Are we almost there?

How many times during a family vacation have we heard that?

When I was a child I must have asked thousands of times. My family always took driving trips. I didn't get on an airplane until I was working as a travel agent. Back in the day there weren't portable video games, Ipods, even TV's with DVD players for the cars. We just watched the road signs and scenery along the way, playing pididle- that game when a headlight was out on a car.... Now, kids can be entertained by a million different devices- but they still come out with, "are we almost there?" We're all in a hurry to get somewhere fast. My mom used to say, "all good things come to those who wait." I never know who coined that phrase, but he must have been a smart man- might have been a woman, we're much more patient.

My father used to be a driver, when I was little. I remember him driving the tractor trailer for the post office and delivering milk, too. So, he was an accomplished driver. But, there was always that direction dillema. We would drive, sometimes for hours, (ok it felt like it) trying to find the right way. My daughter drove, with my parents, to Canada, quite a few years later, and nicknamed him "wrong way". Why don't men like to ask? Now we use mapquest or some other website to get the directions before we get on the road, most of us don't even have maps anymore.

Well, here's to the old-fashioned driving trips with mom and dad- getting lost along the way and bonding. Remember those days when gasoline is $8.00 a gallon and we all have to walk.