What are your worst and/or fondest memories of family car travel?

Either as a parent or a child. Bonus points for make and model...and for what was popular on the radio at that time.

(As if your parents EVER let you listen to YOUR station...)

Who remembers standing up on the front seat? HAND UP....How many kissed the front window when yours parents slammed on the brakes? HAND UP....
Don't remember make and model but it was a land yacht. Huge back window...large enough for the bobble head boy to ride there on long trips. Dad had a sense of humor though....waited until I was asleep and then cranked the redio on full blast. KISSED THE BACK WINDOW TO! Thats OK...got even at the filling station when he was checking the oil....blasted the horn and he conked his head on the hood.
I can remember on long trips that we hardly used any gas....Dad would tuck in behind a semi trailer and he would pull us along....mom was going to have kittens though.....we were only about 5 feet off his tail. THAT WAS COOL MOM....LETS DO IT AGAIN!

Song my folks sang and taught us while on long drives:

"Oh I gotta cow down on the farm,
Golly ain't that queer.

She gives milk throughout the year,
Golly ain't that queer.

She drank water from a frozen stream,
Froze her tail right up the seam,
(more slowly) Now she only gives ice creeeeeme!
Oh golly ain't that queer.
Oh golly ain't that queer."

My parents were too cheap to buy cars with factory radios, so my sister and I always had a portable in the back seat on long trips. The static from a portable AM inside a car bugged my parents as much as our music did, but at least my sister and I almost always got to choose the station.

>>what was popular on the radio at that time.

One of our stops in the summer of '69 was Cape Girardeau MO, so we may well have heard "Rusty" Limbaugh's first radio gig, but I really don't remember. The main thing I recall is hearing of Judy Garland's death while we were in Cape G.

I went on a trip to Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona and California when I was 11. The first night of the trip I threw up because I had never been on a trip like that before. But the rest of the trip was a blast. My family still has slides of the trip. On the way to Disneyland we stopped at Yellowstone and then we went to Pueblo Colorado where my grandma lived and my mom grew up. Then we went to Arizona and went through the ghost town of Jerome. Ever since then I have always been interested in ghost towns. Then the highlight was when we went to Disneyland. It was in 1957 and the park was open for 2 years. I remember I wanted to see the Mouseketeers perform in the Mickey Mouse club. I found out later that the show was not done before a live audience. I was disappointed! Other than that it was a lot of fun.

Oh we had a green 57 Ford I think it was a Fairlane which we had for years. It was in the summertime and I don't remember what the songs would have been because I didn't listen to rock and roll until KISN came on in 1959.

Car games:

We play Slug Bug. Have played it for years. Well, that's no longer true. My wife quit playing after calling a lot full of Fiats at a distance for the win. When the truth became clear, she ended up so far down the scale, it was all but over.

I'm sure she is still pissed about it!

Funny thing happened one day when the kids had a friend in the car. He cheated at slug bug. Cheated big and I could tell the kids had enough. Eventually, one of the kids called for a verification of the mystery black slug bug that kept cropping up every time this kid ended up in 2nd place.

So, I pulled over and asked where the sighting was exactly. Turned around and investigated... no bug! Busted huge right there!

Since this had not happened before, I let the kids decide his fate. Turns out we take slug bug seriously! They discussed the matter and it turns out the game totally depends on everybody being honest. So, the decision was to only allow sightings from this kid, that have been verified by another person in the car, for a year!

Harsh little tykes huh?

I then pointed out for such a judgement, the game has to have clear rules. Even though cheating is never ok in these kinds of situations, the game was too loose for a whole year, so I cut it to a month. I put the task of defining rules on them.

The rules we ended up with are:

Must call "slug bug color." Nothing else counts as a point. Calling "Slug bug's color color 2 color, etc..." is acceptable if a mass sighting occurs.

Getting any part of a call wrong is a negative point, one for every wrongness

When the game starts, and only when it starts, the driver can ask for a 2 slug bug handycap. After the first sighting, this option goes off the table.

Point goes to whoever completes their call first.

Disputed points go to the group, or are dismissed completely depending on how heated things get.

Winner is the person who had the most sightings called correctly.

A game of slug bug can start any time the car is actually moving, but always ends when the first person gets outta the car.

A bad call is minus two points.

Color disputes are settled by the close enough rule. We don't have good names for all the wannabe colors. (That's the kids moniker for the pastels.)

SActual slugging is permitted by group consensus, or any two members can agree to engage in the slugging, but also surrender their right to gripe about it.

For the most part, these rules evolved over some time to settle in car disputes.

It's funny how this game ended up being a totally serious thing. My kids are teens today and are avid slug bug players! It's funny to see newbies get sucked in to the game and watch the kids tell them just how it's played!

When my kids were younger, I could not stand the "are we there yet?" question!

Good grief! If we were there, I wouldn't be driving the car still! Arrgh!

Began to answer those with a reduction in speed. Didn't take long for them to start asking something else!

We drove a 26 foot RV in summer 2005 from here to upper Michigan. A 26 foot RV with four adults, two children and two big dogs.

Day one, we blew a tire in Bozeman and had to hunker down there for the night instead of making it to Billings. We either ate something bad or drank bad water because literally ALL of us got sick.

Day two, my daughter and I were the first ones to get sick. We drove through Eastern Montana and North Dakota, stopping for the night in Moorhead, Minnesota. It was 2am when we pulled in and my oldest son and I popped out to hook up the RV. The second we were outside, any body part not covered with clothing was instantly covered in mosquitos.

Day three, my oldest son and wife had it coming out both ends intravenously, we made it to Michigan's U.P. (If you are ever up there, try a pasty. Good stuff!) We rolled into my wife's aunt's house at about 1am.

Driving back took four days, highlighted by a stop at Lambeau Field and a glimpse of the Spam museum in Minnesota. Day one took us to a town in western Minnesota about 100 miles east of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Both the temperature and humidity hovered around 100.

Day two was to Sturgis. I drove us up to Mt. Rushmore ... wanted to drive north through the Black Hills to see Deadwood (I lived there my senior year in high school, wanted to show the family the ol' haunts) and got on the wrong road leaving Rushmore ... we end up on this switchback alpine road with one-lane tunnels and the like ... in a 26-foot RV mind you. About 2/3 of the way down my brakes overheat and I have to park it on the side of the damn road for two hours to let them cool down. We end up backtracking through Rapid City and up the 40 miles west to Sturgis.

Just as my wife and I go to bed in the tent (we pitched a tent for ourselves for more room), I hear what sounds like Niagra Falls coming from the RV. Sure nuff, a pipe to the toilet ruptured, flooding the back of the RV. I stop off at an RV place that following morning and fix the situation ... it was already over 100 degrees leaving Sturgis at 8:30am.

Day three takes us to Deer Lodge, Montana ... I notice the RV running like crap driving through the eastern part of the state. I chalk it up to bad gas in Rapid City so I stop in Billings to get some additive and top of the tanks. I open the front gas cap and *POOF* vapor starts shooting out ... it's 110 degrees out, gas vapors meet air and the next thing I know, the RV is on fire ... parked right next to the gas pump. I get the family and dogs out, and my eldest has the common sense to grab the fire extinguisher from the back door and put out the fire. Only cosmetic damage but it scared the crap out of us, and delayed us a few hours.

We made it home safe and sound after that ... this last summer when we traveled back to Michigan, I flew. I told my wife I will **NEVER** do that again.

>>>"We either ate something bad or drank bad water because literally ALL of us got sick."


Now you know why you have to "super clorinate" the water in the fresh water holding tank.

Actually we didn't use the water in the tanks for drinking at all, just flushing the pooper.

We were on well water at the KOA there outside of Bozeman at the time.

Man, that's a brutal vacation!

I wouldn't do it again either.

Was it your RV?

KSKD - Yes. My mother-in-law bought it for the trip, she thought it would be a grand idea for all of us to go on a RV trip since it was her last trip home (she was dying of cancer at the time).

She passed away almost a year ago, and we inherited the RV. So if you see a 26 foot RV with a big scorch mark up the drivers side, wave and say HI!

>>>"The second we were outside, any body part not covered with clothing was instantly covered in mosquitos."


That's the Minnesota State Bird you're talking about.

Will do!

I did a similar thing for my wife and her mother. She was dying from a severe heart attack that didn't get properly diagnosed.

(Never again trust doctors in this regard. Always double check --the cost is worth it.)

I had just purchased a new Ford SUV. (Had 6 in the fam at the time, so it was justfied ok?0

They wanted to do the Million Mom March on gun control. Family has some deaths from gun problems. My personal view on this is not in support of the march, but I wasn't going either.

So, I spent a week booking all the right places, plotting courses on maps, targeting good eats and stops along the way. All looked good.

My wife, her mother, my oldest daughter and a friend all took off for a bit of female bonding and activism.

They had trouble from one end of that trip to another. At one point they ran into a pretty big tornado. The hailstones dented the crap out of the SUV...

Got a static filled call on my cell. My wife is driving frantically to reach cover, I could hear the hailstones hitting everything and my daughter is in the back of the thing yelling, "We're gonna die, We're gonna die!". Through this, my wife was telling me what she saw and asking what to do.

While we were talking about options (and there were not many but for getting quickly to an overpass in the distance), I heard the phone drop, some muffled speech then this big crack sound several times in rapid sequence, then silence other than the hailstones.

Nobody would tell me what happened at that time, but I suspect my daughter ended up talking to the hand up close and personal! I get the feeling my wife had enough and was not planning on dying right then on that day!

Wife got back on the phone, pulled under cover --or the hail stopped (I'm not sure), and said, "Everything's just fine! How was your day honey?"

I got one....
How many of you as kids were driving with your mom in dads muscle car when some punk rolled up next to her at a stop light and started pitching her shit about what a crappy car she had and then she blew his doors of when the light changed.....that was fun.....Mom knew how to drive back then....I remember some choice words she had for him to...LOL

I can just see them two kids tucking their tails and staying behind her at the next light....must have put a cork in their bottle....HHAAaaaa...just goes to show don't mess with moms with muscle...!!!!

Or Pacers....right Mrs. M

LOL

I was seven years old, living with my father in Pittsburgh at the time. Dad decides to take us on a weekend jaunt to Coney Island (don't ask) ... so we pile in the station wagon and away we go.

We get into downtown Manhattan and my dad is LOST. He FINALLY stops on a street corner and asks some guy in a suit if he knows how to get to Coney Island.

The guy looks at my dad and says, "Excuse me?"

My dad asks him again ... "Do you know how to get to Coney Island, sir?"

Dude PUNCHES MY DAD. It didn't do anything to my dad except piss him off, he absolutely pummeled this poor sap in a suit. My stepbrother and I were sitting in the back of the station wagon cheering on my dad as he wailed away on this guy, and my stepmother was swinging at us with a broom from the front seat trying to get us to shut up, and trying to get my dad in the car so we could get away. He eventually did get in and off we went.

Oh, and we never made it to Coney Island. Go figure.