Everyone told us not to do it, don’t take a vacation with your neighbors.
We were warned over and over that our friendship would never withstand three weeks on the road traveling together……two families, twelve people and, five of those twelve people were teenagers.

Everyone knew somebody with a tragic tale of good friendships gone bad because of vacationing together.
But none of that scared us.
We were two fun-loving couples, our kids all knew each other and even had close friendships with each other.

I think it started out as a coincidence…..both families were planning a summer California car trip.
Their final destination was relatives in southern California and ours were more north.

One week-end evening while doing our usual back and forth visiting with drinks, loads of snacks, great music of the time (the 70’s) and lots of laughter, we got the great idea of traveling west together.

Why not?

And so, over the long winter months instead of playing card games, we spent our get-togethers charting our courses; how far we’d drive each day, sights we wanted to see, towns we’d stay in.
It was fun planning and helped pass those cold winter nights.

Spring arrived, then summer.
We anxiously counted the days and then it was time to go.

One sunny summer morning the two almost identical station wagons, each packed with six very excited people and their belongings, honked bye to their neighbors and they headed west on a three week trek cross country.
One car had a big sign on the back that said WESTWARD HO and the other, CALIFORNIA BOUND.

We drove 24 hours on the first day, that was the plan.
Each car had 3 drivers.
We took turns being pilot and co-pilot and drove straight through to Durango, Colorado.
We stopped and picnicked in parks for lunches, did pit stops to pee and switch drivers.
The kids burned energy by running through the woods, doing who knows what?

This was before cell phones so each car had a CB installed, 10-4 Good Buddy.

We were never more than one or two cars away from each other.

I’m aware of a few things, eight mischievous kids did along the way in motels while their four parents tried to unwind and relax somewhere away from them all but I’m sure to this day there are things we don’t know….. and don’t want to know.

I know they crunched those round Cheeto cheese ball things in the peep holes of the doors, then knocked on the doors and ran and no one could see who it was because of the wadded up cheese balls.

I know they played Hide ‘n Go Seek and Tag in a 3 story motel, using the elevators as get-away vehicles.

I know they made lots of prank calls to different rooms…..brats!

Probably if I saw kids doing that today, I’d be appalled and wonder about the parents.

Our thing was, we were trapped in the car all day with four kids….. crunch Cheetos, run up and down the hallways, whatever, just LEAVE US ALONE for a bit!!!!

While in Durango the five older kids went with their dads on a rafting ride, the three younger ones wanted to swim at the motel pool so Lynne and I decided to take a little walk with our cameras and find the rapids the older ones would be rafting by on.
We found a spot where the rafters were passing and it looked like they were having fun.
They were all laughing and holding on as the rafts moved up and down and side to side with the wild rapids.
We crawled up on some rocks and waited for our group to come by.
They did and they were laughing so hard that WE couldn’t stop laughing watching them.

We sat on the rocks for a while and watched others come by and enjoyed their fun but glad we’d decided to observe instead of ride.

I don’t know what happened but on the way back to the hotel, we kinda got lost.
No cell phone, no Siri, just two lost blondes!!
We weren’t really worried, we knew we’d find our way.

We saw a huge open dirt-field kinda looking place and we saw our hotel just past it so decided to walk across it instead of going around it as it was kinda huge.
Lynne as always, was a bit ahead of me.
She’s always walked faster than me.
We got about 1/4 of the way across when I got suspicious about what we were walking on.
It looked like dried-up, cracked mud but…..it had a real bad smell.
I yelled to Lynne to wait for me, she was getting too far ahead.
She didn’t hear me and kept walking, she seemed to be going faster and faster.
Soon she was almost to the edge and I was only half-way across when the ground under my feet gave way and my foot fell into something and I fell down on my knees.
I reached my one hand high in the air to save my camera and put the other hand on the dark stuff to balance myself and it fell in like my foot.
Kinda like black, nasty smelling quick sand.
I screamed and began to frantically crawl to the edge, each time falling into the dark muck.
I was scared, the edge looked so far away.
Lynne now standing on the edge, covered black up to her ankles was screaming to me and I was screaming back from the middle.
I got closer and closer with each crawl, but had to go slow and balance myself.
It felt like forever but I reached the edge, Lynne took my camera and helped me up.
It was nasty and we both stunk real bad.
It was then we looked around and READ THE SIGNS.
It was a human waste sewage recycle place.
In my life…..I’m sure I’ve been accused of being FULL OF CRAP, well…..this was one time I couldn’t argue.
Just then a man drove by, slowed down and laughed real hard at what he saw…..JERK!
Lynne and I were beyond words, all we could do is make sounds and hurry back to the motel.
Within minutes we were ridding ourselves of our shoes and clothing and hung everything over the railing.
We both hurried inside to shower.

While I was in the shower, my husband (at the time) yelled into the bathroom asking what the hell happened to my shoes and clothes, looked like I fell into a vat of shit!
That’s what he said.
He really said that.
That’s when I began crying and blubbering out the story in the shower.
I couldn’t see his face and he wouldn’t have dared laugh but I knew he was dying inside!
I stayed in that shower a long time.
Much to my surprise, my shoes had been scraped and cleaned and my clothes taken to the hotel laundry by the time I had the courage to come out and look at my stuff.
I have to say, my husband (at the time) earned ten points for that one!

The fact that I didn’t have to deal with that CRAP was like winning the lottery.

That little incident happened many years ago but not a time goes by when we pass by a Sewage And Waste Water Treatment Plant somehow that horrible smell hits my nose!

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful compared to our Durango stay.

I kinda must admit it wasn’t just the 8 kids that did some crazy stuff, the 4 parents were a little wacko too.

There was an incident that we called, “Pass the Mustard.”
We decided to eat lunch in our vehicles on the move.
We had all the fixings for sandwiches but Lynne’s group needed mustard.
We actually drove up next to each other and an arm from each car reached out and exchanged the mustard.
Wrong, I know but, as I said….we were a little bit crazy back then and young with zero wisdom!

There was drama on a horrible, very narrow, scary road with no guard rail.
If a vehicle went off that road, it was a straight down trip to the bottom.

Their car got a bit ahead of us.

By way of CB, Lynne’s screwball husband who was driving at the time, guided us and told us when it was OK to pass the two cars in between us.
The first thing he said was, “OK, it’s clear” so we increased our speed and began to pass.
Almost immediately after he cleared us and we began passing, the CB clicked on again and we heard, “you’ve got 5 seconds”!!!
He was of course teasing and we THOUGHT that but, well it was straight down.
They may have been laughing in their car but I wanted to stop and smack him.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN became our theme song and we sang it in unison every morning as we traveled together down the road.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD was sung as we traveled up and around to Pike’s Peak.

One day we stopped at the Grand Canyon, stayed too long and got off our time schedule.
We arrived at our motel in Flagstaff very late, after 10.
The pool was closed, eight kids were so disappointed so four parents convinced the guy at the desk to let them in the pool for just a little while.
We told him they were good kids and they’d be real quiet.
Eight kids, in a car all day be quiet in a pool?
Their swim time lasted maybe five minutes.
Those good, quiet eight kids made so much noise the guy’s desk phone began ringing off the hook with complaints of tired travelers and well, our eight quiet, good kids got tossed out of the pool.

We spent a day in Yosemite and the kids all jumped into the stream of rushing water.
One of the eight (no name telling here) got picked up by the current and quickly down the stream she went.
My heart did a flip, but she was pulled out by Tom as she rushed by him.
I had no choice but to forgive him for the “five second” incident.

There was a point where we split and one car went north, the other south.

A few days later we met up again as planned along The Big Sur and began our return trip.

We entered back into our neighborhood the same way we left honking, waving and laughing.

We did it.
Twelve people, five teenagers mind you, three wonderful fun-loaded weeks together returned the same friends as we’d left.

Well, I do have one smelly, bad memory and you know when something like that happens people always say, “One day you’ll laugh at this”…..I haven’t laughed yet!