The Journey to the Lakes

It was one of those trips reminiscent of my youth. My son was graduating from Naval Basic Training and the family decided it would be different if we drove out to Chicago instead of flying. I was pumped. For days I was telling my daughters of the traveling adventures of my youth. A good ole Catholic family, large of course, there were nine of us and a huge red station wagon. As the older ones gained their licenses a caravan of cars was formed. Later trailers were attached with all the fixings. We had CBs, for those of you who remember the initial CBs for private use you had to have your call letters visible on your vehicle. We had the stickers from every campground and city we visited. We even belong to the Winnebago travel club. In our youth we ran free in the mountains and along the beaches without seeing our parents for hours. For the kids it was great, but in reality, for our parents, there had to be some type of elevated stress level that we as children were unaware of.

With all this filling my head and the heads of my daughters, we planned the trip. The day of our trip arrived and like days of old we headed out at 2am in the morning. As we left the driveway, it was snowing and the roads were icy. In the back of my mind I’m thinking this is dumb. It was exactly as I remember as a youth As we headed out we immediately began our traveling prayers asking for a safe journey for us and all those traveling. After the initial prayers, we begin and successfully complete the Rosary. By now, everyone is starting to settle in for the journey thinking only of when we will stop for breakfast. I then played the electronic version of Morning Prayer. By the time prayer was complete I could hear the heavy breathing starting in my daughters and Eileen making sure I am ok driving. I was happy, first phase of the trip complete and no problems. 225 miles down and 120 miles to go until are gas fill up.
Then it happened. A quiet voice from the back seat saying, “Dad I’m sorry but I have to go to the bathroom”. Now remembering my youth journeys, everything happens at the gas fill up stop. You eat, go to the bathroom, stretch, make calls etc. The only rule was that it all had to happen when you stop for gas. My initial thought was man 120 miles to go before gas. My second thought was that is a stupid rule. We started looking for a place to stop for restrooms. It was in retrospect a great stop. As we pulled back out onto the highway the car doesn’t feel right. It was pulling to the right and shaking. We blew a tire and the second was leaking. We looked back and thanked God that we were not going down the road at seventy miles an hour where an accident could have happen. We immediately got back to a rest area. Since it was 5:30am in the morning I replaced the spare with a donut and filled the other with air. We started looking for service stations to replace the tires. Four tires later and over three hours behind schedule we again headed west. The rest of the day went pretty well. The roads were in great shape and the sun was shining. In the afternoon the girls had a Top Gun type of experience. We were traveling past a military air base and the jets were swarming all over the area skies. The girls quickly remembered the actors from Top Gun and reenacted the roles of Maverick and Goose trying to find and shoot down the jets. Watching them it was comical and I enjoyed their reenactment very much. Towards late afternoon we were traveling through South Bend, ID area where Eileen and the girls witnessed their first lake effect snow. Out of nowhere we were suddenly riding in small blizzard like conditions. You could see the road in front of you, but everything else was blanked out with fog and snow. We drove for about a half hour in this condition when, as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. The sun was again out and the road clear. The girls thought it was the spookiest thing. One more time, as it was dark, a lake effect snow was upon us. Again as quickly as it came it was gone. We arrived in Great Lakes, IL around 7:30pm. We arrived safe under God’s care and protection. More to write later...