For every American, an epic road trip is a citizenship requirement

The amazing Vermilion Cliffs of Arizona. At 70 mph from the highway. Shot with an iPhone.

The quintessential American experience is the epic road trip. It's as simple as the fact that we are Americans. So we go places and do things, often on an epic scale. I would suggest that you are un-American if you don't. The epic road trip is in our blood. Our collective American DNA is that we are a nation of explorers. The New World. Jamestown. John Smith. The Mayflower. Lewis & Clark. The Oregon Trail. Apollo 11. (Going to the moon constitutes a most epic road trip. It would be hard to top that one.)

The epic road trip is a distinctly American rite of passage. It is a continuation of the historical narrative that establishes us as a people of varying backgrounds but who singularly refuse to be hemmed in by lines on a map, or distance, or barriers -- be they mountains, valleys, oceans, rivers, deserts or thin air, including the really, really thin air and rather expansive and even foreboding distances of outer space.

We all are descended from people who arrived here from somewhere else. Our ancestors were explorers and fortune hunters. They were the restless, the visionaries, the determined and the undaunted. If they determined a better life was to be found elsewhere, whether it was across an ocean, or a continent, or simply somewhere else, why they packed up and went.

I like to pack up and went. I always have, from the time I was a little shaver and summers and Christmas vacation were typically reserved for road trips. In the grand scheme of things, my roots are traced back to people of European stock who at some point packed up and went on a road trip -- ocean trip? -- to America. I have no desire as they did to leave the homeland. Rather, I long to see the homeland. As much of it as I can.

What triggered all this musing about the great American experience of the epic road trip is a song. I happened upon it the other day and a memory flooded back in my mind of one of the many epic road trips I have had the privilege of taking. The song is by U2, titled "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It was released in 1987, the year I graduated from Bend High School.

The summer following my graduation, my good friend, Chris Hamilton, asked if I'd take a little road trip with him. Chris was a talented bicyclist and my memory is that he was going to compete in a bike race in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. I think it was late June, maybe early July, when we road tripped in epic fashion. Chris, our mutual friend Dean Dilday, another bicyclist who was a couple or few years younger than us, and I set out from Bend, Ore., to  drive 570 miles or so to Mammoth Lakes. I believe we were driving Chris' Toyota pickup that had a canopy on it. Now mind you, this is approaching 30 years ago so I may be fuzzy on a few things. But not everything.

We listened to a lot of U2 on that trip. The Joshua Tree, which I still consider the quintessential U2 album, was released that year and by the time the summer rolled around I had the songs memorized. Those songs are indelibly impressed in my mind. As is the road trip.

One thing I'll never forget is stepping out the door for my first run in Mammoth Lakes. At the time I was a couple of months away from heading to the University of Portland on a track scholarship. In Bend, I trained at an altitude approaching 4,000 feet, where the thin air deprived my lungs of oxygen but helped give me a competitive advantage when I raced at lower altitudes. I was fast and fit. Or so I thought.

I was wholly unprepared for what I was to encounter in Mammoth Lakes. Sitting near 8,000 feet of elevation where the air is so thin that simply getting out of bed gets you winded, when I was on that inaugural run I sincerely believed my lungs had somehow caught fire. Surely I was self-combusting, which meant death by oxygen-deprivation was imminent. Yet I somehow cheated death that day, probably because I slowed way down. But the epicness of any American road trip is directly proportional to how close you came to some sort of permanent and premature demise. The fact that I nearly died of oxygen deprivation on a mountain in California that sits not all that far from Death Valley counts for max points in the epic road trip scoring chart.

Yet there are two things from that road trip that I am forever grateful to have experienced. A premature death due to oxygen deprivation not being one of them. They both occurred on the trip home. We left Mammoth Lakes after the racing and bolted for Bend. Somewhere along the way, whether it was still in northeastern California or southeastern Oregon I can't recall, we stopped at a turnout or rest area amid the sagebrush and occasional juniper tree of the American West's Great Basin. It's a place that I like to say is a chlorophyll-free zone, emptied of most anything of a green, leafy nature and populated by the muted tones of plants and trees that have mastered the art of surviving in forbidding climates where water is often merely a mirage.

Exhausted, we bedded down for the night in the cool, open air. Above us, unfolding across the unfettered horizon, was the Milky Way in all of its astounding glory. The stars at home in their extraterrestrial glory spilled across the inky sky, lighting it up. I have never forgotten the glory of it all.

The second thing I have not forgotten occurred the next day. As we made a beeline for home across the emptied out landscape, we made a spur of the moment decision. The "spur of the moment decision" is an absolute requirement of any epic road trip. An epic road trip that lacks the suspended judgment and inadvisability of a "spur of the moment decision" is simply a road trip. It's just going from Point A to Point B. There's nothing too epic about that.

We stopped at Fort Rock, an extraordinary natural feature that juts 200 feet above the barren, foreboding Oregon High Desert. It's like a mirage, an ancient fort with rocky palisades stretching high above landscape. It was well out of our way, but well worth the stop. We killed an afternoon there, three teenage boys who, for at least this one time, were wise beyond their years. We climbed over the rocky walls -- Dean pretty much won the climbing competition as he shinnied up the walls -- and gawked at the views. It is a place very few have seen and experienced, which makes it all the better. On the epic road trip point scale, we scored a big, fat cha-ching. Link: Fort Rock

As the memories of my epic summer of 1987 road trip flooded back to me, spurred by the chords and lyrics of that iconic U2 anthem, I thought how fitting it all remains. I haven't found everything. I haven't seen everything. I'm not done making epic road trips. I'm an American after all.

No Child Left Behind: All The Sabos Came Back*

I'm not sure where to categorize on the scale of miracles what occurred this summer in the Sabo family. Somewhere between the Red Sea parting and the lame man walking might be where we would insert: "Sabos travel 8,100 miles across America and don't lose any kids." Now, don't get me wrong, there may have been times where the Sabo adults may have thought it to be in the best interest of family harmony to "forget" a child in say, Wyoming. Or Nebraska. Maybe even metropolitan southern Utah/northern Arizona.

That child may have been 3 and go by the handle of "Judah." But after much prayer and fasting it was decided to keep Judah with us in the van. We just duct taped his mouth shut. Just kidding! We did no such thing ... though I confess to the sin of entertaining such devious thoughts. Ultimately we survived, thanks in no small part to portable DVD players and a gallon of Benadryl. Just kidding again! We were drug-free on the trip. But I am very thankful for modern technological marvels such as portable DVD players. The only downside? I pretty much know "Frozen"line by line and wake up in cold sweats on some nights with "Veggie Tales" songs crashing through my sub-conscious and horrible nightmares of Larry Boy in superhero tights.

You hear horror stories about people leaving kids at gas stations and in restaurants or other places. And perhaps it's remarkable that we can walk into an In-N-Out restaurant in American Fork, Utah, or picnic at Little America in Wyoming, and drive away with all kids present and accounted for. What's our secret? I try not to travel with more than 10 children at a time, that way I can get in my airport shuttle van and use all my fingers and toes to count kids. If all of the digits are used, I know that we're good. Which is exactly what we did on our trip home from Oregon this summer. On the way out to Oregon Claire trailed us in her car and then remained behind to attend Cornerstone School of Ministry in Corvallis, Ore., for the year.

So it was 10 kids all the way home. Piece of cake, eh? All I had to do was count. But I remember one time my heart going a flutter when I looked back about an hour after we had stopped and were back on the road -- I believe we were somewhere in Arizona, or maybe Oklahoma ... or maybe it was Nebraska -- and try as I might, I could only see 9 little heads back there. I asked around to see if anyone had seen a little blond-haired, blue-eyed kid named Ezra and didn't get an immediate reply ... it was almost time to hit the panic button. After a few moments Ezra's head finally popped up. Big exhale. Have you ever had that feeling before? It's horrible.

There may have been one time we left a child at church on a Sunday several years ago. But it may have been a situation when someone called us to inquire if we were short a kid in the van while we were only a few blocks away, so we knew that the child was in good hands. Not exactly panic time, but still something where our parenting card could have been up for review.

When I think about all the things that could go wrong while cruising through 18 states, three time zones and the Texas Panhandle, I am very thankful that we fulfilled all the requirements of the "No Child Left Behind" Act.

*Except Claire, who remained in Oregon to attend Cornerstone School of Ministry. We really, really, really miss her. In fact, Julie cried pretty much all the way to Idaho after saying good-bye to Claire in the Multnomah Falls parking lot.

Chasing Mr. Darcy. Or Was It Mr. Wickham?

No road trip across America is complete without a running of the bulls. Or in my case, a running of the bull. We were on the homestretch of our 4-week jaunt across the U.S. when we landed in very rural Tennessee, a type of place where the outskirts and inskirts of town are pretty much the same thing. It would become a night I'll never forget, an unexpected moment of bonding with my teenage son Abram that we'll talk about for years.

We took a respite from our travels for dinner and fellowship at the hillside estate of our good friends Chris & Sharyl Bertoni, who make their home in VanLeer, Tennessee. The greater VanLeer area is the type of place where everyone still has a land line, folks in oncoming pickups wave to you and cattle and horses outnumber residents. It was right around sunset, about the time we were rounding up our kids to hit the road when the Bertonis got a call from a neighbor. It seems one of the two Bertoni bulls was about a half-mile away in their neighbor's yard. Chris shook his head. This particular bull had a history of following through on his thoughts that the grass is greener in other pastures. Chris was not amused, but needed some help in rounding up the wayward bull. He asked Abram, our 14-year-old, and me if we could help him out. No problem, we said. To me it sounded like a good adventure, a good capper to a memorable road trip that was drawing to a close. Abram didn't look so sure about things and quietly asked me if the bull would kill him. I assured him it wouldn't. I mean it's not like we would be chasing him down with a stick or something, right Chris?

Well, actually that's exactly what we did. There's nothing like chasing a ton of beef with love on his mind armed with a stick. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right? We walked outside and Chris handed Abram a length of sturdy 1-inch PVC pipe and he handed me a handle of what appeared to be a garden tool, minus the garden tool part. We could use them to wave at the bull to get him to go where we wanted -- he showed us how to properly wave our arms and look threatening -- and if that didn't work we could whack the bull about the head. Okaaaayyyyyy Chris. If you say so ...

And with that we were off, walking down the long, sloping gravel driveway armed with our sticks and our wits -- and suddenly fervent prayers -- to find the runaway bull.  As we headed out into the darkening, humid, insect-laden Tennessee night to fetch the wayward, amorous bull ogling the nearby heifers, I had a question for Chris.

Me: "So what's this bull's name?"
Chris: "Mr. Darcy."
Me: "Haha! Seriously?"
Chris: "Yes. But he should be called Mr. Wickham."

About a half-mile walk later we found Mr. Darcy under the watchful gaze of Chris' neighbor. Mr. Darcy appeared to be chewing his cud -- or maybe slobbering -- as he stood in her front yard right up against her fence staring at ... horses? Yes, they were horses. I asked Chris if Mr. Darcy was confused. Chris opined that Mr. Darcy was not only confused, but quite stupid as well. I believe Mr. Darcy heard that because I think I heard him snort. We visited briefly with Chris' kindly neighbor before "encouraging" Mr. Darcy to head back home. I could only assume that it is a universal truth that Mr. Darcy was a single man possessed of a good fortune who merely wanted a mate. The interruption of this desire, even though it was clearly a bit muddled as he pursued members of an entirely different species, proved vexing for Mr. Darcy.

He pawed at the dirt and lowered his head, shaking it from side to side. I've seen this type of activity -- in bullfights. This wasn't a good sign as it appeared Mr. Darcy would not go gently into the good Tennessee night. In fact, it appeared to be something of a standoff. Chris, however, was not up for games and started cuffing Mr. Darcy about the ears with his stick trying to turn him and guide him back roughly toward home. Over the next several minutes the three of us managed to herd Mr. Darcy in the general direction of his pasture, but not before he made a futile run for another pasture and generally misbehaved by jogging about in circuitous paths. I got the hang of standing my ground with my stick looking menacing and even managed to get in a few licks of Mr. Darcy when he got within striking range. Several times Abram and I resorted to the arm-waving and stick-pounding on the road that Chris said would prevent Mr. Darcy from crashing into us. It worked mostly. Until we hit a fork in the road and Mr. Darcy started making a beeline for Kentucky. Which is the exact opposite direction in which we were trying to get Mr. Darcy to head.

Chris, already in a foul mood, went sprinting after Mr. Darcy, yelling rather mean things about Mr. Darcy's character, disposition, intelligence and general demeanor as he huffed it up a hill. Chris returned soon afterward, afflicted not only with labored breathing but a foul disposition as well, saying Mr. Darcy was gone and out of sight and that when he finally did catch the amorous chap, the worthless bull would be rendered into hamburger. I offered to head up after Mr. Darcy and track him while Chris and Abram started heading back to the house to fetch a pickup -- and possibly a high-powered firearm. We parted ways and I began my pursuit of Mr. Darcy. As I crested the hill in a slow jog, my stick at the ready, imagine my surprise to see Mr. Darcy staring right at me just up the way. I tried to play it cool, acting like you know, I was just out for an evening jog in my New Balance running shoes with my stick. I managed to hug the other side of the road and slip past Mr. Darcy, then turned on him. I must have surprised him because immediately he took off down the hill. I yelled at Chris that Mr. Darcy was heading for him. Chris couldn't believe his luck.

Alas, Mr. Darcy wasn't through paying visits to neighbors. He ran all through the yard and around the house of another neighbor on our way home, with Chris hollering and chasing him the whole way. Then Mr. Darcy pulled a fast one and started backtracking toward where we found him. Chris was beside himself as Mr. Darcy tore back toward Kentucky. Enter Abram. He took off and ran down Mr. Darcy in a mad sprint before managing to "convince" Mr. Darcy with inventive uses of his PVC pipe to turn around. It was a heroic effort by Abram, who proved his mettle and courage in the face of desperate exasperation on our part. It was well dark before we finally got Mr. Darcy confined to the corral at the foot of the Bertoni driveway. I will not forget the forlorn look possessed by Mr. Darcy as the lock on the gate clinked shut. We gazed intently at each other. Then we parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.

An American Journey: A Family's Trip Across The U.S.

                                         The Grand Canyon

Our summer road trip is in the bag.  Twenty-seven days, 8,100 miles, 18 states, one astonishing national park and a million memories. We traveled to Oregon and back in just under four weeks, one big family in one big van. At times our journey was a blur -- the 710-mile drive with just one stop on our last day from Franklin, Tenn. to home comes to mind -- and yet so many other times I wanted time to stop, the sun or moon to stand absolutely still in what seemed like a perfect moment. The few brief hours at the Grand Canyon come to mind. Plenty of other moments come to mind: An evening in the cool summer air of Kanab, Utah; the mind-boggling fireworks from a distant lightning storm lighting up the New Mexico sky; the view from Highway 89 where the Vermilion Cliffs jut up from Highway 89 in Arizona after we had touched the clouds on a 7,000-foot mountain pass.

                                          Kanab, Utah

The American West is absolutely alluring. The sky is so big and blue, the canyons are carved so deep into the earth and the mountains seem to kiss the sun. The landscape alternates between the staggeringly harsh and forbidding deserts and lovely and inviting river valleys. So many times I found myself thanking God for allowing me to take the trip and share it with my family. We enjoyed reunions with so many family members, friends and supporters of ours in our mission work with TEN3 (www.ten3.org) that were most often all too brief. We made new friends and acquaintances all across the country, often of people staggered by the amount of booths we took up at restaurants, or who we encountered during a picnic on the road, or at some other family excursion. Sometimes we spied them giggling as we spilled out of the van as they watched a seemingly endless supply of Sabo lads and lasses.

                                          On a farm near McMinnville, Ore.

Our great adventure has come to a close, but I am so thankful to God that He allowed us to enjoy this time as a family. We're at a point where our older kids are forging their own paths. We managed to enjoy parts of this trip with almost all of our kids and I'm very thankful for that. We'll tell the stories of our cross-country trip for years to come, sharing laughs about what happened when Seth hopped on the teeter-totter in Weatherford, Okla. Or how Gabe and Abram and their little brothers tried to catch steelhead salmon with their hands in a small tributary of the Clackamas River. We'll relive Judah's hurling incident in Dickson, Tenn., or chasing a bull down country roads in VanLeer, Tenn., or scrambling over the rocks atop the Grand Canyon cliffs. I can still picture the vineyards cascading down the cliffs of the Columbia River Gorge, the blueberries bigger than quarters in Grandma and Grandpa Young's back yard, and the sight of the range fire in the arid Eastern Oregon hills above Interstate 84 that had ranchers on ATVs herding their cattle to safe ground. And I'll always remember the countless smiles and laughter from a family having the time of its life.

Sabo Road Trip Across America: Part I

                                                  Van life. Sabo style. Seth is hungry ...

On Sunday, July 13, 2014, the Sabos launched what can only be described as "The Great Sabo Road Trip: Version 4.0." For the fourth time we would set out in a van across this great country, traversing rolling hills, majestic mountain passes, treeless plains and deep gorges as we aimed our Chevrolet Express west toward Oregon. On a road trip that would be the fourth time we would go coast-to-coast across America, we would tackle what few families would dare to even imagine: Drive 3,069 miles over the course of 5 days in a van stuffed to nearly exploding with kids, luggage, gummy bears, goldfish crackers, various other snacks, pillows, blankets, coolers, an iMac and, as you can see in Seth's grubby little mitt, pizza. No road trip across the country is complete without pepperoni pizza after all.

It's hard to describe in words what it's like traversing the geographic heart of America in a van posing as a moving house full of kids. But let us try.

Day 1: Gloucester to Danville, Kentucky. Just east of Charlottesville, a mere two hours into our journey I hear Judah's van from the depths of the abyss: "Are we almost to Oregon?" Oy. It's started.
We make it to our destination of our new friends the Morlotes -- amazing hosts and wonderful people -- sometime after midnight. We're safe, we're sound and we survived driving through a thunderstorm in a 3-car caravan late at night on Kentucky roads, with only one detour through a McDonald's parking lot.

                                                  The road trip struggle is real, man.

Day 2: Danville to St. Joseph Missouri. We drove 600 plus miles, a journey low lighted by the sight of black clouds, howling winds and debris being blown across I-70 outside of St. Louis. I was pretty sure we were going to drive through a tornado. We managed to pull off the freeway and find cover in a mall while the storm passed. We stormed the food court like locusts, or a tornado, leaving virtually nothing in our wake. If you happened to be in a mall near St. Louis and saw a man with a bunch of little kids riding the escalator over and over again, well, that was me. What can I say? The Sabos are easily entertained.

                                              The elephant is stuffed. The kids are real.

Day 3: St. Joseph to Laramie, Wyoming. What a day. I learned something on our drive and that is that they grow corn in Nebraska. And that Nebraska is a very loooooooooonnnnnngggggg state full of corn. Our highlight in Nebraska, besides watching the corn actually while we hurtled down I80 at 80 mph, was a stop at Cabela's in Sidney. Anyone who is anyone stops at the Cabela's at Sidney, which happens to be the site of company headquarters. As you can see in the photo above, Cabela's was a big hit. A Cabela's is basically a taxidermist's dream. It's like a zoo full of dead animals, and I say that in a good way. An elephant, moose, elk, deer, bobcats, mountain lions, birds, squirrels, fish ... if it's covered in hair or fur and walks in four legs it's pretty much stuffed and in the Cabela's in Sidney. Somehow we managed to walk out of there without buying any firearms. Or trying to stuff an elk in the van for Judah to pet along the way. Other highlights included an amazing thunderstorm in metro Cheyenne. When the storm parted and the sun poked through the clouds it was breathtakingly gorgeous.

                                              Somewhere in Wyoming. Or was it Idaho?

Day 4: Laramie to Boise, Idaho. A 690-mile run in which we only traveled through 2 states. On the East Coast, particularly the Northeast, if you travel 690 miles you're going to hit at least 6 to 8 states. I don't even know if we traveled through that many counties. Wyoming is an absolutely amazing state. For example, we were nearing Cheyenne, or maybe it was Laramie, and Judah had to go pee. It was quite urgent, in fact. We made it to a rest area on a mountain pass at 8,700 feet elevation. That is way up there! Just walking to the restroom is a lung burner! Then when you are up on the high plains of Wyoming where the interstate speed limit is 80 mph, you can look literally as far as the eye can see and not see a single tree. Zip, nothing, nada with leaves. It's grassy hills and plateaus and indigo skies with fluffy clouds you think you can grab when you roll down your window. Our trip had a bit of a hiccup when a hazmat incident closed I80 at Evanston on the southwestern fringe of Wyoming into Utah. A very helpful Wyoming Department of Transportation worker we reached by phone directed us to Highway 30 through Kemmerer and on into Idaho. I have to say, it was a gorgeous drive. Everyone raved about the scenery: The stark, rather desolate landscape of southern Wyoming to valleys where green hay fields straddle the river bottoms and a few herds of antelope roam (Seriously. We saw them.), to big skies and picturesque mountain ranges forming the backdrop of little towns like Soda Springs, Montpelier and Georgetown. We're actually glad about this detour.

Stay tuned for Part II of our road trip, when we pick it up with an incident in Idaho involving a small Sabo within the tight confines of a Dodge Dart that left Claire and Evie traumatized. Perhaps for life ...