I was seventeen. I wanted to get lost. I wanted static on the radio and a boy in the backseat who wasn’t my little brother. But you don’t say that to a man who cried when they discontinued his favorite brand of canned chili.
We stayed for forty minutes. We didn’t take a single picture. Then Dad turned the car around, the map still useless in the back seat, and we drove home the long way.
— Margot
That was the whole point of the trip. My father, a man who still prints MapQuest directions and keeps a Thomas Guide in his glove compartment “just in case the satellites go dark,” had planned every mile of our two-week journey from Seattle to the Grand Canyon and back.
For two hours, we bounced along that forgotten road. The canyon walls rose up on either side, striped like a jawbreaker. Sam fell asleep with his head on a stuffed pterodactyl. Mom passed back peanut butter crackers. And Dad didn’t say a word. blog amateur
“Gas is low,” Mom said softly. “Back is sixty miles.”
For the first six days, everything went exactly to script. We saw the Petrified Forest (Dad took 200 photos of rocks). We ate at a diner where the waitress called us “hon.” We sang “Sweet Caroline” so many times that Sam threatened to jump out of the moving vehicle. I was seventeen
Finally, the road dead-ended at a view that wasn’t on any map.
Sam woke up. “Whoa,” he said.
Everyone looked at me. I never had opinions on logistics. I only had opinions on playlists and whether my brother was touching me.