog.
I admire him, but I don’t envy him. Although my sister outpaces him with her open-road and rugged-trail lifestyle, my preferences range more toward the open veranda and expansive lawn of a very good hotel with a three-mile hike followed by dinner and relaxation with my wife.
I have to admit my brother’s decision to embrace the trailer life makes me nostalgic for the summer road trips our family took in the 1960s and 1970s when “SUV” and “hybrid” had yet to enter our nation’s collective vocabulary and the interstates were ruled by Vista Cruisers, Estate Wagons, (my dad was a die-hard Buick man), and a dozen other station wagon models.
Our destination on these excursions was typically Yellowstone National Park where we spent a week on my grandparent’s Chris-Craft cabin cruiser. My wife shakes her head in bemusement at my rich-boy formative years and recalls with fondness how her childhood vacations centered around the iconic motel camps that still survive in New England with their quaint cabins built to house a small family in tight quarters.
We packed cousins and adults onto the Chris-Craft with my grandmother filling the boat’s cabin with cigarette smoke and my grandfather cooking up his perfect batch of oatmeal in the morning.
The long drive across Wyoming to the lake included an obligatory stop at Hell’s Half-Acre, a miniature badlands just off the highway, where Satan — or, at least, a frightening facsimile — could be spotted peeking from a ravine no doubt favored by diamondback rattlesnakes.
Long-gone Esso, Chevron, Sinclair and Conoco stations offered brief respites from the road. Our car rolled over the rubber-sleeved cable running across the asphalt lane bordering the gas pumps, activating a bell that sent a uniformed attendant sprinting out to the pump island ready to check the oil and radiator levels and clean the windows.
After a trip to the restroom where my father instructed us in the proper use of a paper towel to open the door after we washed our hands, we raided the candy aisle for penny and nickel sweets and I always grabbed as many free maps as I could carry to the car.
Each one unfolded with the crisp snap of new paper and revealed a one-dimensional world packed with unfamiliar and exciting names for towns, parks, mountain ranges, and mysterious restricted government areas.
At some point in the drive, counting billboards or attempting to spot the mythical half-rabbit, half-antelope jackalope dropped my sister and brother into somnambulance, their heads lolling on the vinyl seat, while I hunched over a book and bet myself I could make a jumbo box of Junior Mints last a hundred miles.
The Carpenters, Seals and Crofts, and doomsday preachers dominated the radio dial while my parents made fun of some politician’s idea to introduce the metric system in the U.S. or make the speed limit 55 miles per hour.
Happy motoring to my brother and I hope he stays safe on the road. But you are much more likely to find me enjoying the view from Jackson Lake Lodge’s patio with its mind-defying view of the Tetons than you are to catch me pulling into the Gold RV Ranch and Casino in Verdi, Nevada.
