Family Vacation
by Robyn Brown
When my parents told me and my sister that we were going on a two week road trip to Yellowstone National Park, we responded enthusiastically, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. At ages eight and nine, my sister, Bonnie, and I had only known positive family vacations. We were used to hotels with cable TV, an unknown entity in our household, and heated swimming pools. We would watch cartoons while we ate breakfast, then splash around while our parents went out and experienced all that the city we were in had to offer. Occasionally we would wander around the town unchaperoned, looking for a candy store or playground, but usually Bonnie and I were more interested in exploring the lobby and flipping through hundreds of channels than in learning anything of historical significance.
Day 1
Our trip started off with an afternoon’s drive across California to Donner Lake, named, of course, after the Donner Party. My mom was always full of tidbits from gruesome chapters of history. When we were little, one of our favorite books that my mom read to us was an old German picture book that was written back in the time when cruelty to animals and little children was not only acceptable, but humorous. From an early age we recognized the name of Charles Manson, the famous serial killer, and had watched several documentaries on the Donner Party, a group of settlers in the 1800s with an infamously poor sense of direction that got hopelessly lost in the snowy Sierra Nevadas and turned to cannibalism in order to survive.
My mom dragged Bonnie and me into the Donner Lake museum eagerly. We were treated to what she claimed were “really interesting” black and white photos, molding pieces of clothing, and pages upon pages of letters written in impossibly small handwriting. All we came away with was the fact that those people actually ate each other. Eww. Our trip was off to a great start.
The next night we stayed in a hotel in Nevada and my parents abandoned us in front of the TV to go gambling. It sounded exciting to me and the next morning the first thing out of my mouth when I woke up was, “Are we rich, now?”
My dad replied, “Well, I wouldn’t call us rich with money, exactly. But we’re experiencing great new things everyday! That makes us rich, right? Right?”
They had lost forty dollars between them. Risk takers, they were not.
The next day Nevada gave way to Idaho with little fanfare. Indeed, they both afforded Bonnie and me consistently monotonous scenery from the backseat. My parents, however, couldn’t stop raving about the “gorgeous views” and the “lovely simplicity” of the landscape. Simple, yes. Gorgeous, no. All we could see was some boring sand and wimpy mountains that weren’t even that tall. It was as flat as a saltine cracker and just as dry.
Day 4
By the fourth day we were tired of our parents yelling at us to stop resting our feet up against the window and sick of passing by McDonalds and going instead to local cafes. Unfortunately, our trip was far from over. Late in the afternoon, we pulled into the ominously named Massacre Rock State Park, our campground for the night. The campsite was barren except for a few low-lying shrubs, a picnic table, a rusty old fire pit, and…nothing else. That was it. A desolate wasteland under the guise of a state park.
We pitched two tents and were about to start cooking dinner when the storm started. First it was a little windy, then it started to drizzle. Before we knew it, the wind had picked up to full-fledged blustery madness and the rain was pouring down. My hair was flying straight up from my head and the rain pelting us in the face made it impossible to see, so we were forced to relocate our dinner preparation to the covered area between the men’s and women’s restrooms. My sister and I ate our hamburgers sullenly, shooting our parents menacing glances between bites.
“I can’t believe that this place is called massacre,” I muttered.
“Yeah. Why didn’t we just book a reservation at a cemetery or something? At least the tombstones would shelter us from the wind,” Bonnie added.
“Stop whining,” my dad told us, as the sound of a toilet flushing reverberated from behind the bathroom door. “This place has its share of historical significance.” He read from a brochure that was tacked to a bulletin board on the wall. “The name ‘Massacre Rock’ was coined after an Indian skirmish with a pioneer wagon train in 1862…. let’s see…see, girls, the total death count was only ten white men. It doesn’t say how many Indians, probably about the same number…” He trailed off, realizing that we were looking at him with horrified expressions. “I mean, out of 40 or 50, ten isn’t that bad, is it?”
“Give it up, Dad. We’ll be lucky to get out of here alive,” Bonnie said, as a family of five trooped through our pleasant meal, toothbrushes in hand.
Our parents told us to shut up and enjoy the experience. They were positive that we would look back years later and laugh heartily at the present predicament. Bonnie and I weren’t convinced.
After dinner, we made a mad dash back to the campsite, where we were greeted with a horrifying sight: the two tents were dancing about in the wind, held down only by the corners that were staked into the rapidly disintegrating dirt. Bonnie and I immediately retreated to the car and locked the doors, watching the tents whip around and muttering to ourselves under our breath about our parents’ idea of a fun time. My parents opted to sleep in their tent, with the logic that their weight would hold it down and prevent it from blowing away in the middle of the night. Bonnie and I spent a cramped night in the car, entertaining ourselves occasionally by looking out the windows at our parents’ tent, which continued to flap about wildly around the weight in the center.
On our way out the next morning, my mom took a picture of the only tree in the campground, which had fallen down during the storm.
Day 5
Apparently the only two things a family can do for fun in Idaho are participate in park ranger information talks and visit historical landmarks. We attempted to do the former, but after missing two talks and a shuttle we realized that we had entered a different time zone and had forgotten to set our watches forward. That left us with the second option, much to my dismay. One of the historical landmarks that we visited (or, rather, my parents visited. I don’t think it counts if you don’t get out of the car) was, in fact, some wheel ruts. Neither Bonnie nor I knew much, nor cared to know much about the Oregon Trail, and therefore were mystified by our parents’ interest in these seemingly insignificant potholes. There wasn’t even a gift shop.
The day had finally come! We were actually in Yellowstone. After setting up our tents and eating a quick lunch, we headed out to see the natural beauties of the landscape. Our first stop was a museum, of course, where my mom purchased a book entitled Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. On our way to view the bubbling mud pots she read aloud several selections that graphically described the deaths of bumbling tourists who had leaned a little too far over the railing at the boiling geysers. Needless to say, I refused to come within fifty yards of anything that came out of the ground and was bubbling, boiling, spraying or fizzing. Bonnie took pictures of everything for me so I could see what I missed out on when we got back home. There were over one hundred geysers and colorful mineral deposits, each carefully documented by my sister and her camera. We all agreed that they looked cool, but, much to my parents’ annoyance, they also all looked exactly the same, leaving us with five rolls worth of virtually identical pictures.
This was the day that we saw the can’t-miss Yellowstone attraction: Old Faithful. It was supposed to erupt approximately every fifty minutes, and we timed our arrival to coincide with an eruption. As luck would have it, however, we were a few minutes too late and got there just as crowds of tourists were leaving, satisfied smiles on their faces. Luckily, there were plenty of activities to occupy us for fifty minutes.
“Robyn! Look more scared!” Bonnie instructed me as I posed before a carved, life-sized wooden bear statue. “That’s good. Now pretend you’re feeding it your ice cream. Don’t actually put it in its mouth, you’ll get it dirty. I’m the director! You have to do what I say!”
And:
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, coming through!” I shouted as I raced Bonnie around the wooden walkway that surrounded the famed geyser. We pushed our way through Asian sightseers and families carrying babies and young couples shooting us dirty looks and muttering loudly in French. We completed two laps before our parents saw us and pulled us into a museum as a punishment. It was finally time for Old Faithful to erupt again and Bonnie and I pushed our way to the front of the crowd to get the best view. As it flowed forth with steam, the crowd gasped in appreciation and Bonnie lifted her camera to get the perfect shot. Unfortunately, she had used up the last of her film taking pictures of the bear and me.
We were now making our way back home, though not on a direct route, much to my disappointment. We wended our way down through Utah, stopping in Salt Lake City. Our main destination in the city was the airport, where we dropped my dad off so he could fly back home.
“Daddy has to go to work. But he’s going to be sorry that he’s missing the rest of this trip!” Mom said, as we pulled into our campsite, Camp VIP, for the night. I say campsite, but it was really an urban RV park. We found our spot, one of the three reserved “tent sites.” What differentiated these spots from the others was the six by twelve foot plot of grass that we staked our tents on. From the back of our tent, Bonnie and I had a lovely close-up view of the chain link fence and my mom got the pleasure of looking out onto the picturesque Winnebago parked next to us. All night long we slept soundly to the hum of generators.
Salt Lake City could be described in two words: hot and boring. The hotness was expected, though not welcome, in our car. Bonnie generously offered to switch sides in the backseat with me, since I had had to sit on the sunny side for the last nine days. Little did I realize that since we were now heading back in the opposite direction, the sun would once again be streaming through my window.
The boredom was another issue altogether. Bonnie and I convinced our mom that seeing a movie in an air-conditioned theater would be an acceptable alternative to visiting historical landmarks that day, and she miraculously agreed. It was a Sunday, however, and we hadn’t counted on all the movie theaters in town being closed. Indeed, everything appeared to be closed, including libraries, restaurants, swimming pools, miniature golf venues, and, our mainstay, museums. There were only two places that were open: McDonalds and the Mormon Temple. After a quick lunch at McDonalds, we cautiously made our way into the temple. After only a minute it became obvious that all the white people in town were at the temple and everyone else had been at the McDonalds. The temple was air-conditioned, though, and the water from the drinking fountains was ice cold, so we decided to check it out. After watching an interactive movie about the story of the Mormons, with surprisingly impressive surround sound, we decided it was time to leave before one of us accidentally got converted.
After Salt Lake City was Green River, a scenic little campground situated amongst willow trees and soft grass. It was a welcome sight after nights of sleeping in less-than-ritzy locations. My mom made teriyaki chicken for dinner and we all went to bed happy, with full stomachs. The next morning, though, we were forced to make a hasty retreat to the highway after I vomited chicken all over the grass as we were packing up.
My mom thought it might be fun to visit a real old west ghost town. Neither Bonnie nor I could think of any objections, so we hauled off down a steep, gravely dirt road, led only by a map and a sense of adventure. When we got there, it was little more than a slight widening in the road, decorated with some beer cans. I groaned loudly enough for my mom to say, “Well it isn’t my fault. I must have been given faulty directions.”
The road wasn’t wide enough to turn around in, so we had to drive in reverse up to the top of the road, several miles, which turned out to be more exciting than the ghost town.
Day 12
The next day we arrived in Arches National Park. I was relieved when my mom suggested a short hike; the heat had followed us relentlessly through Utah and the car was hot and stuffy. Bonnie, however, had refused to get out of the car since we left Salt Lake City and informed us that she had no intention of going on any sort of hike. My mom had some qualms about leaving her sitting in the car by herself on a baking hot day, but in the end she figured it was better than listening to Bonnie complain about how she was hungry, or thirsty, or that the seams on her socks were irritating her, or that the people in front of us smelled funny.
“Fine with me,” my mom said, stepping out of the car. “Don’t turn the radio on. You’ll run down the battery. If you feel like you’re getting too hot you should step outside or you’ll overheat.”
We left her with a bottle of tepid water and a half empty bag of crumbled goldfish. My mom and I enjoyed a delightful hike, complete with a foreign tourist taking our picture for us at the peak and, as we found out later, cutting off both of our heads. Bonnie was still alive and complaining when we got back to the car.
Day 13
Nevada. Again.
Day 14
On our last night of camping we set up the tents one final time at Great Basin National Park.
“Wow, girls! Look at that view!” my mom exclaimed.
Bonnie and I exchanged confused looks. Perhaps it was because she stood a foot taller than both of us, but we could not figure out what my mom was seeing that we weren’t. There were some trees and bushes, but nothing remarkable.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she asked us. We nodded silently, in unison. I made brief eye contact with Bonnie which confirmed my suspicions. After 14 days, mom had finally gone crazy and begun hallucinating. We hoped that she would not drive us off the road the next day.
Day 15
The next morning we set off on the road again, for the last time. The plan was to drive straight through the rest of Nevada and California, to Berkeley. That day, which consisted of approximately sixteen hours, twelve minutes, and thirty-one seconds of driving (not that anyone was counting), turned out to be surprisingly good. We acted like normal families do on vacations; we sang songs, went to a fast food restaurant for lunch, and only stopped at one historical landmark, which was actually interesting for once.
After our trip was long over, my mom put together a scrapbook that contained, among other things, countless pictures of geysers, the brochure from the Massacre Rock bathroom, a map of the Oregon Trail, and excerpts from her book about the dangers of being boiled to death in a hot spring. She also compiled a list of memorable “bests.”
Best Museum: Donner Lake
Best scenery: Nevada
Best bathrooms: Massacre Rock
Least best overall: Camp VIP
Best camping meal: Green River
Best view from campground: Great Basin
Best day in the car: Day 15