Road Trip Dreams and Nightmares

I’ve never lived in a car. I’ve never lived in one for any period of time, to say nothing of four months. This is what I should have been thinking when my wife Katie had the idea to go on a long road trip around America. Instead, I thought ‘We’re experienced campers. Four months is just like the weekend camping trips we’ve done, only longer!’

Once, a friend and I drove cross country from San Francisco to the middle west of America with very little stopping, a trip that took around 24 hours. This was a long time spent in a car, but I don’t think I would consider that living. With little sleep and the only hygiene consisting of a swim in one of Yosemite’s cold lakes, we were more melted into the fabric of the car, becoming one with it like the smell of the bad gas station coffee and Barbecue Corn Nuts that we used to stay awake.

We’d done plenty of camping in the past, our family of four. Throwing a bunch of stuff in the car, the exact same stuff we’d thrown in the car the last time we went camping, then stopping at the supermarket on the way out of town seemed vastly different in my head. Certainly being only a couple hours from home on those weekend trips made things a bit more comfortable. If the weather or your wife turn nasty, you can easily pack everything up and go home. If your kids start to stoke the fires of mutiny, you could roll them up in the tent and be back in the city in time for happy hour. My kids had already begun to grumble, especially about to be 13-year old Henry, who had made it clear that he didn’t want to be camping at all much less for four months. Not that we’d ever done any of those things, the packing up and going home early. But the point is that you could, and there is comfort in that. A thousand miles from our home base at my parent’s house in Iowa, and four months on the road camping— sleeping, eating, relaxing, changing, clothing, training, reading, writing, making, doing, messing, fighting … living, was an entirely different endeavor to anything we’d done in the past. And it was keeping me up at night.

The idea behind the long road trip was simple. Past trips back to America were largely focused on visiting close family in the Midwest and staying with my parents in Iowa, and this was all we could muster on a short time frame. Sometimes those trips had the feel of a tired concert tour that was forever playing the same cities. The Naughtons, live from Australia, featuring special guest, REO Speedwagon! (REO Speedwagon always kills it in the Midwest) Des Moines —St Louis— Cedar Rapids over two weeks and we’d be back on a plane headed for Melbourne. Very little exploring was done. Adventure was not often found. Our boys Henry and Oscar were born in America but moved to Australia in the sunny days of their youth, and had not had an opportunity to experience much of their own country. Katie and I had many friends and some family scattered around the States: Jeff in Philadelphia, Amy in Atlanta, Laurel in Tucson. And so the simple plan was this: take our concert tour further out on the road, and check out parts of the country that we’d not seen in a long time, or had never seen before. We would complete a giant figure eight of the country, starting in Iowa and heading east, then circling south and around to Iowa again before driving northwest, down the west coast, then back around to Iowa for a second time, four months later. Over the course of the loops, we’d drop in to see those old friends we were missing. We would introduce our boys to America and its varied regional wonders, like the museums of Washington D.C. and the Waffle House. Katie and I would reacquaint ourselves with the place where we grew up but left eight years ago for Australia, and gorge ourselves on Smokey Mountains, Rocky Mountains, Philly Cheesesteaks, and Oregonian Crab Cakes. It all sounded wonderful in discussion around the dinner table and on paper. Two days before we were set to leave, however, and all I could do is sit in bed with my hands over my head. Planning and packing was not proving easy.

Katie and I spent a frantic and exhausting week driving all over central Iowa to assemble the long list of what we thought we’d need to sustain ourselves in the bush. Looking at our tent, tarp, four chairs, two tables — did we really need two tables? — stove, mats, sleeping bags, gas bottle and not to mention a full spread of kitchen pots, pans and utensils, and I could imagine a set up and take down of camp being a miserably long and drawn out undertaking. The pile only got worse from there: two enormous bags of clothing, four baseball gloves, five backpacks, two hammocks, and a giant stack of books. We each had a couple pairs of shoes. Ever thought about how awkward eight pairs of shoes is?

Once all that has been squeezed in and accounted for, one must think about eating. There was a small part of me that wanted to really experience America through the wonderful food. We’d frequent local diners for breakfasts of corned beef hash and inoffensive coffee served in round ceramic mugs. We’d have lunch just off the highway in some nameless suburb at a regional fast food outlet like In N’ Out Burger on the west coast, or the aforementioned Waffle House down south. Convenience stores would fill in nicely — one can hardly go wrong with a slice of Casey’s pizza now and again. Unfortunately, a four month long food tour of America quickly gets expensive, even if you are frequenting the oily end of the restaurant spectrum. Not to mention that moving from one roadside fryer to the next is more intestinally adventurous than I was willing to be, and the added time for the resulting bathroom stops would be prohibitive. Foregoing the more glamorous and fattening option, food was packed in the car with us, ideally enough to sustain for 4–5 days without restocking. This takes up a significant amount of space. We had to carry a large bin full of dry food, a cooler for cold drinks of all varieties (varieties of beer, mostly), and then the ultimate in next level camping, a $1,000 electric portable refrigerator where we would store foods that must be kept fresh.

Now, you may be asking why one wouldn’t just use a cooler and ice for both drinks and food, saving on space and surely a few dollars. And such a question would out yourself as a camping newb, someone who’s never had to drain the cooler water from their goat cheese and prosciutto before preparing the charcuterie board. Someone who’s never had to fish a cold drink out of cooler water that unbeknownst to you has been given a fetid pink tinge by the juice from the pork chops that you’ll be grilling for dinner tomorrow night. So the refrigerator, as well as the only slightly dangerous full size car battery and jumper cable apparatus that I rigged up to power it when the car isn’t running, were deemed essential.

Upon proving that we could fit all of this into my mother’s Toyota and the rooftop carrier we’d purchased, I felt no better — the car was about ready for one of the doors to burst open and everything to come spilling out the back, like a closet that’s been stuffed full of the implements of daily life when you have guests coming over. And the packing Tetris that was required to fit everything in could not possibly be accomplished on a regular and running basis without deciding at some point to start abandoning things like that second table on the side of the road.

Our boys were blissfully unaware of our stresses, and who can blame them? Afternoons spent lounging on my parent’s couch does not qualify as stressful, with their largest issue being the dial-up slow internet that could be bettered at the local library. Henry in particular had something else to take his mind off our imminent departure. It was the one final thing we had to do before leaving, something that would hopefully help to forget his misgivings about the trip: his 13th birthday was coming up, and we had to give him a birthday party.

When I was 12, the place to go for your birthday was Happy Joe’s. Happy Joe’s is a truly Iowan pizza place if ever there was one, whatever it means to be an Iowan pizza place. It has been around forever, everyone in Iowa knows it, everyone’s been there. Back then, it was decorated like an old-timey ice cream parlor. There were red and white striped chairs, red carpet and gaudy colored glass chandeliers. A long red counter with a faux brass rail spanned the length of one room, and behind it lived the stuff of a kid’s sugar high induced technicolor dreams. Ice cream was often being whisked around the restaurant in tall glasses, covered by oozing chocolate sauce, a mountain of whipped cream and topped with a cherry that was redder than any color red that appears in nature. Add to that sodas and candy galore. And not just any candy, not the 5 cent pieces of dry bubble gum you’d get at your local corner store, Happy Joe’s had the good stuff. There were giant lollipops and licorice ropes the length of your leg, but tops was Lik-m-aid Fun Dip. Eating Fun Dip was an interactive experience. A packet consisted of two white sticks of pure sugar, delightfully muted in flavor, which were used to dig cocaine-like fruit flavored powder out of little pouches. You know you’d done well when your parents got you a Fun Dip.

The wait staff at Happy Joe’s had uniforms that matched the decor, red and white jackets and little straw hats, which the teenaged waiters wore with little enthusiasm. When they weren’t wearing overly enthusiastic fake smiles, you could often catch them shooting nervous glances around the room to comfort themselves in the knowledge that no one they knew was around to see them dressed up like they’d just joined the barbershop quartet. When you went there on your birthday, one of the unlucky employees would find their way to your table, whichever one had drawn the short straw or showed up late for work that night, I imagine. Wielding a horn like a clown uses to punctuate bad jokes, they’d interrupt the entire restaurant to announce that it was little Jimmy’s birthday, and he’s 10, and then guilt everyone in the room into singing happy birthday to Jimmy. At the conclusion of the singing, a siren like that from a fire truck would blare throughout the restaurant while your friends and family added to the din by cheering you loudly. Aside from Christmas morning and maybe the last day of school, this was the high point of your year as a kid.

Standing up at the counter ordering pizzas, it was hard to imagine that this Happy Joe’s was the same place. Drab browns and tans replaced the gaudy colors, and the staff was dressed boring and looked bored. There was no singing, no sirens. The restaurant was filled on this night with other large birthday party groups and families out for dinner. All the men in the room were generally of average height and average looks. Each wore an Under Armor pullover related to some sports team, most often the Iowa Hawkeyes, blue jeans, and a baseball cap also related to some sports team. The women were all vaguely Midwest pretty, with straight hair not much longer than shoulder length and button down blouses worn untucked so as to cover expansive backsides.

One thing that hadn’t changed about Happy Joe’s was the noise and chaos. It was mainly due to the Games Room, and we were unfortunately seated right at the entrance. A never ending stream of children ran back and forth, going in to the Games Room with greedy ‘I swear all I need is one more shot at that claw game and the stuffed turtle is mine!’ looks in their eyes, and then running back out shortly thereafter in desperation, hoping to jones another quarter or two from mom and dad. The games mainly included the types where you win tickets and then turn them in to a bored member of the staff for some useless prize like a single piece of candy or a plastic kazoo.

We gave both boys money to squander on a few moments of entertainment. Henry was spending his money on some skill-less slot machine for skill-less kids, where you pull a handle and get a few tickets based on the spin. Oscar, ever sensible, I assumed had pocketed his money in order to spend it later on something which actually had value, getting entertainment out of simply watching the other kids lose their minds. Just as my mind began to turn back to worries about the impending trip, Oscar came running to our table to report that it had been Henry’s lucky day and he’d won 1,000 tickets. I waded through the sea of feral children to find Henry sitting on the floor next to the spinning wheel game, surrounded by awestruck onlooking kids, all watching the tickets spew forth from the machine like bratwurst from a sausage maker. He gave me a look of surprised amazement, shrugged, then collected his stack when the flow stopped. The tickets only numbered in the 700’s after final count, but we weren’t going to argue. Surely 700 tickets would garner him something better than a rubber bouncing ball, I thought. He returned from the cashier with a spiked rubber ball, a whoopee cushion, and a Chinese finger trap. How’s the saying go? Winner winner, Chinese finger trap?

Henry then returned to the Games Room to enjoy his 15 minutes of fame amongst the other kids, the Godfather of Tickets. No doubt he roamed the room, shaking hands and dispensing wisdom about whack-a-mole. A few moments later one of the Iowa moms approached. “Is that your boy in the orange?” she asked Katie. Henry was wearing an orange jacket. We both braced for some tale of unnecessary rudeness or maybe violence against one of the other kids due to a ticket deal gone bad.

“Yes,” Katie responded.

“I just wanted to say that he’s amazing. He saw my daughter crying and came over to offer her some of the tickets he’d won in order to cheer her up. That was so nice.”

She couldn’t gush enough about it, and we were OK with that.

It felt good to finally get on the road after all the hectic times of the previous week. The worries subsided a little as the corn fields rolled past. We were moving forward, we would figure things out whether we liked it or not.

The initial stage of the journey found us driving east on the Interstate through Iowa and into western Illinois in the direction of Chicago. This is a road we’ve traveled many times before. The Interstate highway system was envisioned and built as an efficient way to transport people and things. As such, it tries as much as possible to eliminate passing nearby anything vaguely interesting so as to not remove your attention from driving fast and straight. It is a decidedly boring way to see the country, only a step up from flying over it. So on this day I had time to think. I found myself thinking back to the day before, and Henry’s birthday party. It was one of those small victories of parenthood, where you forget for a moment your feelings of inadequacy stemming from never quite believing you know what you are doing when it comes to parenting, not to mention selfishness for watching Netflix instead of spending time teaching your kids useful life skills like starting a fire or how to wield a kitchen knife.

At that point we were four months into a year of traveling, and Henry amongst the four of us had changed the most. Inwardly, he was thick in the depths of puberty. He was moody, sometimes flying off the handle at little things like missing a turn or getting temporarily lost (something we did often during our travels), other times picking a fight with one of us, which usually meant physically with his little brother or verbally with his mother. Then the chemicals would mix differently and he’d be a loving guy who would give you a hug seemingly without motivation other than him wanting to give you a hug. Despite having gone through that war myself, it’s hard to tell what’s going on in his body at any given time, and which Henry you’ll get.

Outwardly, the changes were more obvious. A tiny dirty mustache appeared, along with random hair elsewhere. His feet grew rapidly. A month or so later, we would replace his shoes with some that are almost the same size as mine. And instead of a portly phase, which boys sometimes go through before their height catches up with their weight, he simply stretched out, becoming long and lanky. He would at some point, it’s hard to say whether it was on the east coast or the west, pass his mother in height. And a few months later, upon returning to Australia, a friend gazing upon Henry’s new found inches could only utter ‘Jesus Christ’ in disbelief. His new size was the most noticeable change, I thought when looking at him wedged into the seat behind his mother and surrounded by miscellaneous camping gear. It must have been somewhat uncomfortable, because it took him approximately five minutes into our drive to annoy me by stretching out his legs and propping his stockinged feet next to my head. It took him 30 minutes to begin rummaging through the food we had in the car in search of something to eat, the junkier the better. It was only 165 miles down the road when he figured out that we were going camping, leading to him getting angry. And165 miles also marked the point when the glow faded from Henry’s heroic evening at the Cedar Rapids Happy Joe’s.

Findley State Park in Ohio is a lovely little park, with many tall trees the spring green color of emeralds. There are lots of campsites, and we arrived to find our site and most of the sites nearby completely soggy with water. Not ideal for camping. We had arrived there at 8 pm, and my gloom had resettled during the latter stages of the drive. I didn’t want to be there. Arriving with daylight waning and our campsite looking like a bog, I considered telling everyone to scratch the whole thing. I don’t know if the others were feeling the same thing or if my depression had infected them but there had lots of fighting in the car. Henry found new ways to be a jerk. Katie barked at both boys upon every peep from the back seat. And the weather was lousy — unseasonably cold, rain on the way, and there was rain all day the following day to look forward to.

Camping in early May, before kids were out of school for the summer, meant that the campsite was sparsely populated, so we began to search for an alternative to the swamp we had reserved. We found a vacant one with the best amenity one could ask for on such a cold and gloomy day: a fire. Usually a fire pit is a welcome feature at a campsite, a grate to cook on a bonus, however never have I shown up to a fire already crackling away. We checked with the neighbors, who told us that the occupants had just packed up their tent and left, mentioning something about shit weather. The site officially became ours.

So finally, the car backed up to the campsite, we were ready for our first official camp set up of the four months. The back gate was open, the rooftop carrier cracked open like an oyster and my nightmares were spilling out, ready to become a reality.

There would be no nightmare on this night. Or perhaps it was, and I was numb to it after the hard day of driving. I’d like to believe, though, that with darkness falling, the threat of rain starting again, that the four of us simply put our heads down and unloaded and erected and assembled as best we could because the next thing I knew, the tent was up and some egg and bacon sandwiches were on the table just as it was getting dark. As we finished eating, the first sprinkles of rain arrived. We hunkered down in the dry tent shortly thereafter, and I entertained the thought that maybe we’d be OK after all.

It rained all night, and I was cold, all night. My 55-degree rated sleeping bag was not up to the task on a 45-degree night. So I ended up in most of my clothes, either on my body or wrapped around my feet. I used a green bag that we used to store clothing as a pillow since I had neglected to pack a one and my soft fluffy coat was needed to keep me warm. The clothes bag was made of some form of plastic, that I think had degraded during our travels because it ended up sticking to my face and turning it green.

The rain stopped long enough for us to have a bit of breakfast, put the tent away wet and muddy, and get back on the road. Once back on the road, the rain started again. The forecast grimly called for rain for the next two days, and it seemed colder than the day before. At a rest stop somewhere in Ohio along one of the expensive toll roads, a message from my friend Jeff came through: ‘Are you going to camp in the cold and rain, or you going to come to my house early?’. We were planning on visiting Jeff at his home outside Philadelphia, but not for several days. I had wanted to spend a week or so between Iowa and Philly, camping in the green woods of the Allegheny Mountains of central Pennsylvania. I hated to vary from our plan so early in the trip. I also hated to admit that after the exhausting week of preparations, driving almost 600 miles, and a night in the mud and rain with the promise of more of the same to come, that I wished for a break.

So it was that after only one night into our four month camping adventure, that we charted a course for shelter in Philadelphia.