Summer time and the driving was easy… (TMTOMH)

Summer reminds me of fun trips our family took when the kids were little…

Hawaii…we went with other families, usually three other families whose dads played golf…the guys teed off very early in the morning and got back to the hotel around noon… after golf we had to toss down a few Chi Chi’s at the 19^th hole…the kids didn’t do much except sit by the pool drinking virgin (they tell me) Bloody Mary’s and other ‘virgin’ exotic Hawaiian drinks…we never found out until days later at check out time they had charged the drinks to our rooms every day…no dumb kids in our family…

Motor homing…at other times we traveled in our 28 foot long OpenRoad self-contained motor home that was a life saver...the girls went to the bathroom every 15 minutes…it slept all of us but was a wee bit cramped…I would take off in the early morning while they were sleeping to get a head start on driving, usually about 300-350 miles a day…we stayed in campgrounds for two days in a row then in a motel for the third day, so the girls could wash their hair…it was a big thing, and still is, they had to have perfect hair even though we hardly saw a soul except at restaurants along the way…when we skied in Mammoth they had to wash their hair in the morning before skiing for the day and then again after skiing before we went to dinner…and did I ever tell you I had to carry their skis and boots all the way to the slopes…yup, I did! The skiing experiences we had are for another blog…I can’t wait to tell you how much the girls loved Peppermint Schnapps…They MADE me buy hollow ski poles and fill them with the stuff…

Camping in California and Utah…
I remember we drove VW Vanagons…a 1971 and then a 1981…for every day driving …they were perfect for our family size…but they were slow as hell…no power…maybe 70 horsepower… we took the V-Dubs on little trips and we sometimes towed our little boat or a VW Bug…the bug was handy to tow along so after settling in a campground we could go to town…(I mean that literally)...I vividly remember driving in first and second gear on the long incline before Las Vegas on our way to central California fishing lakes and State Parks…fishing with kids was always fun…(at least I thought it was)…as a kid my dad and I fished often and I caught my share…with the girls I spent all my time bating and re-bating their lines, untangling lines, de-hooking and re-hooking their lines…what fish we caught had to be cleaned and de-gutted and we’d have a few trout to cook on the Coleman stove…I soon stopped fishing with most of them, except Leesa and Sarah who loved it…they learned to do their own thing while I napped or read a book...and they carried their own poles and tackle boxes...Now THAT was the life!!!