15 Family Road Trips Remembered From a Station Wagon’s Back Seat: Engine-Warmed Beans and a Tractor Rescue

This was in the 70’s through very early 80’s.

We did picnics on the hood of the car. Dad even stuck a can of beans in the engine to warm them up.

We cooked in hotel rooms but always got a room with a kitchenette. Six people crammed into a double bedroom with two rollaway beds. The kind of rooms with the quarter slot for vibrating the bed, which we only tried once.

“My family on a road trip, early 90s”

We lived on the east coast so we’d road trip out west every summer for about two weeks at a time.

That[’s] me sitting in the way back and I hated it!

My dad quoted the movie often, and at gas stations people would call us the Griswolds.

It was one of the rules of the road my dad taught us when we were kids. “If someone has their hood up, you pull over and see if they need assistance. Why? Because next time it might be you on the side of the road! Would you want someone to help you? Yes? Well, so do they. And that’s why we do it!”

I remember this specifically happening in Death Valley. And there was a car on the side of the road so we pulled over to see if they needed help. The annoyed parents said, “We just pulled over to change the diaper on the baby, but people keep pulling up and asking us if we need help! You want to change the diaper?”

We got out of there. Fast.

I remember being about 10 and my mom’s car breaking down on a back road at night. She left my brother and I in the car and walked to the nearest house.

Then a man came back and told us to get in the wagon in back of the tractor and we did, and he brought us to his house and my mom was sitting in the kitchen drinking a coffee and they had their daughter bring us out to look at the pigs.

About two hours later after eating whatever it was, my uncle showed up and took us home. The car showed up a day or so later at our house. I was 10 so no idea how it got to the house. Then every now and then we went back to the farmhouse people and ran around outside with their kids.

“This is my dad and our camping ‘rig’ circa 1978.”

I would beg Dad to stop at a [roadside shop] in every state so I could buy a window decal (and a pecan log) that would eventually fill up half that back window. As the youngest, I was the tailgunner and would see about 30 states from the back of that car.

Our camping trips ended around 1983 when mom finally put her foot down and insisted we stay in hotels.

Looking back as a 55-year-old, it was a lot cooler than kid-me thought it was. To this day, I still joke that my idea of roughing it is staying at a hotel without an indoor swimming pool!

“Could we look any less excited about our family trip? 1985”

I’m guessing this was one of the Chicago-Orlando drives when I was in high school. My parents worked so hard to show us a good time. We were terrible.

With all three of us sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the back seat of the car. And no screens!!

My dad would lug that giant video cassette recorder everywhere. I have been digitizing all of those old tapes and putting them online for other family members to see.

It was my grandmother who always packed our picnic basket for the trip, so fried chicken and pound cake were always a part of our roadside pullover.

I am from the mid-west also and to this day, one of the first signs you see when leaving 75 south and picking up the toll road east is the “New York 600 miles”.

That sign still has the ability to fill my heart with excitement and possibility, because we were, “officially on vacation”.

We drove from the east coast down to the south to visit family in the summer, no a/c. No electronics, obviously. My mom was pretty great — she wrapped about 20 presents (art stuff, books, little toys, but nothing extravagant) and would give me and my sister one gift per day to open in the car. It kept us happy.

We were well behaved and never had meltdowns in general so I think she was trying to maintain that on the trip. We were 8 and 5.

I remember mom packing those boxes of cereal. In the morning, she ran into a convenience store and bought a container of milk. Dad got out his pocket knife and cut the box into a bowl.

My parents didn’t have a lot of money, so our vacation was driving somewhere at night while we kids slept in the car. Arriving at [the amusement park]/beach/wherever. Spending all day there, then driving home at night. I don’t know how my parents did it, they were up for 24 hours.

I do remember one year I won tickets to [an amusement park] for the family. We were so excited to go. My grandmother gave us $25 for a hotel. That was a big deal because we never stayed in hotels.

“Road trip to Pennsylvania in 95.”

Probably Kiss from a Rose by Seal.

[A portable player] for us cool kids. Mine was yellow and black and would skip unless I walked real smooth.

“My family on an epic 3-week cross country trip in 1992 to see our family in Utah. I’m the smallest kid in the blue shirt.”

One of those god awful purple [minivans] and a [small sedan].

All haircut credits go to the older sisters.

Smallest age gap is around 20 months I think. My parents had it down to a 2-year routine.

No joke, one of my favorite things to do as a kid on a road trip was crack open my dad’s road atlas and find where we are/look at the route. Because of that I’ve always kept a road atlas in my car.

[One] time I was on a road trip and my friend was complaining about being bored. I tossed them the atlas and said, “Take a look at where we’re at.” They stared at it confused for a minute and then said, “How?”

They were only a couple of years younger than me.

Absolutely loved the road atlas. As I got older I’d trace the route myself and would run possible stopping points by my parents. We saw lots of cool things doing this. My sister couldn’t read a map so we’d get into big fights in the car because she always said I was wrong.

One time we were going by Gainesville, Georgia and she swore we were in Florida almost to Orlando. My mom believed her. It wasn’t until we drove for another 3 hours that they admitted they were wrong.

Coolers. If the lid squeaked, it would make my Dad crazy. As the youngest of 4, I was in the way back with the luggage, so it was my job to make sure there was no squeak. Mom made banana bread and kept it in the glove compartment. In hot weather, it was like an oven and the whole car would smell like banana.

I vaguely remember drinking in the car on occasion — is it possible mom had a thermos of water? I’ll inquire

Edit: I inquired! Not a thermos, but a [plastic] pitcher with hotel ice and water, kept by her feet in the front seat!

“1984 and 2013 — 29 years later, my brothers and I recreated our family vacation photo at the Texas State Capitol”

Weeks. It took time and effort. We had to fudge the tank tops to make them work.