When I was growing up, my grandparents took my cousin, Johnathan and I on several summer road trips in their RV. We travelled to places like Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore. We even went to Fargo, North Dakota to visit our great-uncle once. My cousin and I were reminiscing about these trips recently and I decided to share a few of my favorite memories.
During one trip, we were driving to our campsite for the night and my grandpa was absolutely convinced that we had to rush to get there because there would be no spots left by the time we arrived. We got there as fast as we could and checked in at the registration desk. To my grandpa’s amazement, they had an opening. Surely, we had gotten the last spot there was! We drove in to find our site and looking around saw only one other site had been taken up. To this day, my grandpa still can’t live down how he frantically raced to get the last spot.
On another trip, my grandparents, my cousin and I were playing a few hands of Uno before bed. My grandma was doing unbelievably well; she was calling out “Uno!” like crazy. After we played a few rounds and my grandma was racking up the points, my grandpa discovered her secret: She was cheating! She would slip a card or two underneath her leg so that she could declare “Uno!” and play her last card. Once my grandpa realized this, he called her out on being a cheater, threw his cards on to the table and yelled, “I’m going to bed!”. He walked stomped to the back of the RV and climbed into bed. As we cleaned up the cards, my cousin started giggling…turns out he was cheating too, just like my grandma! My grandpa has not played another game of Uno since.
I mentioned before we had taken a trip to see my (late) great-uncle in Fargo. When we went to visit him, he had a girlfriend at the time named Alice. One morning, we had my uncle and Alice over for breakfast in the RV. My grandma was making pancakes and Alice was served first. She took a bite and made a bit of a face but didn’t say anything and continued chewing. All of the sudden, my grandma shrieks and tells Alice to stop eating. My grandma had two containers: one had pancake mix and the other had flour…she had accidentally used the flour instead of the pancake mix! Alice didn’t believe in wasting so she ate the entire “paste pancake” without complaining!
The trips I took with my grandparents and my cousin have provided me with many more memories than I could even list here and I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to experience them. I hope you enjoyed reading these little anecdotes as much as I have enjoyed experiencing and telling you about them.
