My family didn’t have a lot of excess money when I was growing up. We weren’t poor, but there wasn’t a lot of extra to spend on things like vacations.
We were a family that could go to the county fair every year, but not a theme park.
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That didn’t mean that we didn’t have our own adventures, though.
In fact, pretty much every weekend was devoted to some form of mini-road trip.
The four of us would pile into the van with Mum and Dad up front, me in the middle, and my sister in the back, pick a general direction and then drive.
Then over the course of the day, we’d just wander around and stop to browse at interesting stores or sightsee.
Since so much of the time was spent on rural backroads, we still jokingly refer to that style of road trip as a “crop tour.”
There wasn’t usually any sort of map or route planned.
At most, one of us might have a specific location we’d like to aim for, such as a specific knitting shop in a town two hours vaguely east.
And yes, we got lost a lot.
Of course, that was half the fun.
Dad had his big paper map in the glove compartment for if things got really confusing, but usually we would just talk him into stopping somewhere for dinner and then ask the server how to get to the highway leading home.
These days, Dad uses a GPS and while it’s certainly more efficient, it’s not really the same, you know?
Sometimes, I miss just getting lost on a lazy Sunday afternoon and arguing with my parents over which way is north.
