What makes a good family vacation road trip? Several things come to mind as I reflect on our recently completed 3-week camping (mostly) trip down the California coast. Our two boys, 12 and 10 years old, were a perfect age to see where their mom and dad grew up, as well as experience the ocean, which they don’t get a lot of in their Colorado home!
Over the next days or maybe weeks, I would like to recap our experience for a few reasons. One, so that I might glean some answers to my earlier posed question. It was a fabulous trip, relationally, spiritually, and experientially for our family. I have some thoughts on that answer, but I think I can probe deeper. However, I’ll put out my first thought by saying intentionality was key. This showed up many times on our trip all the way from the planning stages, to our constant refrain to one another on the trip, “Let’s be present to where we currently are.” Our boys have vivid imaginations that is a true blessing, but at times their games with one another kept them from being present to some beautiful and unique geography. We tried to help them along the way to sharpen their senses so that they might be fully present. A second reason for this recap is so that I might make my way through the 2,488 photographs that I shot. Don’t worry, I have already done a lot of preliminary vetting, but I don’t want some over-looked gems to sit forever hidden in a dark corner on my hard drive.
So with that introduction, I give you our three days of travel to get out to our destination. These included an airbnb stay in Salt Lake City, and a cheap we-assume-you’re-going-to-gamble room at the Nugget Casino Hotel in Reno on the 4th of July. Highlights of those first two days of travel:
- Salt flats in Utah – what an other-worldly topography. Memories of this would resurface in Northern California for our family when we mused about collecting a few ubiquitous banana slugs so that we could take them back and race them on the Bonneville Salt Flats. A very short race to be sure!
- A patriotic free concert by the Reno Philharmonic on the 4th. Very entertaining, though I was expecting a more elaborate fireworks show. Just a few blasts during the last song, and everyone went home. Surprisingly though, on our drive back to the Nugget in Sparks, we realized there was a very long and scintillating show from the roof of our hotel! Fun to watch, but a traffic nightmare trying to get back “home.”
- We aren’t gamblers, but the boys wanted to see how a slot machine worked so the 4 of us each put in a quarter, and we went down to the casino. We realized that the boys were not welcomed as we meandered and took in the carnival atmosphere, and one black jack dealer shook his head and finger at us from a distance. On our way out we found a one-armed-bandit on the edge of the casino floor, so Dad put the 4 quarters in, and it ended up paying for all of our whole vacation! Actually no. True to form, we walked away one dollar poorer, but lesson learned for our boys: gambling doesn’t pay off.
