What a nice piece of writing, but I'm not surprised. Andrew Leonard rocks. I just read an older piece of his on his home state of Florida that knocked me out! But back to our story...I enjoyed the journey through the years, through relationships, through California. As an aspiring non-fiction writer, this is just the kind of non-fiction I just love to sink my teeth into. What a great metaphor for the journey of life, those ever changing road trips. And how about that "In 'N Out" folks! Right ON Tiana! Me too! On the way home from Big Sur, it's the only way to go.

I would really like to read something substantive in Salon about parents who can't afford:

a minivan

the gasoline

toys

meals out

travel

This fluffy piece didn't say much. I got no real glimpse of the children's minds, just an image of their decently coping with another thing children of divorce have no choice about.

I'm tired of poignant little self-justifying essays about minor upper-class dilemmas.

We are veterans of the Interstate 5 road trip and Andrew captures what it is like to a tee! I taught my daughter how to use a portable tape player when she was 2 years old for our sojourns up Hwy 5. She would say "I want to hear the Pocahontas story again!" and my husband would say "If I hear the Pocahontas story again, someone is walking the rest of the way."

You have to develop a rhythm to these trips. Where I used to sit in my living room, listening to record albums on the stereo, my daughter listens to tapes and CDs in the back seat of the car. You see the different plants in the different seasons, and you always always always avoid the road on the Wednesday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend!

Thanks for a nice article!

Our parents took us on many-a-car trip through the Central Valley of California back in the 50's and 60's. My father was a habitual drunk driver. My mother didn't have a driver's licence.

The sheer terror of flying through the night -- wondering if the next set of approaching headlights would be the one that would mercifully killed us -- was all we needed to stave off any boredom.

The nuanced recollections of a thoughful, caring dad like Mr. Leonard almost seems ludicrous in the face of my own upbringing. I'd give what remains of my nuts for 1% of the concern his children are grew up with. For their own good, I hope they appreciate it.

Geez - share a private glimpse of your life and get a ration of self-righteous garbage. What kind of masochist are you, Andrew? I'm glad some readers "got" it that you are a wonderful father to a pair of fabulous children, learning and growing every step (OK, mile) of the way. I'm sorry those repetitive trips to Lakewood were even a small part of your marriage's demise. Yes, it would have been better for everybody if Grandmother had visited you more often. Oh well.

It's a pornographic scat picture advertising an adult site...

Tacky and gross, to say the least....

When our daughters were young we flew light planes. The only place you can pull over is at an airport. Potty stops have to be carefully planned as landing, pottying, and taking off again consumes an hour. Then of course when you stop for the night it has to be at an airport where there is a way to get to a motel without renting a car, if one were even available. We were once weathered in at an airport in Michigan. The airport was so new that there were no services, or even a human being. Except of course for the grader driver, who was about to leave in his huge truck with his grader on the back. We got a ride into town with our two little daughters, and were dropped off at the diner. Luckily the waitress owned a motel and she took us there after we ate. After a second night there the weather lifted enough to fly 50 miles to Bay City where there was a little more do to. So even though it took only 16 flying hours to fly from PA to OR, we spent five days doing it. But light planes are very sleep inducing to small children, so all in all it was OK. When the weather was good, which is usually was, it was nice to cruise a 175 MPH watching the traffic below.

Thanks to Andrew Leonard for a great father's day read. I also want to say that I'm sorry your marriage didn't survive, since your article strikes some notes of regret; it sounds like you two have raised some smart & wonderful kids. Good luck to you.

Salon is getting to be very rigid and single-minded in what content it accepts

Just want to add my appreciation of this elegant paean to fatherhood, to parenting. Life on the road with kids does sometimes seem like the crucible for, and the distillation of, the entire maddening, wondrous, redeeming experience. We'll leave the carbon issues aside, except to note that when the time comes (as it surely will and must) that such single-family, single-car journeys are less common, when transportation is eventually more centralized, whenever that time comes, some precious part of what it means to be a family will be lost. But never fear: the road trip will live on in our collective memory forever, and new family rituals will never cease to take shape. I suspect travel, in whatever form and by whatever medium, will always make up a big part of what we will remember from childhood. So you are doing right to have made it a ritual your kids can form a deep and relatively happy association with.

I too used to travel with cloth diapers only, but now find trash cans in gas stations. Sigh.

Thank you, Andrew, for your revealing, honest account of all this.

By the way, whatever happened to the email from Rob Anderson that caused such a fuss? I understand if it may have crossed the "some inappropriate posts may be removed" line, but is there any password-protected, secret-handshake way we well-meaning voyeurs can see it? Just asking.