Family Travel Can Be Family Fun or Roadtrip Disaster

The Summer Family Roadtrip.  Family Fun???  Or car trip disaster???  Despite packing the family car with primo snacks and planning plenty of great family activities, even the best family cartrip can, in an instant, become a Roadtrip from HELL!

For us it only took 10 miles in an otherwise pretty good car trip from San Diego to Colorado and back in our recently acquired, slightly used Land Rover LR3 — named Nigel because of the unceasingly polite voice with the clipped British accent emanating from the GPS.  We were tightly packed with 2 adults, 3 teenagers (one of them not ours) and a bunch of bikes hanging off the back.

All had signed Dad’s PLEDGE FOR HANDFELT ROADTRIPS to not touch or hit, be grateful, listen to and give consideration to the desires of others, limit sarcastic remarks, be courteous, friendly and pleasant for the duration of said ROADTRIP lest the offender be put on a plane home at said offender’s expense — duly witnessed and notarized by both parents.

Good Roadtrip Planning

Beginning with Day One, armed with last Easter’s blessed palm fronds and a few St. Christopher medals stashed in glove boxes and strewn under seats, we did our best to shield ourselves from the tempations of booze, babes and bets in Las Vegas, a point through which one must travel to go anywhere from San Diego.

Things were going smoothly.  The day we were to arrive at our destination was exceptionally glorious, with sunlight splashing down on the Great Rocky Mountains as we pulled into a woody information kiosk in stunning Crested Butte.  Looking at the map my husband felt sure in his civil engineer gut that there must be a shorter way to Aspen, going through, not around, the jagged peaks in front of us, perhaps?  The Ranger pointed on his map to Schofield Pass Road, the road NOT to take.  “There are signs that say ‘only small-axle four-wheel drive vehicles’ but they’re gonna take those down– nobody should use that road.”  To Leo and my 18 year old son, it sounded like a PLAN!

Family Travel  — Know When to Turn Around

The asphalt winding though the gentle field soon gave way to a packed gravel road and then a narrower, coarser gravel surface.  The lure of adventure was gathering some steam as we passed the aforemention sign.  My firm but calm pleas to “Turn around while we can!” went unanswered until there was, indeed, no way to turn around.

By Mile 3 we were boulder crawling thanks to Nigel’s all-wheel drive, raisable chassis and special Rock Crawl Mode. When the road became impossibly narrow, my son got out and walked  in front of Nigel to direct my husband in subtle wheel turns to avoid strafing the sides on the large boulders jutting out or running off the narrow “road” altogether.  If we had encountered a Divorce Lawyer along the trail, we would have taken care of business.

At one point we stopped a mountain biker coming toward us to ask how bad it was up ahead.  Well, he says, there are about a half dozen ATV’s, 3 of them pretty much stuck there.  The faces of the menfolk began to glow with a terror and excitement.  I, on the other hand, controlled my panic as I instructed the girls to put on their sturdy shoes, grab a water bottle and anything shiny they could pry off the car (for signaling the rescue helicopters).  With someone’s else’s child in our care, some adult had to survive when Nigel tumbled into the canyon.

But when I open the car door there was only air below me.

Family Travel Adventures are a GOOD THING

It was only by the grace of God and the prowess of Nigel that we managed to forge the last stream before the hamlet of Crystal.  There, passing a Baja Racer on the narrow single-lane road we asked, “How much farther?” He replied that we should know, didn’t we come from there.  “No, we came from Crested Butte”.  He eyed the bikes hanging off the back and gasped .  “In THAT thing???”  10 miles and 2 hours from Crested Butte.   We had saved ourselves 200 miles (but NO time) on Schofield Pass Road, which shall forever be known to us as THE DEATH ROAD. 

P.S.  We are still married.  And this was one of best trips ever!

Mary Handfelt writes from the safety of home in San Diego.

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