How to train your children to enjoy really long road trips

Several weeks ago, I told you about my 18-year-old son’s spring break, which involved driving 36 hours to Yosemite National Park with three buddies, and then driving back.

He was still on the road when I last wrote about it, so a lot of you have wondered if he made it back OK, and some of you have wondered how in the world a kid could tolerate driving that much.

The simple answer to the latter question might be a combination of genetics and childhood training. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

As you may recall, Robert drove home from Athens on the Friday his spring break started, and then left at midnight on his 5,000-mile trek.

We heard from him four times over the next eight days.

On Sunday morning, he called to say he was in California. On Monday afternoon, he called to confirm reports that his campground had been closed after a woman was killed in a snowstorm by a falling tree. Oh, and the cellular reception was really bad up there and he probably wouldn’t be calling anymore.

Late in the week, he called to say they were on the coast but heading home. They just had three quick stops to make.

“Redwood, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon,” Robert said.

On Saturday night, as we were moving our clocks forward and going to bed, he called to say they were in Memphis.

When we came downstairs on Sunday morning, we found a mountain of dirty clothes and camping gear in the middle of the living room floor.

He was home.

Robert left for school several hours later with his sister, after eating a big lunch and showing us a quick slideshow of his adventures.

In Yosemite, the waterfalls froze and ice sounded like gunshots when it hit the rocks below. They hiked 10 miles up a mountain until they got bogged down in six feet of snow.

Apparently, in three days they’d done everything there was to do in a 1,169-square-mile state park, so they drove four hours west to San Francisco.

They toured the city and drove up to a point where they could look down on the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. They drove to Muir Woods and Muir Beach.

Someone suggested they stop at a fancy seafood restaurant, but then they realized they hadn’t showered or changed clothes in days.

They took turns driving and sleeping and keeping the driver awake. They stopped at Joshua Tree at 3 in the morning. We could see the stars in their photos.

Ah, the freedom of the road!

As I’ve told you before, Bess and I spent four years in Europe traveling and camping everywhere from Norway to the coast of Italy. So maybe wanderlust is in all of our blood.

I also chalk it up to this: We never watched movies in our mini van when we were on long trips.

Actually, we tried it once on a trip to New York City. The kids had been dying to see snow, but when we drove through a winter wonderland in Pennsylvania, they were fighting about which cartoons to watch and didn’t want to stop or even look out the window.

Later, they complained that we hadn’t seen any snow.

Instead, we talk, we tell stories, we laugh, we sing, we listen to books on tape. It sounds corny, but I think the best times we’ve spent together are during trips that seem to go on forever.

All the time, we’re looking out the window and watching the world, and stopping when we see something we like.

So Robert came by it honestly.

And then took it to the extreme.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 3:02 PM with the headline "How to train your children to enjoy really long road trips."