Dave Hall wrote:

When I was a kid my parents took the family for a vacation. Dad's idea
of a vacation was to hook up the travel trailer and drive 14 hours a
day for the entire 4 weeks he had off. So we started in WV and drove
(almost all backroads) through the Dakotas and over to Oregon. We kids
were just as excited as hell to get to the Pacific Ocean and even
though the wind was a bit chilly my brother and me were adament that
we were going swimming in the ocean. We couldn't quite grasp why no
one was in the water and everyone was wearing fairly heavy jackets and
long pants. We rushed down the beach and ran full tilt into the water.

Once we caught our breathe, we got the hell out of there and tried to
get our blood flowing again ;-)

It was a great dissapointment to us that even though we traveled down
the coast all the way to San Francisco it never got warm enough to go
in the ocean. At SF dad turned left and drove back to WV through
Nevada and Utah. Entire 4 weeks we only stayed at two places for more
than one night and never more than 2 nights. I am now much more a "get
somewhere quick and stay" kinda vacation man. Oh yeah, on that road
trip dad had put an 8 track player in the car to supplement the AM
radio. We had two (count 'em - 2) tapes.... and you know there
weren't any AM stations in most of the midwest in 1968....

Dave Hall

Mom and dad never did own an automobile...so once a year my uncle would
show up on a Friday night to bundle mom and us (6 kids) for our annual
vacation in Cape Breton. Back then (mid to late '50s & early '60s the
main highways here were back roads.
My uncle could always be counted on to produce a stinky cigar and it was
just a matter of time before one of us got car sick. Once one of us
upchucked over the seat & floor, the rest of us would usually follow.
Sometimes he had an old pickup truck with a homemade bed cap of plywood
and old car seats inside to sit on. Those trips were only about 5 hours
but seemed to take forever. He got the biggest kick when someone
suggested he take along an old puke bucket wetted with turpentine.
For years he loved to tell how he cured us of road sickness by putting
that bucket under our noses whenever we got queasy. For some reason, we
didn't puke into the bucket.