Vacation season is just around the corner. It is that magical week you spend with your spouse and kids, listening to them whine and complain, vowing to never take another family vacation again. Then, February or March rolls around and thinking the kids are older and maybe last year was a less than ideal destination, you start to think about this year’s family vacation. And the kids start to badger you about where you’re going on vacation this year because they had so much fun doing this or that last year. You wonder if you were actually on the same trip because while they remember the fun they had feeding the goats at the zoo, all you remember is, “It’s so hot! I’m hungry! When can we eat?!”
I love to travel. I love to see new things, learn about the history of other locales, the architecture, and the landscape. I love the whole process of travel; well, packing and unpacking are not much fun but I enjoy the ride, especially if by airplane, as well as actually being there seeing the sights. Yes, I take my family on vacation in the hopes that they will have good memories to take with them as they grow, stories upon which to reminisce, and quality time spent with our family. I also hope that as a result of our trips, I will get revenge when they are suckered into taking their own children on family vacations one day. But the primary reason I take family vacations is I want to see these places and they won’t let me leave them home alone that long.
As I prepare for our family vacation to Rapid City, South Dakota, this summer, I wonder what “vacation from hell” moments we will be able to add to the multitude of other “vacation from hell” moments from years past. In June, 2002, my husband and I rented a minivan and drove with my mom, my 4-year old daughter, and 7-month old son to Denver, Colorado. I cannot say we were not fore-warned about the hellishness of this trip. The worst wild fires in decades were raging in the southern part of Colorado and the local news showed a black bear on the loose near down town Denver the night before we left. The fires actually ended up being somewhat of a positive for us though because even though the smoke obscured our tri-state view from Mt. Evans, it wasn’t very crowded. We arrived in Denver on Saturday evening and on Sunday; my daughter started screaming in pain every time she went to the bathroom. After her bath that evening, I noticed the redness and showed it to my mom who covered her eyes, slouched back in horror and said, “You have to take her to a doctor.”
So we called my brother who we then picked up so he could show us the way to a hospital. The first hospital we went to didn’t take our insurance so we ended up at Denver Children’s Hospital. By 11:00 p.m. we were driving the streets of Denver looking for an all-night drug store so we could fill the prescription for the antibiotic prescribed for my daughter’s urinary tract infection. Almost immediately as my daughter began to improve to the point where she didn’t cry when she had to use the restroom, my son started in with vomiting and diarrhea. On the bus to the Coors brewery tour, he threw up in my hands and my mom fished whatever tissues she could out of her purse to clean it up. Friday morning, after we’d loaded the van and were getting the kids strapped into their car seats, my son was afflicted with another bout of diarrhea. My husband held him under his armpits at arms’ length as the diarrhea flowed out of his diaper and splattered on the asphalt. I scolded my husband for moving to put my son down on the parking lot but my husband didn’t want to soil the rented van. So before we left for home, we took another detour to the Denver Children’s Hospital to confirm my son had nothing more serious than a gastro virus.
After that trip, I did avoid family vacations longer than a few days for six years. Last year, two years after my husband and I spent a week alone in Colorado, I thought about the things I’d wanted my kids to see and that since they were older, maybe giving a family trip to Colorado a second chance was in order. Our trip to the Colorado Springs area last summer was much better than the first trip—no hospital runs—but it was not without its hellish moments. On our first day, we went hiking at St. Mary’s Glacier near Idaho Springs. Then on the way to our cabin, the kids got root beer float soft drinks. I thought they sounded disgusting but they wanted them and we were on vacation so I agreed. While we were winding our way up the narrow road to the cabin we’d rented, my son got car sick. Luckily, we had a container to catch it and we arrived at the cabin just in time to allow my daughter to narrowly escape being sick herself. She was not so lucky a couple of days later driving back from the Royal Gorge. The highway we drove wound tightly through rangelands; we were tired and hungry. Based on our experience just a few days before, we thought to keep a puke bucket close by. I’m not sure who lost it first but somewhere between the Royal Gorge and Cripple Creek, one of them made use of the bucket. A moment later the other one took the bucket and added their own contribution. I have pictures I took of us pulled over on the side of a highway in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere rinsing out the bucket with bottled water. Thankfully, after that the kids got used to the elevation and my husband focused on driving a little slower so we had no more barfing incidents.
The last day of our trip, we took a hike on Cheyenne Mountain by Colorado Springs. The sun was out and it was warm but the kids could only focus on how hot they thought it was and how they needed to eat the picnic lunch in their back packs right now. More than once, one or both of them said, “I wish it would rain.” When we got to the highest point of our hike and the furthest from our car, like the heavens had heard their prayers, the clouds started to march over the mountain and obscure the sun. It was cooler and did feel nice but the clouds continued to thicken and darken until we thought we should hasten our pace back to the car and read those little markers that tell you what to do in case of lightening. We didn’t get very far before the clouds opened, the rain poured down and hail began to spit on us. We got back to the car drenched and hungry.
Last year in Colorado we joked with the kids that they are so unimpressed with everything and we speculated that if we ever went to Mt. Rushmore, they would probably look up at it then say, “Faces on a mountain, let’s go.” I have always wanted to go to the Black Hills in South Dakota so I reserved the trip in March to test this theory. The kids are a year older and we are staying at an indoor water park resort so I’m keeping my fingers crossed it will go better. I also bought them hiking gear and decided to bring lots of snacks I will allow them to eat whenever they want to hopefully make hiking more bearable for them. The kids are excited about the trip although I think their excitement revolves entirely around the water park rather than the national parks, culture and history. But that’s okay; it will afford me a little time to purchase some local cheese to go with all that whine that will inevitably flow.
