The Trip From Hell

The Trip was almost thirty years ago, and those of us who experienced it still call it The Trip from Hell. It was the summer of 1993, and my dear father had planned a summer trip of epic proportions. He had everything mapped out for us to hit eleven states in fourteen days. “Us” was Dad, my stepmom, my two younger stepsisters, my boyfriend, and me. Six people. In a puke-green nineteen eighty-something Buick LeSabre.

Dad’s grand plan had us driving northwest from Louisiana, across the corner of Arkansas into Oklahoma, then north through Kansas and Nebraska and into South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. From there, he had us turning west to drive across Wyoming to visit Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, then through the corner of Idaho and down through Utah to Arizona, where we would hit the Grand Canyon and finally Carlsbad Caverns on our way home through New Mexico and Texas. It was an ambitious itinerary. And it might have gone smoothly.

It did not. Somewhere south of Wichita, the radiator went on strike. We hobbled into a little town in the middle of miles of cornfields and found a mechanic. Hours oozed by while we waited for the car to be fixed. Finally, the mechanic had news. We perked up and got ready to get back in the car, but no, it was not to be. He was going to have to keep the car overnight.

We found a hotel and all crammed into one room. The next morning, six bleary-eyed grumpy people reported to the mechanic’s when he called and announced the car was fixed. We piled in and were, in the immortal words of Willie Nelson, “on the road again.”

As we wended our way through the Badlands and into the foothills of the Black Hills, I snapped through roll after roll of 35mm film. We happened to pass through Sturgis the day before the main event of the huge annual motorcycle rally, and spent a day boggling at the rainbow of bikes, trikes, and choppers that flooded into the city around us. That night, we camped out in the Black Hills National Forest, and for a brief halcyon moment, everyone was enjoying the trip.

On into Wyoming we plowed. It was only when the terrain started getting steeper and steeper that we came to realize the mechanic back in Corntown apparently had a different definition of the word “fixed” than the one we were used to. The old Buick got to where she was running so hot, we had to stop halfway up each mountain rise to add water to the radiator and let the engine cool, then repeat the process at the top of each rise. Running the heater in the car was necessary to allow even that much driving between stops, so we ran it at full blast. In July. Thankfully, the temperature and humidity were dropping as we gained altitude. Our attitudes, on the other hand, were rising. We were all practically at each other’s throats by the time we got to Yellowstone.

That’s the point at which I decided all the hell thus far had been worth it. The wildlife, the waterfalls, the mountains, the foul-smelling but beautiful sulfur springs and pools – it was like some kind of fairy land. Old Faithful was true to her name, belching and vomiting clouds of vapor and plumes of spray right on schedule. We climbed rock faces and frolicked in the occasional patch of snow we found near the mountaintops. We camped out at the edge of a cliff overlooking a thundering cascade that occasionally sent a light mist across our campsite. In Jackson Hole, we had a more competent mechanic work on the car. Heading south, spirits were lifted just by means of running the air conditioner.

Things went south as we drove south. Utah was flat and boring and with nothing to distract us outside the windows, we all grated on each other’s nerves. Mile upon monotonous mile dragged by and there was nothing to notice except each other’s less endearing qualities. Tempers flared, sisters squabbled, parents threatened. By noon the tension was thick enough to dull a samurai sword. When we finally stopped in the little town of Kanab at the state’s southern border that night, we looked and sounded like a pack of angry caged animals being freed as we clawed and scrambled over each other to get out of the car.

There in Kanab we found an International Youth Hostel run by an ancient Inuit named Erol. Erol was a chef, and took genuine pleasure in concocting dishes to tempt the palates of all his traveling guests. The other hostel patrons were a friendly, delightful mix of cultures and languages. That night, after we tucked the young ones into bed, Dad and I drove a few miles outside town into Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, where we spread a blanket on the sand and watched the Perseids meteor shower together. There was no moon that night, and the show was spectacular. Streaks of light filled the sky and put to shame every fireworks show I had seen before. No one else was around, as if God was putting on a show just for me and Dad. It seemed all was right and beautiful and magical in the world... for a few hours.

We left Kanab refreshed, rejuvenated, and raring to see the Grand Canyon. Two hours later, our eager eyes were rewarded with the distant sight of that gigantic gash in the desert surface. It was truly, well, grand. All that day we prowled the scenic overlooks and wandered through the museums and along the rimside trails. We snapped pictures with all the enthusiasm of amateur tourists and blithely made fools of ourselves.

With only Carlsbad in New Mexico, then Texas, to go, the rest of the trip looked like it just might not be so bad. I had never been in a car with five other people for the entire expanse of Texas, though.

The caverns were the kind of breathtaking that genuinely leaves one incapable of finding breath to speak, much less words. The vast caves and tunnels seemed to go on forever, each “room” more magnificent than the last. Sparkling quartz deposits danced behind cleverly placed lights until, with only the briefest warning, the cave guide palmed a switch and plunged us all into the blackest, most suffocating darkness I have ever known. When we emerged at the end of the tour, the setting sun’s rays stabbed into my light-starved pupils and made my eyes water.

Our last night before crossing into Texas, we stayed at a “rustic” little campground with “quaint” port-a-john style latrines. The air mattress I shared with my stepsisters sprang a leak. One of them kicked and twitched all night. The mosquitoes came in waves of trained, disciplined squads that efficiently located and exploited every minute opening in our tent. The ground underneath our slowly sinking mattress was the stuff of which heat-radiating bricks are made. Literally. It was a long night.

No one was in a particularly good mood that last morning. Dad was determined to be on the road by seven that morning, so we wrestled the tent down one last time while it was still wet with dew. This, of course, after everyone was dressed and suitcases were packed into the trunk. We crammed into the Buick damp, groggy, and grouchy. A quick stop through a McDonald’s drive-through later (no one had wanted to get up early enough to cook breakfast), we were hurtling towards the Texas state line.

Texas is big. Eight hundred fifty miles, give or take, hadn’t looked all that bad on the map, in light of how much driving we’d done in the past two weeks. That morning, with the early morning sun glaring into our eyes as we drove, evening and home didn’t seem too far away. We failed to take into account the time warp that occurs in those long, barren stretches of Interstate.

It is an unarticulated and ethereal law of physics that time dilates greatly along the wide open spaces of Texas highways. Although mechanical means of measuring the time of the drive indicate it takes approximately fourteen hours, those actually experiencing the drive can attest, unequivocally, it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of three months, five days, and sixteen hours.

Late that night, or three months later, depending on how you look at it, I nearly cried for joy when that dear, blessed sign finally came into view: Bienvenue en Louisiane! In a couple of hours, we pulled in at Dad’s house. We were all past irritated, past exhausted, and well into “numb.” An onlooker would have thought we were a family of zombies as we unloaded luggage and shuffled the girls inside.

Dad offered to let me stay at their house that night, but I had to get away. It was nearing midnight as I drove towards my mom’s house, and I found myself sobbing and laughing at the same time. It had been a wonderful trip. It had been a horrible trip. It had been the Trip from Hell. And I would never forget it. sobbing and laughing at the same time. It had been a wonderful trip. It had been a horrible trip. It had been the Trip from Hell. And I would never forget it.