Yes, the plane is easier, and it's nice to get there in 3 hours instead of 3 days, but there's something nostalgic and exciting about getting some good snacks and good tunes and hitting the open road.
Like Clark Griswold says about his long road trip, "Nothing worthwhile is easy!"
The opening sequence uses 52 postcards and other vintage photos to establish the excitement of travel and the variety of things to see or do in America.
Are you taking a road trip this year? Before you set off in the Family Truckster, please take a look at the unique opening of National Lampoon's Vacation by CLICKING HERE!
Comments
Omg, Jeff. You had to pick today to post this???
ReplyDeleteLove this article - it’s the one that first got me to come to your site, and I have been stopping by ever since. It was a great resource for me and my family last summer as we went on our own cross country road trip.
I love road trips, but it’s not something we get to do very often - we live on a island in the middle of the pacific, so we can’t just hop in a car on the weekend and drive. We’d either have to hop on a plane first for a 5 hour flight, or if we did just hop in the car and drive to our destination… our trip would be over within an hour. Needless to say, when we do go on a road trip, it’s a big deal for us (I’ve gone on two in my life… 20 years apart). So this article really does have a special place in my heart.
With that being said… I woke up this morning to see a follow.it email that you posted a one of your sneaky Friday articles, which turned out to be a repost of my favorite article on your site… ON THE EXACT DAY THAT I (as a lazy teacher) HAVE TO GO BACK TO WORK! Of all the days this year to post this article, why today???
I was already sad because my grade level is starting a few days early for planning meetings because the other grade levels don’t know how to respect “dibs” being called for days earlier in the summer, but waking up early and dragging myself out of bed and this is the first thing I see as my summer break officially ends… thanks a lot, man.
But aside from the timing of this article, keep up the great work with this site. Just know that I was already very sad today and you just made it worse. =P
Today's as good a day as any! :) You're back in school in July? Bummer, man. When does it let out for summer, April? You've never said... What locations did you visit based on these postcards? I'm interested to hear what is still around to see and what's now a high-rise condo complex :)
ReplyDeleteCouple things, Jeff…
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, normally I would have agreed that this past Friday would have been a great day to post the postcard article - as I would have been approaching the end of my summer break and it would’ve been a nice nostalgic trip down memory lane. Unfortunately, this year my summer break ended early (even by our standards)… on the exact day that you decided to post the postcard article! I was literally getting ready for work when I saw the article and posted my reply while on the toilet (I don’t care if that’s tmi - I’m still upset that my summer is over).
Secondly, yeah in Hawaii the public schools usually start up in early August (sometimes late July), and the teachers start about 4 days before the kids. My first day this year was supposed to be this upcoming Tuesday, but my grade level had two days of meetings (Friday and Monday) this year so our break ended extra early. Our school year usually ends in late May (sometimes early June), so basically we start earlier, but then end earlier, than most places on the mainland.
As for the postcard locations we ended up visiting… I had to do a little digging to double check what we had planned and what we actually got to see. Once I got it all straightened out, I was actually kinda surprised how much we missed. I knew we didn’t get to everything on our list, but I didn’t realize how much we missed until I went through your article again postcard by postcard.
We started out in New York City, so we got the George Washington Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and Statue of Liberty ones done right away. We also got Chicago, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Mount Rushmore later in the trip.
ReplyDeleteThe most unique (in that it’s not in a major city or tourist location) shot we got was the Kittatinny Tunnel entrance. It looked a little different than the postcard, so I’m not sure if we were at the exact same entrance pictured on the postcard, but it was definitely the same tunnels. The route we took to make sure we saw the Kittatinny Tunnel also led us to some other interesting places. If it weren’t for the postcard, we probably would have taken a more northerly route through Cleveland, but that Kittatinny detour ended up leading us to awesome places like Falling Water, Hocking Hills, and eventually even the world’s largest ball of paint in Alexandria, Indiana.
Unfortunately, I can’t really help you much with what other postcard locations are still there, because we ended up not going to a number of ones we had planned. The first one we missed was the Tower of Pizza in Greenbrook, New Jersey. That was on our list, but my son got us a little lost and we ended up just settling for eating at a Jersey Mike’s that was in New Jersey.
The next set of missed postcard locations was a little more intentional. When we were in Minnesota (at the Twine Ball in Darwin), we had a choice between making a trip up north to see the Fairyland Cottages, The Big Fish Supper Club, and the Paul Bunyan’s Babe locations or double back south to see Ed’s Museum in Wykoff. We chose Ed’s Museum… which ended up being closed (even though the hours listed on the internet said it was supposed to be open). That was a bummer, but it wasn’t a total waste because we got to visit the Spam Museum in nearby Austin (MN), which was huge for the kids because… Spam is very popular in Hawaii.
The next missed opportunity was Trout Haven in South Dakota. We chose to go to the Anna Miller Museum in Wyoming instead because time was an issue and there’s an Anna Miller restaurant in Hawaii.
The next postcard locations we missed were in Colorado. We skipped the Ahwahnee Motel in Denver because my wife really had to pee. Then the next day we were originally going to stop by Santa’s Workshop in Cascade, but that happened to be our longest drive day (14 hours), so when we ran into some delays due to roadwork early in the day we decided to skip the detour to Cascade. On the bright side, that change in plan led us to a neat little shop in Cimarron called Newberry’s Store. I picked up a pretty rock for my daughter at a super cheap price and bought my favorite souvenir of the trip - a Newberry Store hat that I still wear today.
In California, a huge chunk of Route 1 was still closed due to a rock slide or something, so we didn’t get to see the Highway 1 bridge from that postcard. And on our last day of the trip we were supposed to drive out to see the Cabazon Dinosaurs, which also had Dick’s Motor Inn and the Wigwam Village Motel postcard sites nearby. Unfortunately, by then we were so exhausted that we dropped that entire drive and just slept in that day.
In the end, although we missed a ton of the postcard locations we originally wanted to go, the route we planned for our cross country trip was heavily influenced by your postcard article on this site and we really had a great time. So once again, thank you for writing that article, Jeff.
ReplyDeleteBut you really could have picked a better day to repost it this year. Like, ANY other day would have been better for me - there are 366 days this year (since it’s a leap year) so you had 365 other choices…
Wow! What an amazing trip! Count me as jealous! We've been to a few of those places, and done several smaller road trips, but one day we'd like to do as you did and drive clear across the country (and obviously back to get home). When we had an RV we drove from New York to as far as Wyoming and that was a blast but it was a marathon sprint because we only had just about a week and a half off work.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine how much fun you must have had taking in the sights with a longer timeline and the wonderful memories you and your family made together that they'll always cherish. Trip of a lifetime for sure!
Sorry about posting on your return to work day, but... that's the way the ball bounces :) I've got my topics scheduled out to Thanksgiving already so unless I get a brilliant idea (HA!) or someone points out an anniversary that I missed in my research, it won't be changing much. I likely had picked that day back in May!