Are We There Yet?

Two things prompt me to share this essay now, even though I wrote it years ago. One, I just returned from a great trip to visit my oldest child and her husband.

Two, I spent a great deal of time on the phone today with a frazzled Expedia customer service rep who was rebooking the trip we have planned, in several months, to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday and my brother's 60th birthday. We're all headed to Hawaii, somewhere my brother's never been. We researched this trip for over a year, watched prices fairly obsessively, squirreled away money and finally booked a few weeks ago. We booked at a golf resort on Oahu's leeward shore, not because we love golf (none of us play) but because it had a great price on what we wanted - mini suites with kitchenettes. Apparently those great prices were their last ditch effort to stay afloat, because they just declared bankruptcy. They'll be closing in a month, displacing hundreds of holiday travelers and those like us who are leaving months after the holidays.

"Thank you so much for having a sense of humor and being patient!" the Expedia rep said to me. "I've been on the phone with angry people all day." No sense in getting angry here. Hey, even though the new booking would have originally cost us more, they're changing our reservation for free because we already booked and paid. Plus, we're going to Hawaii! How bad can it be?

(Note to self and others - I've never dealt with Expedia customer service before, but based on this experience, I highly recommend them.)

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I believe firmly in the value of travel. My parents had very little discretionary income – truth be told, they had little income to cover a lot of necessities. Yet, we took a family vacation every year, and more day trips than I can count. It was just part of the fabric of life.

I can only remember staying in a motel twice. We may have done so more than that, but it was extremely rare. We stayed with relatives, or we camped. I could spot a KOA Kampground sign from miles away, even before I could read. I went on an airplane for the first time at seventeen; we always drove wherever we were going. (Airplanes were for rich people.) When we could, we picnicked instead of eating at restaurants. And yet, we covered thousands of miles. We visited volcanoes, geysers, the ocean, the redwoods. We saw moose, elk, antelope, buffalo and bears. We swam, fished, hiked, climbed, and spent time just sitting in patio chairs.

When I was the only child left at home, and a teenager besides, family vacations seemed less relevant. Still, I went to Disneyland with my friends two years in a row, with my mom along as a chaperone. I spent a week with my dad and my cousin in her cabin. There were still day trips with my family, but now there were day trips with friends as well. We once drove to a neighboring city just to eat at a particular Japanese restaurant. I've never had wanderlust in the sense of having to constantly change dwellings and/or jobs, but if I spend too long without getting out of town at all, I get antsy and grumpy.

After growing up and getting married, Dan and I took our first family vacation when our oldest child was eight months old. (We'd been married for about a year and a half.) It took a bit of talking to convince my husband that it was a good idea; he was much less sold on the idea of yearly vacations (or, really, any vacations) than I was. We stayed with my sister in Orange County, and spent a day at Disneyland as just a couple while my sister babysat. Suddenly, Dan felt better about vacations. Since then, we've made sure to take a trip every year, and occasionally more.

I sat once, years ago, around a table with a group discussing a mutual friend and her post retirement travels. She and her husband, it seemed, spent more time away from home than they did in their own house. Their latest trip had taken them to Europe. We were all quite jealous. Then someone said something that demonstrated a sharp divide between my opinion and that held by the rest of the group.

"Well," she said, "I guess you can go all those places if you don't care what kind of hotel you stay in. I mean, they'll stay in discount motels."

Another woman agreed. "And they'll fly coach. All the way across the ocean!"

"They don't eat fancy food, either. They'll just pick up something simple in a pub."

"Sure, you can go anywhere, I guess, if you're willing to put up with that."

Then the fantasizing started. "If I were to go, I'd want five star everything – hotels, restaurants. I'd want first class plane tickets; you know, where they give you hot towels and eye masks and even foot massages."

The conversation went on while I sat amazed, wondering if they'd noticed that I was no longer saying anything. The thing that truly amazed me was that these were people who not only did not take five star vacations, they didn't normally take any. I'd known them for years; they were not travelers. I sat thinking, if the choice is between motels and pub food and not going anywhere, the choice is easy for me. Bring on Motel 6!

I've stayed in lovely resorts with helpful concierges and free group activities. I don't have the money or inclination to go five star, but I do know the difference between those properties and some others I've stayed in, like the motel made from mobile homes, whose pool was a Doughboy. Still, to me a room is a place to sleep, shower and dress. As long as it's clean and I can sleep, I'm happy. The reason I'm there has nothing to do with the hotel I'm in.

I don't even need a great view. I'll be leaving it all day anyway, and it doesn't do me much good when I'm asleep. I was glad my oldest daughter shared this opinion when she went on her high school graduation trip. She and her two best friends spent a week in Hawaii, and out of necessity they booked an inexpensive room in a high rise hotel. They took gleeful photos of each other standing in front of their windows, indicating the view – a multi level parking garage, so close to the cars that they could see make, model and plate number. They didn't care. They were 18 years old and in Hawaii without parents! They went snorkeling and to luaus, but because they were teenagers, they didn't have endless funds. Lana, my daughter, spoke fondly of buying 99 cent fruit and yogurt parfaits from a fast food restaurant, and then eating them on Waikiki Beach, feeling on top of the world.

Our four children had a great time on our various travels when they were growing up, but they're also kids. We listened to hours of complaining and bickering. "We'll be in the car for how many hours? I hate the car! I'll be so-o-o-o bored!" Siblings who were barely civil to each other when they shared a room were often thrown into the same bed, resulting in a recitation at breakfast of who kicked whom, who stole the covers, who snored and who hogged the bed.

For our first trip to Hawaii, we had to drive for four hours to the airport, then spend approximately six hours on a plane. The older two complained so long and so loudly about the travel time that we finally threatened to leave them at home with Grandma, as they were clearly missing the point. They grudgingly agreed that maybe they could stop complaining long enough to get to Hawaii.

Once we got there, we also listened to our ten year old complain that we didn't spend enough time at the hotel pool. "We're always leaving the hotel to go somewhere!" she groused. I finally had to say, "We did not spend thousands of dollars and come thousands of miles to the most remote pieces of land on the planet simply to stay in our hotel! There are swimming pools at home."

Every parent would also recognize our battles about what they could and could not buy, and where we could and couldn't go. Children who used the bathroom twice a day at home suddenly needed us to stop the car every hour so they could use gas station restrooms. We endured complaints about the food, the weather, the scenery and everything else.

It took years before we knew that, despite all that, they actually did get something out of the long drives and shared beds. When Lana went hundreds of miles away to college, she met kids from all over, kids with a variety of backgrounds. She found one fact about her new friend Sarah very odd. "Mom," she told me over the phone, "can you believe that she's never been anywhere? She's been in her hometown and here at school! That's it! We have to plan a girlfriend trip and take her somewhere!"