Spring Creek Arts Guild: Load Up the Family Truckster!

Here we are in the middle of what most of us think of as Summer since we are halfway between school letting out and school starting back up. Of course in reality, we are not even one full month into summer yet! Either way, summer is when most of us travel places other than to visit family--since the kids are out of school, the weather is not likely to cause travel problems, and amusement parks and such are all open.

A classic road trip stop.

When I was a kid back in the seventies, my dad would get a serious case of the wanderlust every summer and load us all in the car to head out and see something we had not before seen. We did not have a lot of money so we did these trips the tightwad way. The trunk of the car was stocked with a cooler, various groceries, a camp stove, and a few cooking utensils. Breakfast was either cereal or eggs cooked right in the motel rooms (!). I always thought this was great because we got those multipacks of little cereal boxes that you could cut down the side and convert into a bowl. For some reason, the cereal right out of the box tasted so much better! Lunch was a sandwich made and eaten in a roadside park, rest stop, or parking lot. For supper, we either had more sandwiches or we may have a meal at a restaurant if we could find something suitable (cheap).

Notice above, I said “motel,” not hotel, resort, inn, or bed and breakfast. By definition, a motel is a place of lodging where the rooms open to the outside and you can park your car right by your room. The word is actually a hybrid of “motor” and “hotel,” and came about after World War II when the grandest thing was to load the family in the car and go on an adventure. If you look along some of the old pre-interstate thoroughfares, you will find lots of old motels and motor courts. Back in the seventies, they were getting a little run down which is why they were usually very inexpensive. There were many nights when my brother and I slept in sleeping bags on the floor of these motels so we would not have to pay for extra beds. The thought gives me the willies now, but we turned out just fine.

Great local food--fish tacos in San Francisco

One advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your outlook) of traveling on the cheap as we did is that

you become much more intimately acquainted with the places you visit in a way you would never experience with more packaged experiences such as resorts, chain hotels, and chain restaurants. We visited grocery stores and local diners all over the country—two places that reveal much about local cultures and lifestyles. I credit these summer adventures as being a major part of my education and giving me a lifetime of fuel to feed an overactive mind.

This style of traveling is certainly still available to us today, although I believe I would leave out the campstove in the motel rooms and the sleeping bags on the motel floors. We really do not need to travel thousands of miles to find a new perspective. Sometimes all we need to do is to spend a day or two being a traveler in our own area or our own state. Go to a small town where you have only traveled through in the past, or go to a big city, but avoid the malls and instead head downtown. Find some museums and some old-fashioned diners. In many places you will find the old motels have been renovated to the point that some are downright upscale. Get the book “WeirdTexas” and make it your business to see everything listed in person—now that would be an adventure!! By all means, tell me what you find!