Chapter 4 · America the Beautiful

Summer Road Trips with Grandma

One bed extension, a bag of arcade coins, and a bond built one mile at a time

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When I was in high school, I began venturing out every summer with my Grandma on her annual trips to West Virginia and Ohio. Each trip lasted about a week. A couple of times we stayed in a hotel, usually the Red Roof Inn, probably because Grandma was between campers. We even tried to reel in my cousin Brittany on our annual excursions, bringing her along one year. Grandma still talks about the arcade and ice-skating rink her friends Paul and Barbara took us to, and how they gave my cousin and me each a bag of coins to go wild with in the arcade. It was a fun trip, the only time I’ve ever been ice skating, but my cousin’s rookie skills made her feel like a third wheel, and she didn’t return the next year. Grandma and I would joke about all the others in our family who didn’t camp with us, like Mom and my sister being a little too delicate for the wild outdoors. This was our thing to bond over.

Along our journey, we would stop for gas, take a break to stretch our legs, walk the dogs, go to the bathroom, and, of course, load up on a fresh cup of convenience store cappuccino. Grandma would pick out a new murder mystery audiobook from the library for the trip, and I would spend half the ride lounging in the back of the SUV with the seats down so I could spread out with the dogs and play Tetris or Dr. Mario on my Game Boy, or sleep. The other half, I was in the front seat with her sightseeing through the window, listening to her audiobook, while watching her maneuver the camper around the switchback roads of the Appalachians. She still laughs at me loading up on phone cards so I could make long-distance calls home to my boyfriend every evening from the campsite pay phone. I called Mom too, but most of those minutes went to that young love.

Grandma was a master at parking and setting up the camper. She had it down to a science, organizing all the luggage, food, camping gear, and other essential road trip supplies in the camper. She knew exactly how to set up at each campsite, including the tie-downs, plug-ins for water and electricity, linens for the beds and the table, and even the lights that she and one of my uncles made from plastic planters with holes drilled in them for decorative lampshades secured over each colorful light on a string of Christmas lights. We cleaned the picnic table, swept away leaves, strung the lights, set out a trash can and our foldable chairs, and popped open the camper, pulling out each bed extension and unrolling the shade canopy. Setting up a camper, or even taking it down for that matter, can take a while, and we’d usually venture out for dinner afterward before returning to the camper to shower at the community shower and call it a night.

Noticing the amount of work that goes into camping, I suggested early on in our adventures that we just use one bed extension for our luggage and one side we could sleep together on so we only had to make one bed. She agreed immediately, and this became our norm for camping from then on. This is another of my grandma’s favorite camping stories.