Listening to the CB Radio as We Traveled Across America

As young kids and teenagers, my siblings and I traveled everywhere with my parents. One year we would go camping in Yellowstone or at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Other years we would spend a week on the beach in Hawaii. Some of our favorite trips were traveling across the country. The first time we took this kind of a trip, we traveled from Salt Lake City along Interstate 80 to the East Coast of America. We traveled through the Midwest states of Illinois, Iowa and Ohio. We stopped at my great-uncle’s house in Iowa, caught lightning bugs and put them in jars. We ended up in Washington, DC where we toured all of the monuments and museums.

We did many things to keep us entertained along the way. We would play the alphabet game. We looked at the letters on all of the road signs and tried to be the first one to complete the entire alphabet. We slept much of the way and ate lots of snacks. One fun activity was playing with my dad’s CB radio. We could talk to all of the big truck drivers on the CB radio. They would tell us of good places to eat in the next town or city. Often we would just sit and listen to them tell each other interesting stories.