Eastbound and Down, Loaded up and Truckin'

Our daughter Maggie "graduated" from elementary school this month, and so we offered to take her on the trip of her choosing, within reason.

Mind you, gradating from elementary school is not particularly difficult (and California, as yet, has not instituted an elementary school exit exam), but Maggie is a pretty good kid a deserved some kind of reward. In fact, they don't even call it graduation, they call it "promotion," which is actually a little too corporate for my tastes. Anyone I know remembers being sentenced to middle school, so perhaps on the last day of fifth grade they should hold a conviction ceremony.

But I digress.

Maggie is beautiful little traveler. She was born in Japan and had her first passport (a prerequisite for obtaining her "alien registration" card) before she had her first solid poop. In her passport photo, she is lying in her car seat, a gelatinous, unfocusing, week-old ball of goo. Previous attempts to save money by taking her passport photo by holding her up in a cheapo photo booth ended in hilarious failure that would not have passed muster with the Department of State, so we ended up opting for the more expensive camera shop version. We still have the failed photos, though, in which the baby looks like a cross between Edward G. Robinson and Yoda.

Anyway, we have dragged this kid to Thailand, France, Spain, Italy, back to Japan, and who knows where else. So I was fully prepared to dip into the line of credit when we asked her where she wanted to go for "graduation."

"I want to go on an RV trip," my aspiring redneck child replied.

This did not surprise us as much as you may think. Four years ago, when moving from the east coast to the west, we rented an RV as much by necessity as anything else - how else do you move two dogs, a cat, and two pet fish with more than a 50% confidence level for survival?

That trip was much more fun than we expected, and all the pets survived, although little Trixy, our rat terrier, tried to make a break for it in Virginia, and we spent the better part of an hour chasing her through the woods as she cheerfully eluded us, as I crapped and moaned about the foolishness of owning small animals and letting them off the leash in foreign lands.

In fact, our trip was a hoot - with our copy of Road Food, which catalogs weird but wonderful regional holes in the wall, and a desire to see large presidents carved out of stone, we spent two weeks on the road, meandering our way west to our new life in California. It was educational and delicious - with the highlight meal a "pig salad" in some barbeque joint in Arkansas.

So when Maggie opted this summer for recreational travel, as the industry wags undoubtedly call it, we agreed almost immediately.

When you tell most people you’re going on an RV trip (at least most people I know), they look at you kind of funny. RV trips conjure up images of, among other things, RVs, RV parks, and Wal Mart parking lots. (For more on that, I recommend the highly entertaining and infinitely disturbing film, This is Nowhere.)

But RVs are actually a lot of fun, especially when you’re traveling with children or, ahem, women. Problems like “I have to go to the bathroom,” or “I’m hungry,” or “I’m tired” are very easily dealt with. On the flip side, backseat driving can be a challenge, but you can’t have everything.

In an RV you’re actually encouraged to visit all those cool places you always wanted to see but never got it together to do – Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon – there are more RV parks than gun shops in these places (this is actually a made up statistic, but I’ve been doing that for years, which wouldn’t be such a problem is I weren’t in nonprofit communications, but we all have our faults), and that’s saying something.

RVs also allow you to visit family members without sleeping under the same roof or necessarily having to eat their food, which can be dangerous. This may sound harsh, but we all know it’s true. A certain member of my family snores like a youth hostel full of teamsters – a low, disturbing rumble that causes you to dream that you’re on a subway car from Brooklyn to Panama. The food part’s not a problem, but I’m lucky on that score.

On the downside, RVs require driving. If you don’t like driving or being in driving things, you will hate an RV trip. If you have navigational problems, or relationship issues with your loved one that center around navigation, do not ever do this. If you dislike small spaces, unless you get one of those RVs that resemble Air Force One, you’re probably going to be sad.

We are undaunted and intrepid - at least we like to think we are. So it's eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin"...

And now, on to our saga.