In January of 1983, we decided to take our 5 boys on a 6-week tour of the United States during the summer of 1983. We had six sons, but one of them was scheduled to do something special with his grandmother during the time we would be traveling that next summer, so we took 5 of the 6 with us. The older boys were in various grades at high school and we wanted to show them what a big place the United States was before they started disappearing off to colleges one by one. This looked like it may be the last summer that they wouldn’t be occupied with summer jobs, sports camps, academic camps, or other activities that would make a trip like we were planning impossible.
We began planning the trip in January of 1983 when we saw an ad for Holiday Inn that offered a free weekend at a Holiday Inn anywhere in the world if you stayed 20 nights in a Holiday Inn over the next year. We decided to stay at Holiday Inns all across the country on our trip, since there would be no way to include camping gear in our already-too-crowded small cars. They also had a “kids stay free in the parent’s room” thing going on, so that was a big savings. We were going to need to take our 2 small cars, as we did not own a vehicle large enough to fit all 7 of us in at once with luggage. We would easily be able to stay 20 nights of that 6-week trip in Holiday Inns. Paul and I planned to use our free weekend the Spring of 1984 on part of a week-long stay in Acapulco, Mexico.
I bought each of the boys a medium-sized blue duffle bag and told them they could take anything they wanted on the trip with them as long as it would fit in their bag along with their necessary clothing. We needed space for Paul and me to each have a bag plus the family items like our cooking set-up for dinners. I bought a very large, deep electric pan that was big enough to make family-sized one-pot meals in. It lived in its own duffle bag along with a cooking spoon, cooking fork, kitchen knife, a plastic measuring cup, and salt and pepper. We took a small cooler for fresh milk, mayo for sandwiches. and anything else that needed to be kept cold. We had another bag with paper plates, plastic silverware, napkins, etc. We kept a bag of groceries with staples like breakfast cereal and peanut butter. Paul had a tool box along also, since he and Chris could fix most anything once they got the parts. All these things needed to fit within the trunks of the 2 little cars.
We planned our route so we could show the kids as many famous sites and as much of the country as possible within our 6 week window for the trip. Its a huge country and it can take days to drive from one place to the next.
Paul installed CB radios in each car as there were no cell phones back then for us to keep in touch between the cars. The plan was that Chris, our 17 year-old son who had a driver’s license, would drive one of the cars, and Paul and I would take turns driving the other. There would be 3 of the boys in the car Chris was driving, and Paul and I had Dan in the car with us. With Dan being 4 years old and his brothers all in their teens, we figured he had a different choice of music and conversation than the big guys. People were free to trade cars if they got sick of each other or riding in the same car all the time. We would caravan across the country, mostly staying within sight of each other.
We had little disposable income at this time of our lives with raising 6 boys. I figured we could cover the cost of our food using our regular grocery budget that we used at home by making breakfast in the room in the morning, picnicking at lunch in a park along the way, and cooking dinner in our big electric pot for dinner in the evenings. The food budget came out to $20.00 per day for all 7 of us. I figured that if I could feed us at home for that, I could feed us on the road with the same money if we were creative. Paul planned to teach classes at the college for the first half of the summer session to cover the gas and lodging money. I saved up some money for a few special dinners in restaurants like on the Wharf in San Francisco, in the Old Faithful Inn for David Wright’s 15th birthday, and a couple extras that might come up.
I was doing Stained Glass professionally at that time of my life while serving as a full-time Mom, so I made a series of native Michigan wildflower sun-catchers over the winter and sold them to a shi-shi gift shop and got enough money to buy some special souvenirs and T-shirts for everybody at places along the way. So if nothing went terribly wrong, we could have an incredible adventure. We had a couple of credit cards we could use in case of an emergency.
I made all the reservations at Holiday Inns along our route once we got our route figured out. We chose the larger hotels that had the old Holidomes – with indoor pools and play equipment. We figured after riding in hot cars all day, the kids would be ready for a swim and we’d need some time to let Dan swim and play. In some places, we stayed more than one night if there was lots to see in a particular area. We stayed in other hotels in some of the more unique places such as The Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone, a cabin in Yosemite Village, and a suite in the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon.
So, after 5 months of careful planning, preparations, and building excitement, we loaded up our 1970 Toyota Corolla and our 1970 Subaru and took off on our adventure in mid-July of 1983. Neither one of these automobiles had air conditioning, which would later in the trip prove to be of significance. We drove from Coleman, Michigan to Spring Grove Minnesota the first day where we stopped and visited Paul’s mother, the kid’s beloved Grandma Zada. She took this group photo of our road trip crew before we headed out.
Then we drove to Mitchell, South Dakota to visit the famous Corn Palace. Our goal for this cross-country trip was to show the kids a sampling of various places around the country. We wanted them to realize just how big the United States really is and all the diverse landscapes it contains – huge mountains, deserts, vast plains, and all sorts of other interesting geologic features.
We made our lunch stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Every year, the scenes decorating the entire outside of the building are changed with new corn added to create and decorate everything on the outside of it. Its sort of like a Rose Parade float except everything on the outside of the Corn Palace is made of parts of the corn plant instead of flowers and plants.
We made our lunches everyday by going to a grocery store where I would buy a loaf of sandwich bread, a bag of popular chips, and some luncheon meat. We always had peanut butter and a jar of strawberry jam for those who wanted that. We’d mix up some Countrytime Lemonade and find a local park to eat our lunches in. Dan could run around and play with his brothers while Paul and I fixed lunch. It got people out of the cars and moving around for a while.
We drove another couple hours and stopped at the famous Wall Drug Store. This is basically just a long-standing tourist stop. Back in 1931, they advertised that if you stopped in, they would give you free ice water. When you were driving across South Dakota in July on two-lane roads in old-time cars without air conditioning, this was a very attractive offer. Its a cultural phenomenon.
One of the big attractions at Wall Drug was to see a mythical creature called a ‘Jackalope.’ This was an animal reputed to live in the area which was a combination of a Jack Rabbit and an Antelope. You decide if you think it is real.
This was a good stop for an ice cream cone, and a good time looking around at strange stuff in their multiple gift shops. Yes, they did actually have a real drug store in there still.
We then drove on to Rapid City, South Dakota where we spent a couple of nights with plans to see Mt. Rushmore the next day. Our Holiday Inn was exactly what we reserved – with the indoor pool and play area for Dan.
For our dinners at night, I would take one of the boys with me to a grocery store and they got to help pick out what we’d have that night. It had to be a one-dish meal for the hot entree and we could mix up a big salad in a large bowl I carried with us in the car. These were gourmet meals, I might add, but everybody understood that this was how we needed to eat most of our dinners in order to be going on this long trip. Sometimes we’d have canned chili, sometimes spaghetti, sometimes a Hamburger Helper creation, Macaroni and Cheese casserole, or Dinty Moore Beef Stew. The kids would help me look around the store and choose things that looked good to them and that we could heat up or cook in the hotel room on the bathroom counter. No one complained because everybody would get their turn to choose something they liked. We’d have fruit or Dairy Queen ice cream for dessert.
We spent the day checking out Mt. Rushmore and the Rapid City area sites then spent another night before moving on.
We drove on to visit Devil’s Tower in Wyoming which was made even more famous thanks to the 1977 movie Close Encounters of a Third Kind. We were all excited to see it for real.
This was a huge geologic structure, a giant volcanic neck formed from molten lava. The surrounding area was sandstone and eroded away over time leaving this huge volcanic plug sticking up. It was also surrounded by thousands of cute ground squirrels scurrying around and living in amongst giant boulders.
We moved on to Yellowstone National Park where we had reservations at the historic Old Faithful Inn. They had a limit on the number of people in a room even if they were family members, so we had to have 2 rooms. The older boys had a room and Paul and Dan and I shared a room. We celebrated David Wright’s 15th birthday by having dinner and cake and ice cream in the main dining room. Quite a treat after many nights of Hamburger Helper and canned chili!
Here’s David in front of the 3-story stone fireplace in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn at 15 years old.
We spent a couple days seeing all the sites and features in the Yellowstone area. The Old Faithful Geyser, which is right outside the Old Faithful Inn.
We had Dan in one of those little kid harnesses with a strap on it (like a leash) since the places we were going could be quite dangerous. If he stepped off or fell off of this board walk, for instance, he’d be in a world of hurt. The water around it was close to boiling. There weren’t guardrails in a lot of places we went, with shear cliff-face drop-offs at some locations. We made sure we had a tight hold on his little strap and he was safe without always having to hold his hand or carry him. We told him it was a special Luke Skywalker Safety Vest. He was OK with that small fiction.
Here is a scene of one of our lunches in the woods around Yellowstone.
Next is the silly version.
As you can see, everybody was having a great time with our picnic lunches.
From Yellowstone, we took a detour south to see the Grand Tetons.
We drove into Jackson Hole to look at the old historic part of town which is very touristy, but fun to see.
We were fascinated by this huge arch made out of elk horns in the center of town by the park.
We then backtracked through Yellowstone Park again and headed out the west side on our way to visit the Craters of the Moon National Monument in eastern Idaho. It is a large volcanic flow area with all kinds of interesting volcanic features like lava tubes and cinder cones. You can crawl through the lava tubes and climb up the cinder cones on trails.
Here we are after climbing to the top of Inferno Cone – a giant cinder cone. It was a trek on a hot, sunny day and extremely windy at the top.
We drove on, continuing west across Idaho. We were going to make a stop at the Idaho National Laboratory to show the kids a nuclear reactor. We started heading across a very small two-lane road that had a small sign saying the reactor was down it, but after a while we noticed that we were being followed by men in white jeeps. They stopped us and asked us what we were up to? They were wearing overcoats and sunglasses. James Bond types. We told them we wanted to see the reactor and they told us we couldn’t go there and we needed to turn around and go back the way we came. They escorted us clear back to the freeway and made sure we got back on it. This was a lot of interesting drama for our adventurous group, but no one thought it looked like a good idea to argue with these guys.
We got to our Holiday Inn in Boise rather late that evening. It had been a very long day. We were glad we had made a reservation ahead. When they gave us our room key and we went to our room, we found that the carpet was soaking wet! We went straight back to the office to tell them that the room was unusable. They said they didn’t have another room in that price range, so they gave us an upgrade for free. Nice surprise! Especially since there were 7 of us sharing a room.
The next day, we drove on across Eastern Oregon heading to the Sutherlin area to meet up with Paul’s sister Janet and her husband, Richard. We spent an afternoon in a lovely park with them and Janet had brought a picnic lunch for all of us. What a treat!
We stayed at a Holiday Inn in Medford, Oregon that night, played in the pool and made our dinner in our room.
I want to tell you about our usual breakfast routine. Some mornings we would have cereal with milk or Instant Oatmeal. Other mornings, I would fry up some chopped up bacon and drain off the fat and make a whole pan of scrambled eggs. I would use about 18 eggs for all of us. It made a delicious hot breakfast. Other mornings I’d saute some Smokey sausages and to mix in with the scrambled eggs. Sometimes we’d have a donut or a sweet roll with it. I could make a nice, hot breakfast for all of us for less than $5.00. Then we’d spend about $5.00 on lunch fixings, leaving $10.00 for dinner. Back in 1983, $20.00 per day for food for a family and was a workable amount. However, it was impossible to travel on that amount if we had to eat in restaurants with 7 of us for 3 meals per day and snacks. On the days we’d eat cereal, we’d have extra money for ice cream or a sundae or something fancy along the way.
Our hotels rang in at about $20.00 per night – and 20 nights in Holiday Inns cost us $400.00. We did have to pay more for the fancy places we stayed like the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone and the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon.
The kids all learned valuable lessons about doing things on a tight budget and making choices about how we’d use the money we had available so we could have a wonderful experience. We all had to work together and agree on choices. It was an excellent way to teach them how to budget and then adjust the budget along the way.
From Medford, Oregon, we worked our way on down to the San Francisco area. We could not afford to stay in San Francisco proper – the hotels were much too expensive – so we found a Holiday Inn in Livermore, California which was just east of San Francisco. We planned to stay there and drive in to town to see sites. It was hot and dry in Livermore and they had a lovely huge pool outside surrounded by a nice patio area.
As we got to our room and and were getting settled for the evening, Dan reached under one of the beds and pulled out a dead mouse! Oh no!! Yuck! Back in the early 80’s, Holiday Inns had a slogan “No surprises when you stay at a Holiday Inn.” Well, we were very surprised! So Paul carried the dead mouse by the tail and we all marched down to the front desk trailing behind him – eager to see what would happen.
Paul put the mouse down on the check-in counter and told the man, that in spite of their ‘no surprises’ slogan, we were very ‘surprised’ to find this dead mouse in our room. The guy said that we should NOT have been ‘surprised’ at all, because Livermore was an agricultural area and it wasn’t unusual to find dead mice under a bed. At that point, our oldest son Christopher tells the man that if we had known that beforehand, we would have brought our grill!
With that comment from Chris, everyone dissolved into hysterical laughter, including other people standing around the check-in counter waiting to get their rooms. We left and went back to the pool area, and Paul found us some cold beer at a store nearby and some root beer for the kids, and we had a wonderful time playing in the pool before cooking our Hamburger Helper dinner. We were excited because the next night we would be eating on the Wharf in a nice seafood restaurant in San Francisco and following that up with ice cream sundaes from Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in Ghirardelli Square.
I don’t seem to have very many photos from our San Francisco foray, but I did find one of us taken at the bottom of Lombard Street, the famous curvy street that shows up in so many of the chase scenes at the movies. We had a great time driving down that block in our little cars. In fact, we did it twice!
We did indeed have our seafood dinner on the Wharf and our Ghirardelli Chocolate ice cream sundaes. We checked out Chinatown and walked all over the downtown area. We returned to our hotel in Livermore, checked under the beds for more stray mice, and the older boys went for another turn in the pool. Paul, Dan, and I fell asleep.
Next, we drove over to Yosemite National Park, which is pretty much due east of San Francisco. We had reserved 2 cabins in Yosemite Village next to the historic Ahwahne Hotel since they only allowed a maximum of 4 people to a room. That was the National Park Service rule for their lodgings. Our cabins were adjoining so the older boys had one and Paul, Dan and I had the other.
Ten years ago, these cabins were wiped out by a giant boulder that came crashing down into the valley. Yikes! Giant boulders fall in Yosemite Valley nearly every year. Mostly, they don’t fall on the buildings.
We spent the next day visiting all the sites in Yosemite Valley. We hiked on several trails through giant boulders along the bases of the major falls – Bridal Veil Falls and Vernal Falls.
We played in the river running through the valley.
Yosemite is such a gorgeous place to visit. We have since read that the traffic there became much too congested and now the only way to get into the valley is via shuttle busses. No cars or RVs are allowed in. The valley was just becoming overwhelmed by pollution and smog from all those vehicles.
We next headed down to Sequoia National Park to show the kids the enormous redwood trees growing there.
I can’t believe how bad these photos are with the little Instamatic camera I was using. Sigh. We did not have money for a fancy camera when the boys all needed umpteen pairs of various sports shoes each, along with everything else needed when raising an active family. You really learn how to prioritize things. Our fancy camera days were still many years away.
Below we are eating our picnic lunch on top of one of the giant fallen logs. We thought that was really fun.
We took this next photo when we drove both of our little cars up onto a tree set up for people to take photos of their vehicles on the top, to demonstrate the scale of the size of these trees. They are incredibly huge.
Before leaving Sequoia, Paul and the boys all hiked way up a swinging bridge trail to an overlook on top of Mono Rock. I stayed behind with Dan. It was just too scary for me. Paul took the camera up to get a photo. Of course, when I got the pictures developed, I could see our boys all sitting on and leaning on the railing over this 10,000 foot drop-off. Yikes!
Next we next drove to King’s Canyon which isn’t very far north of Sequoia. It has very dramatic geologic formations with huge cliffs of granite and steep, curvy roads with enormous drop-offs. ( Scary!!)
The next much-anticipated stop on our tour of California was a couple of days at Disneyland. My parents met us in Anaheim and we found a Holiday Inn near the RV park where they were staying. My dad had purchased the Disneyland passes from the company where he worked at a great discount.
Here we all are lined up at the entrance, ready for a long day of fun inside the “Happiest place on earth.”
I think we rode every ride in the park. Paul and the kids and I took turns riding the small ones with Dan. Here is Paul taking his turn with Dan on the Dumbo flying elephant ride.
After exhausting all Disneyland had to offer, we moved on to stay a week at my parent’s home in Chula Vista, California. I grew up in this house – living there since I was 10 years old until I went off in the world at 19.
Using my parent’s home as a base, we toured around the San Diego area every day for almost a week. Paul and my Dad also discovered a problem with the Toyota’s transmission, so they decided to rebuild it right in the back yard. It was a fun project for Paul and my Dad and Chris, as well. He helped when we weren’t off and about seeing stuff in the area.
We spent a couple different days at the local beaches and tide pools. That was a popular activity with the kids.
We also spent some time at the famous San Diego Zoo. It really takes more than one day to see that place.
We were treated to a very nice dinner by my Grandmother at the Coronado Island Offices Club. My Grandmother who was in her nineties was a widow of an Army officer from the First and Second World Wars, so she could use all the facilities on bases anywhere in the world.
We also had a lobster dinner down in Ensenada, Mexico, along the Baja coast one night. An unforgettable experience for the kids.
When we finally left Chula Vista, we posed on the front porch for one last group photo in California. As you can see, everyone is sunburned to the max from a week in the California summer sun.
From Chula Vista, California, we would be heading east back in the direction of our home in Michigan. Our first destination was to get to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we would overnight before going to the Grand Canyon. We drove over the Laguna Mountains on I-8 across southern California and stopped in Yuma, Arizona for gas and a lunch break – deep in the Sonoran Desert. Oh my word!! It was 115 degrees and this is where having no air conditioning came to bear bitter fruit. It was too hot to believe! There was no way we were going to have a leisurely picnic in a nice park for lunch. Impossible. We had to find an air conditioned fast food restaurant and eat inside.
We had a hasty family meeting while we ate lunch in air conditioned comfort while dreading getting back into our broiling cars for the push to Flagstaff – which was way up in the mountains and would be cool. One of the places we were intending to stop after leaving the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater area, was to go down and see the famous Tombstone, Arizona. We checked the weather and found that it was 118 in Tombstone while it was 115 here in Yuma. We voted, and it was unanimous, that we wanted to skip going to Tombstone. No one wanted to spend any more time than necessary in the hot desert environment.
So, we topped off our water bottles with ice water and piled back into our spartan vehicles with all the windows rolled down and headed toward Flagstaff as fast as we could safely drive. We started gaining elevation north of Phoenix and the higher we got, the more the temperature dropped. We finally caught up to a summer afternoon thunderstorm and pulled off the freeway at an overlook and got out of the cars and stood in the cool rain for a few minutes. We were all drenched in sweat so getting wet from the cool rain, didn’t matter to us in the least.
We settled into our Flagstaff Holiday Inn (which had an outdoor pool) and the kids headed off for a swim while I made dinner in our room. They came back shortly and said it was too cold to go swimming. The evening temperature in Flagstaff after the thunderstorm went through was 45 degrees. I made a big pot of chili that night which was perfect!
The next day it was off to the Grand Canyon.
It was gorgeous. We hiked a ways down the Bright Angel Trail since we couldn’t check into our cabins until after 3 PM.
I know I said earlier that we stayed in a suite at the El Tovar Hotel, and that we did. Originally, way back in January, we had booked two cabins on the rim of the Canyon from the National Park Service. When we went to check in, they had messed up our reservation and had us instead in cabins way back off the rim a couple miles away. We said that wasn’t what we had paid for and I had a copy of our reservation confirmation with me. They said they had a cancellation that night for the Santa Fe Suite in the El Tovar that we could have for the same price as our 2 cabins. The suite could accommodate all 7 of us. We enthusiastically accepted the switch and had an unbelievably gorgeous suite at one of the National Park’s premier hotels in their system. We were so lucky, we could hardly believe it!
Our room was that top one with the huge bay window on the 3rd floor. We had a giant whirlpool tub in the bathroom and everyone wanted a turn in there later that night.
Here is David Koblas taking his turn in the spa tub. Too much fun. Later, we all had a fancy Chocolate Mousse dessert on the Mezzanine overlooking the canyon. None of us will ever forget that evening.
After leaving the Grand Canyon, we drove on east to see Meteor Crater, the sight of a giant meteor impact that happened about 50,000 years ago. It blasted a crater in the desert that is a mile wide and 570 feet deep. Scientists say it killed every living thing within a 100 mile radius.
We had a great time checking it out and visiting the on-site museum. Below is a photo of Dan next to a piece of the meteor. This small chunk was one of the larger pieces found and it weighed over 400 pounds! Dan weigh 30 pounds.
The meteor that excavated the crater was about 54 yards wide and was made of a nickel-iron combination. It hit going about 30,000 mph and wiped out a lot of ground sloths and wooly mammoths which lived around there at that time. Most of the meteor vaporized upon impact but they managed to find some small pieces throughout and around the crater. It is a huge crater and if it happened in these days, a lot of people would die.
We left Meteor Crater and drove to our next Holiday Inn on our way over to see Carlsbad Caverns. It took a couple of full days driving to get to the Caverns. We bought our tickets for the 10 AM tour so we could eat lunch in the bottom of the Caverns. They sold various box lunches that you ordered when you bought your tickets and they would have them for you at the bottom of the cave after your 2-hour tour working your way down to the bottom where they had a cafeteria.
It was fun climbing all through the cave but kind of scary, too. We were glad to finally get to our lunches at the bottom.
The cave tour people gave everyone these clunky phones to listen to presentations about the cave as you walked along. These were in addition to the cave guide person who led you through the tour, explaining things as you walked along.
Aren’t these phone thingies so 1980s?
After overnighting at some Holiday Inn near Carlsbad, we began our trek across Texas to our final planned stop at the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. From there we would head pretty much straight north back to our home in Coleman, Michigan. We had been on the road for 5 weeks at this point. Our group was starting to flag. It was terribly hot in the southwest in August and the thought of driving for another 3 days in 110 degree heat, just to get to Mammoth Caves, was wearing on everyone. Fights started breaking out. We began needing to change out the passengers to different cars. People riding with Dan had to choose between listening to Sesame Street music and Little Marci tapes – his music choices, or riding with now-annoying other brothers. An hour listening to Dan’s music sent them back to their other car with a renewed effort to get along.
We stopped at a Dairy Queen in Abilene, Texas, to try to boost people’s spirits before the next 2-day’s drive to Mammoth Caves. When we went inside, Paul announced to the kids, “you can order anything you want this time. No restrictions.” To our surprise, they replied that they didn’t want anything – they just wanted to go home. They had just been to a huge cave and they were willing to skip seeing Mammoth Caves in order to go straight on home.
So the vote was in and we were OK with that. We changed our course and drove northeast on through Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Chicago and north to Coleman, Michigan. It still took 3 more days of driving which was enough to give us our full 20 nights in a Holiday Inn, which qualified Paul and me to get our free weekend in Acapulco.
The trip had been a rousing success. Our goal of showing the kids what the United States was like in all its nooks and crannies was met. You should try something like this with your own kids. Today, families have mini-vans so everyone can fit in one vehicle which would have been really nicer. Also, almost all vehicles are air-conditioned these days which makes summer travel in hot climates so much easier on everyone.
If you decide to do a trip like this, however long or short, please let me know how it comes out? I would love to hear from you.
carpyharpy 