My first big cross-country road trip was the one I took in 1971 with mom in her 1968 Plymouth Valiant out to California, to see my dad’s side of the family for the first time since I was two. A few years later I took another road trip in my 1973 Pinto with some friends in their Dodge van, in which we wandered around the southwest for a bit and then I split off from them and went to visit my California family again. Back then most gasoline pumps could only handle prices of less than a dollar a gallon, which gives you an idea of how cheap it was, and everyone thought it would always be.

Taking a cross country road trip used to be a thing you did when you were still young enough to have summer vacation and a newly minted driver’s license in your wallet. It got you out of the familiar world you grew up in and gave you a first hand look at the rest of the country you’d mostly only ever seen in TV shows and you noticed that it was…different than what the TV said it was. Later you might discover that most of your favorite westerns were actually shot just outside of LA. The real west was different…way more expansive and beautiful. And mysterious. Timeless. Travel is broadening like that…I highly recommend it. And back then it was cheap. Because fuel and food was cheap and when you’re young you don’t mind driving for hours into the night and the next day, and sleeping in the car from time to time.

Whenever I get back on the road I feel that same rush of excitement I felt those first road trips. It never fails. But at age 61 I have to keep remembering that it’s not like it was back in the early 70s. For one thing, the Interstate Highway system is complete now. It wasn’t then. I remember parts of it between Arizona and the coast suddenly becoming two lane roads in the middle of nowhere. What are now the “business loops” through a lot of small towns were all you had before the highway around them was completed. I-40 dumped you right into the center of Barstow. Also, fuel isn’t less than 40 cents a gallon anymore and motels cost more than 20 bucks a night.

When I got home from my trip to California and back last December/January I added up my fuel chits and posted the result to my Facebook page. I was particularly interested because the sudden drop in fuel prices would mean my trip had to have cost me less. And it did, by a substantial amount. The total fuel cost was $511.06. Previously I’d spent around eight to nine hundred for fuel, but that was to feed gasoline burners. I own a diesel now and notice right away my fuel costs had dropped.

But there are other expenses to take into account on a road trip, particularly the motel bills which I knew would add a big piece of change to the overall cost. I just now got around to adding up the motel bills, and they amount to $565.86. So there’s about a thousand bucks just for fuel and a place to sleep. Still not so bad. But I’m in a place now where I can afford that too. Were I still the youngster I was back in the 70s my jaw would drop and I’d turn white as a sheet to see that bill. And that wasn’t all of it either.

I know from the credit card I put all my travel expenses on that the total for the entire thing came to around two grand, but a bunch of that was grocery shopping and eating at nice places when I finally got to California. My brother and I took turns picking up the tab so it wasn’t all on me, and I got to stay with him so that saved me renting a place out there. Plus I spent $240 bucks to give Spirit a lovely full detailing and hand wax job.

You take care of the car that gives you the open road. This was my second trip to California with Spirit and it is a pure pleasure to drive. I can drive it for hours at a time and not feel fatigued, and being a diesel it has an 800 mile range on a full tank. Best road trip car I’ve ever had, and I’ve not really ever had any bad ones. The Pinto got me further longer than I had any right to expect from economy class Detroit. But  Spirit is bigger, nicer, surer footed, way more powerful, takes everything from the desert heat to the winter deep freeze in stride, and its massive amounts of torque (for a passenger car) gives it a magnificent indifference to the steepest of mountain highways, either going up or down. You have to experience engine braking on a ten mile plus downhill grade with a diesel to really appreciate it.

Anyway…as I was saying, vacations aren’t cheap but the surprising thing for me looking at my chits lately is not even road trip vacations are inexpensive anymore, which is surprising when you think about it. It’s obvious a stay at a nice beach vacation spot, or Disney World, is going to be costly. You don’t expect just bopping around the highways and staying at cheap motels every night is going to cost all that much. But it actually does. I have to remember when I start planning these things nowadays that it’s going to cost a lot more than it did back in 1974.