There’s nothing quite like a vacation to show your family what it’s really made of. It’s like life on steroids.
All things considered, I wouldn’t say we’re on the Mark McGwire of trips right now, but we’re still on some serious roids. Tenzin, the kids, and I are driving across eastern Nevada on the “Loneliest Road” (that would be Hwy 50). We’re headed home tomorrow. Highlights:
• Because the world is weird and small, we ran into someone we know at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. We’re talking middle of nowhere, 50 miles off the Loneliest Road (which I guess makes it the “Clinically Depressed Park”). I knew there was a reason I put on makeup that morning.
• We took a tour through Lehman Caves with a woman and her three children — all under the age of 5 (including a baby) — while her husband and father stayed outside because “they’d already seen it a bunch of times.” Because why would dad want to go on the tour and keep his kid from drinking cave water or shining his headlight in everyone’s faces? Or stay outside with his baby who might otherwise possibly cry in a confined and echoing cave? (At least they made us look good.)
• We met a young, gay waiter in a town of 125 people and still can’t figure out what the hell he’s doing there.
• We wondered when the yahoos outside our motel room at Bordertown were going to stop shooting off their guns — near the gas pumps — at 3 o’clock in the morning.
• We got lost trying to find a trilobite dig sight. Why? Because it was in a mountain range in the middle of the desert without any signs and it was snowing. So in hindsight, probably not the best day to be hitting rocks with hammers anyway.
• We inhaled more smoke while eating, despite Nevada laws to the contrary, than we have since 1975.
• We’ve been consistently baffled and surprised by rural Nevadans. Just when you think you’re surrounded by a bunch of crazies who send money to televangelists, you end up talking to the 70-year-old cashier about evolution (because your son popped off about how humans came from chimps). Just when you think you’ve never seen so many RV’s in your whole life, you see giant compost piles at a construction site. And just when you think, “How the hell could anyone live out here,” you come across some of the most beautiful light and scenery you’ve ever seen on earth.
And the biggest contradiction, of course — me. Being either absolutely thrilled or completely annoyed with everyone or everything at any given moment. Because in our family, that’s just life on the road. Peaks, valleys, and mommy trippin’.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.
Sounds like fun! Erm, no actually it doesn't.
It actually was fun, in an adventure kind of way. Definitely not a “lie on the beach and relax” vacation. I'm lobbying for that next time. Thanks for reading, by the way!