On The Go

Road trips are always fun. Whether it be to a amusement park, seeing family, or just because you felt like it. There is something about getting in the car and getting away from the chains of everyday life. My family is big on camping. Its one of my favorite parts of summer. I love getting the chance to get away from the normal day to day activities. It's where I get a ton of reading done. Both in the car ride there and once we are at the campsite.

Since my mom always liked to go somewhere different, that meant at least a three hour drive. Sometimes more if we decided to go to the UP. Packing six kids into a car for a three hour plus drive wasn't always easy. My brothers and I learned very quickly that we had to keep ourselves occupied. So I always made sure that I had a book. Actually, I always made sure I had several books depending how long our trip was.

Reading in the car isn't always the greatest of places but I made it work. Mostly by taking breaks when my eyes would start to hurt.

All of my extended family lives in Muskegon, Grand Rapids, and some of them are even out of state. When I was younger, we used to have a family reunion every summer. It used to be the family canoe trip down the Rifle River. But it had since changed to the family kayak trip because kayaks are much easier to handle down that river. If you've never been on the Rifle River, its a fairly large river and its very fast. I was never particularly interested in going down the river once I was old even to go. I had this fear that if the kayak tipped over (and on the Rifle, you will tip at some point) I wouldn't be able to get out and I would drown. Not a really rational fear but very few fears are rational.

Since I stayed behind I would fill my day with going to the beach and reading the many books I had brought with me. The quiet that I get when I go camping is perfect. It's nice to be able to unplug from the outside world every now and then.

I remember when my brother, Evan was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Georgia. It had finally worked out for us to go see him and have a nice vacation. Since we were driving down there rather than flying, I knew I was going to need lots of books to get me through the trip. If you have even done the summer reading program and you get a tote bag as one of the prizes, I filled one of those to the brim and then some with books. It was so heavy and I really thought I was going to read them all. I was even a little worried I hadn't brought enough.

In reality though, instead of reading the many books I brought, I slept. Seriously, I practically slept the whole way there. I really only woke up when we stopped for food. I'd eat and be wide awake but once we were back on the road I'd be asleep once again. To say the least, that's not how I thought it was going to go. So then I was stuck lugging around that colossal bag of books from the car, to the hotel rooms we stayed at and back again.

Now a days though, I don't read in the car as much. Simply because now I'm the one driving myself to the places I want to go instead of my mom. Sometimes I wish I could get that time back to read books but until they come up with a way to safely read while driving, I'm stuck. But for now that's okay.