There has been a fair amount of talk around the McClelland house lately surrounding the much anticipated and rapidly approaching family cross country adventure. We have discussed sleeping arrangements, food possibilities and likely problems, house and pet sitting scenarios, friends and family we may be able to visit along the way, and much more. Rising to the forefront most often is the planning of a route. While we have come up with a general route, and it does have specific places to visit, camp , and stay, it is by no means an itinerary. Some places will be skipped, in others we may linger, sometimes a long push will be necessary, and at others we may decide we are only up for a short drive. The main function of our planned route is to make the big and general decisions. The smaller choices about how far sanity and civility within the confines of a relatively small vehicle will permit us to travel on any given day, or just which attractions are really attractive to us will be decided on a daily basis. Flexibility will be key in making the trip a success. Before I get into where specifically we will be going this Summer, I'd like to mention how it is that my family brought me to a place where I feel like this is a good and important thing to do.
When I was seven years old, my mother married Dr. Jerry Maida and, as he came with a pair of his own kids, our little family doubled in size. As a parent of two, in a two income household, at the age of 37, I can finally begin to appreciate the difficulty of single parenting, but as far as I knew my mother had done it really well. I didn't know hunger or fear, and I never doubted that I was loved. I wonder if I could do as much for my girls without my wife's help. While I remember my early childhood; my mother's single parenting years, as a happy time, it is distinct in my memory from the life I would come to know after she remarried. While many things would change as a result of our new family structure, the relevant one here is travel and the wider world view that would result from it. I had been a Florida kid, and before Dad, Florida was all I knew. The first time he took us to visit his family in New York, it was like nothing I ever could have imagined. My sister and I didn't really know yet what to make of him, and seeing where he came from didn't really make him seem any more familiar. Brooklyn was so loud and teemed with people in a way I had never seen. It was full of people, but not the way that an amusement park or public event are. Everyone was going someplace, doing something, they were busy, and crowded. Dad's family was also different than the family I had known. When I could decipher their accents, I was sometimes surprised at their bluntness with each other. It was Christmas in the big city and we went to see the biggest tree I'd ever seen. There was snow, dirty snow, but snow nonetheless. People were selling everything you could imagine in the streets. The tall buildings all crammed together, trains that ran overhead and underfoot, yellow cars driven by the most collectively aggressive people I had ever encountered; it was almost more foreign and new stimuli than my young mind could handle. By the end of that visit, Dad's family had revealed itself to be one that was close and warm and knew well how to celebrate being together at the holidays. This was my introduction to New York Italian family life. The city itself remained in my mind strange and fascinating.
Memories are slippery things, and it is hard to know the facts and chronology of the shaping of your perception, but I point to that first trip to New York as pivotal to my own personal world view. I think New York city leaves its mark on people of any age and experience when they first encounter it, but for me as a small child, it left me with the impression that there are more kinds of people out there than I had ever thought, and that if a place like New York was out there, then anything could be. Over the years that followed, Dad took us to place after place that would verify and renew those thoughts. Every new place I saw added some small or large nuance to the way I saw the world. Travel is education, but it is a humbling one. In the words of Micheal Franti, "Seems like everywhere I go, The more I see, the less I know". I hope that by traveling with my girls, they will benefit the way that I did. Aside from patting myself on the back for educating my kids, I will get to see lots of cool new stuff too. Without further ado, here's what our route looks like drawn on the map on our dining room wall.
There are bound to be detours and deviations from the route, but the general heading has been decided. We usually spend the week leading up to the 4th of July with Kat's family at her parents' home in Pennsylvania. This week, which is often the only time each year that many of the siblings and cousins get to spend time together, has been dubbed "Camp PaHaGaCo" after the lake on which it has been held each year for the past decade. Thank you Dan and Martha, for fostering and hosting so many wonderful memories... and for stoically dealing with the post-exodus aftermath. This year camp has been moved to Rock Hall Maryland, where my brother and sister in law, Mike and Julie, have a vacation house. Sleeping arrangements will be split between the house, two boats, and the trailer, and this is where we will spend the first week of our trip. It should give us an opportunity to tweak the truck and trailer if needed and to ease into camping mode. From there we will be heading west on the northern line until we reach San Diego where we will invade the happy home of an other brother and sister in law, Danny and Natasha. This is our official turn around point; it's either turn around or drive into the Pacific or Mexico. The southern line shows our return track. At Nashville, the route splits representing a choice between the western and eastern sides of the Appalaician mountains. We will arrive back home (hopefully we will all still like each other) in time for Kat to begin her new job on August 24th.
Part of what makes setting out on a trip like this so exciting is that there is absolutely no way of knowing what we will find out there, who we will meet, what it will be like to be so constantly in each others' company, and a hundred other things that are unforeseeable. One thing is for certain; it will be different, and that is as good a reason as any to do it.
Finally, I'll let Kinsey have the last word...
I just wonder what New Mexico is going to be like. Same with Kentucky! They both sound like a place with cowboys and cowgirls. I just wonder. I wonder if there will be lots of enormous, really big, tall, trees like in Red Wood Forests or barely any trees like in Kansas where it's just sandy ground, really tall grass, and wild animals. Talking about Kansas, I can make a connection to this, and here it is : I'm reading the book "Little House On The Prairie " the family is in Kansas along with a dog and two horses. They stopped for some rest. We are also going to cross Rocky Mountains. "Ha Ha I just said part of my sister's favorite ice cream! Rocky Mountains, Rocky Road,Rocky Mountains, Rocky... Ya. No one gets it... Anyway, after we cross the Rocky Mountains we are going to cross Nevada in the hot, hot desert and I have never been to a desert before , although I know that my dad has because he has been to the grand canyon before with his friend, Laura. I also have a few more wonders then I have to close it up. I wonder if we will stay awake enough for at least one of us to see one or two shooting stars well maybe three. I wonder how many jets and airplanes we will see. ( There are so many airplanes and jets in the United States of America that we will find like 945,689!) And sadly this is my last one but here it is, I wonder if we will see the license plate Hawaii. And... Good bye... Until next time...
