Like everyone else, the Smidt family has been cutting back on some of the luxuries we indulge in to save money. So in the spirit of the fictitious Griswold family trip to Wally World in the 1983 film “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” we decided that this year’s family vacation will not involve boarding a plane at SeaTac but instead involve loading up the vehicles and hitting the road.
Yes, I said vehicles in the plural sense. You see, the Smidt family shuns the stereotypical station wagon of the ‘80s, shudders at the thought of the minivan of the ‘90s and deliberately avoided the marginally better crossover of this past decade. Instead we roll with my husband on his Harley while I drive with our son Nick in my Pontiac Solstice GXP two seat convertible. Thanks to a wonderful invention called the “Chatterbox,” Jason and I can talk back and forth between the vehicles while we are on the road. Well, I think it is wonderful, anyway. Jason just enjoys the fact he can turn the sound off when I am getting on him about missing the exit for the rest stop AGAIN!
Last year, this was our mode of travel down to the Redwood Forest in California. There is nothing like driving on the Pacific Coast Highway or shooting through the Avenue of the Giants with the top down. This year we decided to stick closer to home and have selected a very scenic tour through Eastern Washington, staying in various locations that we usually just pass on by. On the agenda is a stop at Horse Haven Hills in Pasco, a night at Grand Coulee Dam to watch the laser light show with a stop at Dry Falls, another night in the remote Okanogan town of Colville and our last night in Wenatchee before we head on home.
As a family we have come to appreciate the fact that just getting away and spending time together is the most basic point of the family vacation. The destination is really just secondary. We will enjoy this simple close-to-home vacation in the same way we have enjoyed our more spectacular long-distance destinations, such as walking on a glacier in Seward, Alaska, being awed by a nighttime space shuttle launch in Cape Canaveral, Fla. and touring the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. We know that it is the small quiet moments that will stick with us and help to buoy us through the rest of the year and the busy, crazy aspects and obligations of daily life that keep us apart a majority of the time.
I hope everyone has the opportunity to have some small, quiet moments with their family vacations this summer, no matter what your mode of travel is or where your destination ends up taking you. See you on the Holiday Road.
