Vacations — you either thrive or, at least, survive

Summer’s unofficially here and post-pandemic plans are being made for vacations and doing things we haven’t been able to do in over a year.

I’m expecting company from three states — at the same time. And that’s OK! The last time my family vacationed together my kids were, well, kids. One year it was a Missouri River float. Another time it was a trip to the coast kicked off by Kalispell’s first Mountain Madness airshow in 1999. My sister and brother-in-law had come in from Ohio for the air show and the next day the six of us piled into a 26-foot rented motorhome and headed for the Washington/Oregon coast.

We got as far south as Paradise when the fuel pump also went south. We limped back into Plains and parked next to an abandoned car wash. It was July and hot … hotter in Plains. We were under an awning, thank God, so at least the sun wasn’t beating down on our “tin can.”

Being a Sunday, no repair shops were open so we bought a deck of cards and some cold drinks at the mini-mart next door; it wasn’t long before everyone was slap happy. Next to us was a large cage filled with at least a hundred old tires. As we toured the grounds after it had cooled off, I dubbed it the “Tire Garden.” More than 20 years later all any of us has to say are those two words and we crack up.

The repair shop didn’t have the fuel pump in stock on Monday. My husband called his workplace, found a logging truck driver heading our way from Kalispell and asked him to pick up the part at NAPA and drive it down to us in Plains. Problem solved. We had to wait most of the day for the shop to install it, so we checked out the old stone jail in town, walked down to the Clark Fork River, and hung out for a bit in the air-conditioned library.

We were back on the road by 5 p.m., having lost a day and a half of vacation, but spirits were high finally heading to Seattle. The next morning, after coffee was poured at a campground in Ellensburg, Washington, I opened the camper’s screen door and my sister was sitting at the picnic table in her bathrobe, hair up in giant rollers, big sunglasses.

“When’s breakfast?” she says while enjoying a smoke.

“Whenever you feel like makin’ it,” I think to myself.

Lucky for her, I was well-prepared (I’d been grocery shopping, packing and prepping for weeks).

After Jim maneuvered the motorhome through Seattle’s urban streets, searching for a parking spot, we ended up at Quest Stadium and caught the bus downtown.

We walked from Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market and back, taking in the city vibe before hitting the road again.

Coincidentally, as we were heading south on I-5 and passed Boeing Field the U.S. Navy Blue Angel No. 7 jet, which we’d seen two days earlier at the airshow, was flying parallel to us.

Along the coast we stopped at various historic sites, then splurged at a swanky motor coach resort where the minimum length requirement was 25 feet. We barely qualified; clearly outclassed. But we arrived just in time to walk down to the beach and toast the sunset.

The next day our neighbor confessed that when we first filed out one by one he wondered how many of us were actually in there.

In Newport, Oregon, my theatrical sister, again in big rollers and big sunglasses, pretended she was “Lil” so we could use our mom’s national park pass at Yaquina Head Lighthouse — we all collapsed in laughter as we pulled away. We also stopped at the iconic Mo’s for steaming bowls of clam chowder.

On our way home we visited the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville. Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, the largest wooden aircraft ever built, is on permanent display there.

We headed back to Missoula to drop off my sister and brother-in-law for their flight back to Ohio — after threading the needle through a wildfire that nearly shut down I-90 — and had time to shop at the mall while my husband, after a very long drive, took a much-needed nap in the shade.

When we returned home the person we’d rented the motorhome from reimbursed us in full for the fuel pump repair.

All in all, it was a memorable vacation and no one got on anyone’s nerves … much.

Happy trails.

Community editor Carol Marino may be reached at 758-4440 or cmarino@dailyinterlake.com