My first exposure to geography outside of my own state came well before I entered school. No, the tantalizing possibilities of far-flung destinations outside my immediate environs were not presented to me through books or maps but through . . . license plates.

 

I know my parents weren’t alone on the highways in trying to distract a passel of siblings in the backseat from who was poking whom by playing various “Look out the window” games. With seven kids in my family, such distractions were essential to maintaining sanity and a small measure of civility in the car, even if we were only going to the grocery store. The license plate game was far and away our favorite.

 

As you might imagine, it was not difficult to inject a sense of competition into who could spot an out-of-state plate and identify it—first! One didn’t necessarily have to read but only have a good memory for color combinations and images matched to places. Once you learned that Colorado’s, say, had white mountain peaks silhouetted against forest green, it was fairly easy to know which state that car that just whizzed past was from. Reading did help, though. In fact, sometimes it was the motto and not the state name that registered in those milliseconds: Pacific Wonderland, Land of 10,000 Lakes, Famous Potatoes, The Garden State.

 

Those images and phrases allowed me to realize that there were all kinds (at least 50!) of interesting places out there ready to reveal coastlines, waterways, farmlands and forests accessible directly from the street that ran by my house. Maybe that’s why on road trips when my girls were growing up, we would prod them to lift noses out of books to see where that pickup pulling a camper might be from. It fostered conversations and stories about places near and far and I believe opened their eyes to the world to be explored out there.

 

How about you? Have you maintained road trip rituals from your childhood with your own kids?

 

Happy trails!

 

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader