This is Stupid: A Family Vacation

If for some reason I decided to leave my lucrative job as a teacher, I would like to be a golf caddy. Not the kind of caddy that carries around golf clubs and gives advice on shots, but the kind of golf caddy that drives around a golf cart and is really rich. If that job doesn’t pan out for me, I have an entire list of jobs I would love to have, ranging from movie critic to construction worker. (Not the kind of construction worker that actually does construction, but the kind of construction worker that gets to put up all the ‘Detour’ signs and sends everybody in the wrong direction) On this job list is also a world-famous family counselor. I would get rich by telling each family one simple secret: go on vacation. Every summer my family and I cram into our car and drive to our heart’s content, and it is what I live for. When I think about why I love vacation so much, it’s not simply because of the warm sand and salty water. Those are great moments, but the best parts of vacation are the crazy moments: the car breaks down or one family member has FINALLY HAD IT with everyone else in the car. Rarely does my family laugh together when reminiscing of beautiful beaches, but we certainly laugh when we talk about how things didn’t go perfectly.

When I was 14, my family took a trip to Glacier. Although we had enough seats for everyone in one car, we drove in two so we could fit all our bags. On the drive, one of the cars broke down. Luckily we were able to get it to the nearest city, Lima, which has the population of 8.473 million people. What a relief, right? WRONG. The city of Lima in Peru has millions of people. The city of Lima in Montana is 226 people. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX. If you were driving on the freeway and sneezed YOU WOULD NOT EVEN SEE THE TOWN. So there we were, at a “car mechanics” in Lima, Montana. (Quotations used for the obvious reason that although they claimed to be a car shop, they did not have complimentary popcorn in their lobby like JiffyLube. Also, they did not have a lobby.) We were told the part needed for the car wouldn’t come for a few days, so we decided to consolidate our belongings, leave most of our things in Lima, and leave in our first car. This meant the entire family of 8 unpacking their bags on the dirt road and saying, “I can wear one shirt for the entire vacation, right?” or “I’d rather have my matchbox car collection than my toothpaste, so I’m leaving the toothpaste in Lima.”

The rest of vacation went off without a hitch. (wrong) I enjoyed everything we did. (wrong) I never said anything mean. (wrong) The next week and a half was spent with us crammed in the car seeing the beautiful sights of Glacier National Park. We would drive for a few hours, get out and hike, get back in the stuffy car and drive for a bit, hike, get back in the stuffy car, hike, etc. Eventually I got pretty tired of my brother’s feet stretching out into my face and the hikes my dad insisted were “almost done.” I finally snapped. Fortunately the only people that witnessed my meltdown were 50 trillion tourists and my mother who managed to film me snarling, “This is STUPID.” Luckily the video clip is still alive and well and is played on repeat when I visit home.

After that, we’ve all had our “this is stupid” moments. The time that we drove all the way out to the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory while we were in California, only to find out that we couldn’t even go into the factory was certainly a “this is stupid” moment. The time my dad made us go to Lewis and Clark’s Fort Clatsop and role play as Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea was also a “this is stupid” moment. (For the record, I did not participate and also refuse to call it anything besides ‘Fort Ketchup.’) The family certainly had a “this is stupid” moment when we drove to Washington to hike, only to have it rain.

Our most recent trip was no different. On our second day we were driving through Oregon when the gas light turned on. My dad assured us that we would have plenty of gas until the next stop, but the next stop seemed to be getting further and further away. Finally we found a sign pointing us to a gas station, so we turned up that road. The road was getting steeper and steeper. There were no homes, no businesses, and my family and I were practically SCALING MOUNT EVEREST IN OUR HONDA. After informing my family that I did not think there was a gas station on the moon, which is where we were surely headed, we rolled up to a lonely looking “gas station.” (Gas station is in quotations because my dad said, “Well, we’re here” and I looked out and just saw a metal box with a nozzle. Apparently Lewis and Clark built this gas station in the middle of nowhere before logic was invented. I assume the gas was a lot more expensive since I’m guessing they had to have Air Force One deliver gasoline to the top of this peak.)

The rest of the trip went swimmingly. We got sunburns that turned into blisters. We attempted to have “Kite Wars” on the beach. (This is when you fly a kite next someone and try to knock their kite to the ground. After we accidentally severed the strings on one of the kites my twelve-year-old brother was named champion and the game was retired.) We visited the Tillamook Cheese Factory where my brothers told lots of “cutting the cheese” jokes and whenever I took a picture I hollered “Say CHEESE!!” and then forced everyone to laugh at my pun. I also learned that there’s a profession called “the Cheddar Master” who apparently bosses everyone around at the cheese factory, so I added it to my list of possible job options. My younger brother won an honorary award because he was able to snag the most cheese cubes in cheese sampling line. (Two more trips to the sampling line were made after an attempt to beat him, but came up short. My mother informed me that upstanding citizens do NOT go back through the cheese sampling line more than once, but I deftly escaped the wrath of the Cheddar Master.)

At the end of the trip, my dad found a sand dollar on the beach and we labeled it with our name for the next family to find. My youngest brother came up with the quote for it, so we look like the kind of put-together family that has family reunion mottos and matching shirts instead of the kind of family that runs out of gas and goes through the cheese line an unspeakable amount of times. Apparently “This is stupid” isn’t a good enough family vacation motto, but I disagree. As a family we’ve seen great cities and rolling fields and endless oceans, but it’s truly the “this is stupid” moments that make us laugh (eventually) and bring us closer together. I’m glad when things go according to plan, but when things don’t, I’m more than happy to announce, “This is stupid!”