Road Trip Part 1

These are precious times—both of my kids (ages 19 and 24) are corralled under the same roof for a few days after we’ve spent months apart. What to do? Words come whispering quietly but insistently in my ear: “Road trip, road trip.”
A road trip has the appeal of pushing back the other distractions of everyday life, and let’s us just be together, even though we can’t quite shake ourselves from computers (three wind up in the car), phones and other electronic devices. Where we go isn’t that important, but we decide on the beach and on a bright blue, unseasonably warm June morning, we’re off. Long Beach—about four hours away—is our destination.
As we get underway, I note that some things are different from the last time we spent much time together in the car. We jockey for car space based on legroom, tall people sitting in front of short, and vice versa. And we are all drivers, with each of us eager to get behind the wheel. There is none of the bickering you have with small kids, but turns out—we are all avid backseat drivers.
We make a quick stop for gas and “snackies,” (my daughter’s word, an endearing remnant from a not-so-long childhood that makes me a little bit sentimental) just outside of Olympia. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera when we pass the cow sculptures in a pasture along the road. No real cows in sight—just a few massive metal replicas. Random sights like this, I think, are part of the fun of the road trip.
Further on, there are fewer houses along the road, but plenty evidence that Weyerhaeuser is still harvesting trees. At Raymond we stop at a quintessential small-town restaurant serving the regular lunch crowd. The menu probably hasn’t changed for decades: tuna melts, BLTs, build-a-burgers. All American fare.
We drive through downtown Long Beach—and drink in the sea air, and then we’re there: at the beach house we’ll stay at for two nights.
We carry bags in, claim beds and head over the dunes to the beach. There’s a heat wave in Seattle, but here it’s around 70; the sand is warm on our feet and we stroll to waters edge.
There’s not much to do here: fly a kite, walk along the awesome landscape of sky and water. Later, back at the house, we sit around the table and talk—and eat a dinner my daughter has cooked. There is cable TV, telephones and our computers. But we sit together and talk—no distractions. A road trip has taken us away, and back together.