The  beginning of our family vacation was when my Dad came home the purchase of a shiny gray station wagon. He beamed with pride over his investment and knew it would be the icing on the cake for our summer road trip with two spirited teenage daughters, and me. It was one of those moments I wonder what my parents were they thinking as they packed up the Belfond Bus and sent us on our cross Canada journey.

I was scrunched between my two older sisters, high on Gravol, unable to read due to car-sickness, and remembering everything in a sleepy haze.  I always looked straight ahead in the off-chance that I would lose my cookies. I instinctively knew  I would face fear of death if by chance I accidentally vomited on one of them.

We made that  long two-week journey on the open road. No we didn’t have movies  in the backseat, no Nintendo DS, and there was  no luxury of air conditioning.  Most days traveling down the long stretch of highway it was hot and when my Mom drove it was nauseating.

The only saving grace was oldest my sisters tape recorder it was there in the dusty back seat we listened to our favorite cassettes Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Footloose, and my favorite Julian Lennon.

Now looking back we always seemed to play “Too Late for Good-Byes” over and over again at the very end of the day. It seemed we may even have been testing our parents last straw of patience. We would  hit the high pitch notes with gusto seeing how high we could actually go with our screeching voices.

That is until my Mother could no longer take it!  She would look back with fierceness in her eyes and holler from the front, “Turn that bloody thing down! I can’t take it anymore!”

I guess it took my own long drives with my own children to realize how brave my parents actually were to take all three of us on a cross-country adventure. I wondered how they stood sane in some of those more hairy moments. But then again they are what family memories are made of and we will always them have for a lifetime.

Is there a song that  evokes a memory from one of your family vacations?