The approach of warm Summer weather means the news is full of predictions about how the increase in auto use will mean higher gas prices, proving once again that self-fulfilling prophecies are easy when you have a bunch of analysts who own oil stock. But I'd rather focus on a time when you could pleasantly anticipate and plan vacation trips and holiday drives without giving a lot of thought to the price of gas.

When I was a kid I was luckier than some because my parents always felt that a Summer vacation trip of some sort was a necessary thing. It was good to see America and it was just plain fun to find every quirky roadside attraction for miles around. In lean years, our trip might be just a long weekend spent driving around the Midwest (where we lived) but when things were good we'd venture out for a week or more, and I remember one memorable trip all the way to Yellowstone — but more later about that.

Sometimes we'd even form a mini-caravan of two by going on a vacation trip with my uncle and aunt and their kids in their car and us in ours. The two families were close - my mother and my aunt were sisters - but going on a car trip together still required some management, and the pitfalls were everywhere. For example, the families would take turns picking the restaurant for dinner each night — but of course that meant the other family would then carp endlessly about how bad a choice it was.

Picking a place to stay was another dangerous situation because this was before the advent of countless well-known chain motels, with uniformity of design and guarantees of sanitary rooms. We'd usually find ourselves considering a questionable-looking "tourist court", and when things looked a little iffy we'd insist on inspecting one of the units before agreeing to stay there. (I remember that my mother and aunt were especially interested in looking closely at the bathroom.)