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Destination: Road Trip
Movie: National Lampoon’s Family Vacation (1983) with Chevy Chase
A GUEST POST by Sheri Wallace
Everything I Know About Road Trips I Learned From Chevy Chase
This past summer I spent six weeks on the road with my husband and daughter. We drove 10 of the best drives you can imagine and spent 42 days together with no DVD players and no iPods. Why? Blame Chevy Chase.
My childhood was spent living National Lampoon’s Family Vacation. No whisking the family to a resort, you piled into the family car and went wherever your parents decided they wanted to go. Which usually involved a lot of Aunt Ednas and a few nights at the equivalent of Kamp Komfort. Rather than run from the inevitable, my parents embraced the Griswold style of road tripping.
Those vacations prepared me for moving up from the back seat (I can’t decide if I’m more Ellen or Clark now that I sit in the front seat) and instilled in me a lifelong love of the open road. Here are the lessons I learned along the way:
Trash bags waterproof the luggage
Quality Time is #1
In the movie, Clark Griswold (Chase) wants to spend more time with his family, so he loads up and heads to Walley World. That’s the premise of all good road trips. Whether your back seat holds sullen teens or car seats and teething rings, you’ve got to shrug off the warnings and head out to enjoy being a family.
Like most things in life, it’s not the quantity it’s the quality. Ask yourself what you remember from your childhood and it’s rarely the planned or Disney-themed moments. Not because Disney is a bad thing, but because you can’t plan extraordinary. The little ones you’re dragging along on the adventure might be ungrateful and unresponsive. But, they’ll remember you cared.
“You think you hate it now, wait ’til you drive it!”
That’s what the used car salesman tells Clark when he sells him the Wagon Queen Family Truckster. How many pictures are there of you and your ancestors with a Family Truckster in the background? Iconic road trip vehicles aside, one of the rules of road tripping is that you don’t need a fancy car. Remember the first rule? The kids are going to fight anyway. Someone will vomit. Just pack it up and head out.
It’s On The Way
Remember Aunt Edna? She joined the Griswolds after Cousin Eddie pointed out that Phoenix was “on the way” to Walley World. Road trips are notorious for what’s “on the way”.
In fact, the problem with destination-centric vacations is that nothing is “on the way”. Your vacation doesn’t even start until you get there. Whether the attractions are off-beat, world-famous or just nuts, planned or unplanned, stopping along the way is one of road tripping’s essential skills.
Roy Walley
Every road trip has a Roy Walley moment. Things might be at their very worst for a couple of days but at some point, Roy Walley arrives and everything is ok. In the movie he recalled his own road trips and felt sympathy for the Griswolds.
The real trip: Mom on top of car
Your Roy Walley moments will be different on every trip. One of our Roy Walley moments this summer was sitting by the fire with extended family, laughing and swatting mosquitoes, talking about tying mom to the top of our car in Czechoslovakia (remember Aunt Edna?). Something unexpected will always make the trip memorable. Be open to embracing it.
Make a Movie
Probably the most valuable skill I learned from my family vacations was learning to laugh at yourself, take pictures of the insanity and enjoy the moment. Don’t worry about what vacation planners will think. My dad passed before enjoying Road Trips Part Two with toddlers, flat tires and roads that aren’t on the GPS. But he’d have loved every minute. It’s in his honor that I pack up our car and head out every year. Aunt Edna and all.
Sheri Wallace
Sheri Wallace is the editor of Road Trips for Families , and is fast becoming the go-to gal for all information on road trips of any kind. What a job she has created for herself. Go on road trips. Write about them. Fun! You may have noticed that I have linked to her before, and I’m happy to have her partnering here with her take on a travel movie for your travel library. Thanks, Sheri, for the article and the photos. (All photos are the property of Sheri Wallace, so please to not use without permission.)
Have you seen the movie? Amazon shows a high ranking for National Lampoon’s Vacation (20th Anniversary Special Edition)
And how about your family–do they look like the National Lampoon version, or are you more sedate? Come on, fess up.
PDF Tags: Chevy Chase, family road trip, guest post, National Lampoon, road trip, road trips for families, Sheri Wallace, travel movie
NLFV was a documentary of every road trip I took with my family. Thanks for sharing! -r
Everything I know about road trips I learned “on the job”, starting with a traverse of Route 66 in 1949 in a brand new two tone Hudson Hornet. If I was good, I got to sit in the front and work the gear shift. . . This was several years before the first interstate, and I still have a preference for the old roads when time is not of the essence.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love this movie. I had forgotten how awesome the hairdos in this movie are too, until I saw your pics posted. I need to bust this movie on netflix again soon.
Twitter: roadtripseditor
says:
This was a hard post to write. My family misses my dad a lot, but I felt it was important to really pay tribute to both of my parents and their commitment to showing us the world. A lot of kids never experience that, and it’s been a great resource to me. I wish we had pictures of the people standing by, watching us tie my mom to the roof of the car, Aunt Edna style. They hadn’t seen the movie and thought we were just nuts.
Twitter: roadtrips4beer
says:
Great story, Sheri.
In the summer of 1970, Mom, Dad and four of us kids ages 9-14 loaded into the Mercury Montego station wagon (very Truckster-like) and drove from Tampa to San Diego. And, yes, we went to Wally World – I mean, Disneyland. Fortunately, it was open.
Wow! Trash bags on top of the car. What a brilliant idea!
Twitter: travelwonders
says:
One of my dream retirement trips is to drive across the US and Canada checking out these superb routes and drives along the way.
Mark H would like you to read..The Ultimate Jungle Beach Holiday Santa Teresa- Costa Rica
Twitter: Melanie Haiken
says:
Trading iPods and taking turns DJ-ing our favorite songs for each other has been my family’s trick for transforming road trips from “are we there yet?” to “This is fun! Let’s keep going!”
Twitter: pen4hire
says:
Thanks, Sheri, for a fun post that rang a lot of chimes for readers. See post above this for where I am as I write this note. When I was showing 3-yr-old grandson on the world map that I was going to Paris and then drive north, he wanted to know if I was using his mommy’s car.
Twitter: kborsheimartist
says:
Make ‘em or break ‘em — that is what they say a car trip will do for relationships