My family survived its first road trip, and I recorded these bon mots along the way.
• Stop doing that or I’ll take the bacon away! – Terry
• It doesn’t look like we’re in America anymore. – J., age 12, while looking at the scenery of Utah.
• But I saved $1,000 on the car rental! – Terry, as justification for doing anything that cost extra money.
• Really?! Utah liquor laws suck! – Terry, trying to navigate the byzantine liquor laws of Utah.
• He got the sugar from the llama. – J., on suspected source of C.’s hyperactivity.
• You two are banished to the Snoring Room. – Wife., on Terry and C.’s new sleeping arrangement after the first night of the family sleeping together in one hotel room.
• The solution to pollution is dilution. – Cody, river rafting guide, on the acceptability of peeing in the river.
• I’m from America. – C., age 8, to a river rafting companion, while still in America.
• I’m just going to pretend those are all crabs. Crabs. Crabs. Crabs. And not spiders. – Wife, ashore, encountering animal life while adding something to the river that needed to be diluted.
• Fun fact: Scorpions glow white under a black light. – Park ranger
• Rafting companion, on the smell of her young husband during her pregnancy:
He smelled like an old man.
Wife: Terry smelled like an unwashed homeless person. I made him take showers every day after that.
• Park ranger at Dinosaur National Park: Pterodactyls aren’t technically dinosaurs.
C: Well, that’s awkward.
• At least 20x: Factor by which the number of white Ford 150 pick-up trucks exceeds the number of people of color in Vernal, UT. – Terry (estimate)
• The horrors of road trips: The nearest doughnut store is 181 miles away. – Terry.
• I mean, who doesn’t love ninjas? – C.
• Craig, CO: Where there are more taxidermists than bakeries. – Terry
• What kind of frou-frou coffee drinks do you have? – Beefy blue-collar guy at Eggington’s restaurant in Casper, WY.
• C.: I’m sick of ice cream.
Terry: I will never utter those words.
• Abraham Lincoln’s nose looks like Darth Vader’s helmet. – C., at Mt. Rushmore. (We all agreed.)
• We have illegal chickens. But legal pigs. – Melanie, our tour guide for Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands.
• Melanie: Other animals, such as ferrets and walking owls, use the prairie dog burrows when the prairie dog’s move out.
Terry: So its like prairie dog Air BnBs?
Melanie: . . . Sure. . .
• I’m a speed demon. – C., while inner-tubing on a lake in MN and right before he was thrown off the inner-tube because the boat was going too fast.
• Alexander, age 6, upon seeing Cinderella during a movie preview: That’s Cinderella. We should sue her.
Terry: Why?
Alexander: She came to a party, and she was lame. She was supposed to do face painting but didn’t.
Terry: Do you have a good lawyer?
Alexander: You’ll have to ask my dad.
• There are so many white people, it is kind of unsettling. – Terry, a white person from an ethnically diverse city, to Wife., on the demographics of the states visited (UT, WY, SD, MN, CO).
• It’s beautiful! – J., looking out the window rather than at an electronic device, making the trip to that point worth it.