Daryl May's travel writing draws from his visits to forty-five U.S. states, nine Canadian provinces, and sixty countries. Whether as a notable hiker or a lowly hitchhiker - or in cars, boats, bulldozers, planes and RVs - his stories are generally wistful and self-deprecating as he faces adversity and extricates himself without losing his sense of humor.
Daryl and Jennifer May
There must have been a thousand others starting a similar trip that day. So many northeners migrate south at some point each winter that we have a term for those that bide awhile - snowbirds. In RVs or cars, the journey begins in the cold unfit for camping, so the parking lots of motels along north-south highways include RVs of all classes. Only down south do the RVs peel off for RV parks, while the cars head for hotels or condos. Our van conversion at the time was a Ford, not unlike the GMC van conversion we acquired in later life – the “Ambulance” described in earlier stories.
Not much beyond Detroit, where we’d started, the engine warning light came on. Pulling off the interstate, and checking under the hood, I found that the oil level was low, in spite of an oil change just before we left home. Pouring a quart of oil into the engine, I made directly for a service station. In those days, service stations generally had a service bay or two and a mechanic. Generously recognizing that we were on a long trip, he put the car on his lift without much of a wait. There, finding the oil filter loose, he tightened it. Then we headed back to the interstate, and were on our way. I cursed my hometown mechanic who hadn’t tightened the filter right, but was grateful that worse hadn’t happened.
Relieved that we’d addressed the problem while the service station was open, it was now getting dark. I didn’t want to drive in the dark in case the problem wasn’t fully solved. So we pulled into a nearby nondescript motel somewhere near Toledo. Whoever coined the term Roach Motel had this motel in mind. We avoided a section of floor where the floorboards bowed because the floor beams had rotted. Three lamps, the television and an anemic electric heater were all powered from one outlet through a spaghetti arrangement of aging and cracking extension cords. We had an end unit, which in winter, lost more heat than could be generated within, so we froze all night – the windows icing-up inside as well as out. Any temptation to head for a better place was made moot by fast-descending snow that quickly obscured the driveway edges. Putting my head out the door, I saw that the office was closed, with a No Vacancy sign flickering ominously in front of the almost-empty motel. The snow was coming down so fast that you could scarcely see through it.
The May family van
As early as possible next morning, after a shower in lukewarm water, I fired up the van, swept and scraped snow off the windows, and put the heater on at full blast. Rocking the van forward and back, a maneuver necessitated by skidding in the parking place, I verified that we could at least get out of our parking slot – a necessary beginning. Jennifer emerged from the motel (we surely had room number 13) with the boys in snowsuits and boots. Belting them into our nice warm van, we were already more comfortable than anytime the night before.
We made it to the interstate through a mixture of luck and skill, struggling through the deeper patches of snow. Once on the interstate, we found it had been plowed of snow, leaving mainly ice and fog to worry about. Some big rigs were on their sides besides the highway, a warning to drive slowly and stay clear of anything else that moved, which was virtually nothing. It was touch and go for the first couple of hours, with visibility no more than a few car lengths, but then conditions eased, and we could raise our speed to 45 mph or so – and gradually we put the miles behind us.
The boys thought it was fun. “Not half as much fun,” I said, “as when we reach Miami.”
When I gassed up the van near Dayton, I saw that we still had a foot of snow on the roof of the van, where it was somehow clinging but doing no harm. We stopped the night in Kentucky. By now the roads were dry though edged with frozen slush. We could make a decent speed. “We’ll be in Miami tomorrow,” I told the boys, optimistically. Andrew took it in thoughtfully. We were blessed with smart boys, and patient ones.
But we slowed down through the mountains of Tennessee, especially that stretch with the long climb approaching Chattanooga. I am surely not the world’s best driver, but I pride myself on not speeding, especially in poor conditions. We stopped somewhere north of Atlanta where we enjoyed a nice restaurant. It wasn’t warm enough to stay in a campground in our unheated van. We slept comfortably in a Days Inn instead.
“We’ll get to Miami tomorrow,” I announced.
“You said that yesterday,” said Andrew.
“I know,” I agreed. “You guys have been very patient. You’re going to love Miami when we get there.”
At our stop in Georgia, I saw that the snow on the van had turned to frozen slush, perhaps six inches high at this point. It had stubbornly resisted the windstream, and even my gloved hands and ice scraper could not free it. No other vehicles were similarly adorned. The weather was warmer, but scarcely above freezing. I like to drive without a coat, and am often too lazy to wear one for a brief dash to a restaurant or when pumping gas. I carried our bags into the Days Inn, wishing we were already in Miami. Along with the bags: Phil’s potty-seat, bright yellow, that I carried up the motel stairway in short sleeves.
And so we arrived in Florida the next afternoon, stopping for the night near Gainesville. It’s been recently reported that all of the states have snow, except Florida. It was surely like that at the time, unless you counted the ice still on the roof of our van.
“We’ll definitely get to Miami tomorrow,” I said. I could tell from Andrew’s expression that my credibility hung in the balance. Wherever Miami was, he was sure it wasn’t anywhere close.
Next morning, we barreled down the interstate, turning on to the Florida Turnpike, with Miami Beach just a few hours ahead. The skies had turned blue, and the view now included palm trees and swamp. The weather was “sunny and mild” and not yet warm. But it was no longer cold. For us, that was a dramatic change in the right direction.
Our RVing in Florida awaited the end of a work conference, which was why we had booked into the conference hotel for the next three nights. It had a sandy beach and a pool. We just knew the boys would enjoy the beach after the miserable weather up north. And I knew that Jennifer would enjoy the pampering of a nice hotel. Heck, I reckoned that I’d enjoy most everything about Miami after the long drive.
We sped along Collins Avenue with our AAA triptyque in hand (GPS not having been invented yet), and swept on to the circular driveway of the hotel. And that’s when Andrew, patient for so long, uttered the sentence that’s been famous in our family ever since:
“When are we getting to your Ami, Daddy?”
I could only reply, “We’re finally in my Ami, son.”
Then a valet took our van, blanching at his first view of “snow”, not on the ski slopes as he’d imagined, but atop our salt- and dirt-encrusted van.
A bellboy stacked our bags on to a brass cart with silk tassles. On top of the bags: Phil’s potty-seat, an even brighter shade of yellow in the Miami sun.
Read more of Daryl May's 'Stories from the Road' series.