The Red Cooler

Whenever I'm packing for a family roadtrip, I always wonder what my children will remember most about our travels.  Will it be the places we go?  The sights we see?  Will it be the people we meet along the way?  When they think of their parents packing and preparing, what will jump into their minds?  It'll probably be the most random things that I won't even remember 10 years from now.

We traveled quite a bit when I was growing up.  We lived in the midwest, and my grandparents all lived in Florida.  A lot of hours were spent on the road traveling to see our family.  Before each trip, my mom would carefully prepare.  Amongst other things, we had our suitcases, the 'kitchen' (a basket with all the plastic utensils and kitchen-y extras we could need), beach towels on each seat, coloring books, card games, and the red cooler.

The red cooler fit perfectly in front of my seat in our van.  It made for a great footrest!  It also worked well as a table for playing solitaire.  Packed with lunchmeats, cheeses, and egg salad for my dad, it became a sort of symbol of family vacations for me.

About twice a day while traveling, we would pick up a bag of ice along the way.  This, of course, had to be hit against something repeatedly to break up the ice and make it fit in the red cooler.  Then, there was the careful dumping out of the water that had accumulated from melting ice cubes.  Once we were at our hotel room for the night, there was more dumping of water, and numerous trips to the ice machine to fill it back up again.  The cycle started again the next morning.  I loved that red cooler!

I spotted it just recently in the bottom of a cabinet when I went to go get the cooler we currently use for our roadtrips.  We now have the kind that plugs into the car and doesn't require constant refills of ice.  That's a good thing, too.  If you ask anyone in Europe for a bag of ice, they'll look at you funny.  But just seeing our red cooler brought back so many great memories.  It's one of those random things that I remember about my childhood travels.  When we move back to the US, I think we'll have to start using that red cooler again.