Vacation, happy to get away

Well, if I was savvy enough to post up some accompanying music it WOULD'VE been the Go-Go's or Lindsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road." Maybe both.

So it is of course summer and that means leaving the confines of our home to tour our pretty great country. If this were a more interactive medium I'd waste time playing "Where in the Sticks is Bob?" but because it's not I'll refrain from cribbing Matt Lauer's ideas.

At first, we knew that this year's trip was NOT going to be yet another Walt Disney World vacation. We'd done Disney in '09 with all 4 kids for our 15th wedding anniversary and it was - as the Mouse would say - swell. But by the end of the trip Carol and I were actually Disney'd out. No more magic. No more monorails and buses and long lines, mouse-ears, and fastpasses.

So, I'm lucky enough to have access to a beach house, where we've gone for trips every year. This year my son made the travel hockey team and my eldest daughter is in the high school marching band. This means that she must practice for the first 3 weeks of August, and my son's practices should be starting up right after marching band "intensive summer camp" ends in mid-August.

The practical effect? We either take a trip in July or not at all, and the beach house is booked already.

Whoops! What to do?

How about The Great American Road Trip?

I love driving and stopping at whatever interests one of us. Our first idea was a Grand Midwestern Tour which would lead through Ohio and up into Milwaukee and then South through Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, and Point Pleasant, WVa.

Why Point Pleasant? Google it. My daughter Sarah and I were prepared to search high and low for a certain cryptozoological entity that allegedly calls Point Pleasant home.

(yes, I am a dork)

Well, that trip was looking too long and too expensive. Too many $150 per night hotels. Oh, why not camp it? Sounds good, but I'm a bit of a marshmallow when it comes to camping out-of-doors. I like beds with mattresses and rooms with air-conditioning. And no bugs.

I enjoy the outdoors, but on my own terms. My wife claims to enjoy camping, though I've never seen it. Of course, refer to the first declarative sentence of this paragraph and it's pretty obvious that I've not been very open to it. We discuss it once every 6 months and then most likely my "princess and the pea" act reminds her that it's just not worth the headache. (I am a notoriously finicky sleeper)

Well, the Midwestern tour was my idea but (as with many of my ideas) too big for our wallets and her vacation time. Mostly our wallets.

So, she hit upon The Great Smokies. Found a place to stay in tourist-trap Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Good price, lots to do in the mountains that we'd like. Within reasonable driving distance.

Sounded pretty good. Plus the suite has separate rooms, so this might actually be a great trip.

Our last sojourn like this was in the epically awful year of 2007 when we took our family-of-6 to Maine and did a New England tour. It was awful for plenty of reasons, both internal and external to the family. There was the 3-hour trip across New York's GW bridge. The Asian man who peed on my leg in Connecticut. Our poorly-planned first night didn't end until sometime around 11pm in a Days Inn somewhere in south Maine because I'd made no hotel reservations. We started stopping in at hotels about 6pm or so but they were all booked because former Pres. Bush was visiting. Crap. I never voted for that guy, and he indirectly made me miserable again.

Well, then we trekked to Bar Harbor and found it to be another tourist-trap. Blueberries and black bears on every corner. Acadia National Park was gorgeous and our 3 older kids loved it (little Jack was just 1 year old).

After a couple days we borrowed a friend's home in Vinalhaven, Maine - which was amazing. Quiet little place, lots of hiking to do, some swimming. No cell phones. Great lobster. A lot of the internal matters that we were dealing with remained problematic, but every relationship has to navigate rough waters -such is the lot of humans the world over.

From Vinalhaven we made an unexpected jaunt to Boston and walked the entire Freedom Trail and fulfilled my long-standing dream of touring Fenway Park. My kids still remember how tired they were after completing the Freedom Trail.

In fact, this morning we were sifting through the memories of that trip - part disaster and part stroke-of-genius.

And I guess that's what every family vacation is, when you step back and look at the whole experience and reflect upon it. There were great parts, funny parts, breathtaking parts, and breathtakingly awful parts. As we pack up the family wagon for yet another trip into the great wide open I'm hoping for a safe and happy trip. There's even a carefully planned surprise for these kids that I hope will knock their socks off.

Which means, God knows, anything can happen. I'm choosing optimism, even as I hear a calamitous amount of noise from the rooms nearby. Ugh. Peace and quiet are never passengers on these trips...........