My Vacation: Southwest Road Trip

Three years ago, Annette Gendler left a 15-year corporate career in consulting to slow down and have more control over her time. But she hasn't exactly slowed down. In fact, she now has multiple jobs: teaching composition and creative writing and working in communications for her children's school. She also blogs at Memoir, Writing & Life, and just finished a memoir. This summer, she spent four and a half weeks on a road trip with her family starting at their home in Chicago and touring the American Southwest. She shares this report.

Favorite place (above): Death Valley. This was my second visit there, and I want to go again. It is so serene, so vast, so otherworldly and so empty. For a city dweller like me, that alone is appealing. People thought we were crazy going there in the summer, but that's the only time we can do such a trip. We got the kids up at 3:30 a.m. to be there at sunrise and left at 10 a.m. when the temperature was 110 degrees at Furnace Creek. This picture captures my daughter's shadow and mine on the Salt Flats at Badwater, just as the sun was coming over the mountain behind us.

Best memory (above): Rafting down the Colorado River from Glen Canyon Dam. I can still feel the cool air coming off the river. Floating on that deep, smooth water was unexpectedly peaceful, considering that it was a rather touristy thing to do. We were on a raft with about 10 other people, but it seemed to me everybody was quiet, and the splash of our guide's oar was the only sound. We were all in awe of the scenery: the red walls that were so amazingly vertical that it looked like a giant chainsaw had cut them out of the rock, the deep green of the water, the sage green of the sparse vegetation along the banks, and the clear blue of the sky.

What I learned (above): Every item has a story. We visited the memorial of the Oklahoma City Bombing because it was important to us that the children be aware that 9/11 wasn't the first devastating terror attack in the U.S. While visits to memorials are always sobering, I find any collection of objects left by the dead especially heart-wrenching. In Oklahoma City, the cases of keys, glasses, shoes, briefcases and day planners had me swallowing tears. The museum displays an excellent quote by one of the bomb technicians who had been sifting through the debris: "You'd pick up a personal belonging, and it'd have on it 'love' from some relative, and it kind of kept you thinking. Every piece had a story."

Best meal: Our 11-year-old caught five striped bass on our fishing trip on Lake Mead, which made for two delicious dinners of fresh fish with parsley and potatoes that I prepared at the home we were staying at outside of Death Valley. It was worth getting him up at three to be on the lake by five because the fish don't bite after seven.

Most fun (above): The more strenuous a hike, the "funner" it was for our kids. Our second big hike was a rather tough climb to a plateau overlooking Pueblo Bonito, the best-preserved ruin in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Off the beaten path, the park lies 21 miles off SR-550 in Northwest New Mexico, and is reached on a rattling dirt road through a desert where the sage brush is so grey I was amazed it grows at all. We hiked in 90-degree heat and full sun, but the kids loved making their way up an ancient trading route that leads through a crack in the rocks (here my son is at the entrance of the cleft). My husband and I were plain happy that we pulled it off. Thankfully, the view of Pueblo Bonito -- reached after marching along a plateau for about a mile -- is truly rewarding. The ruins at Chaco Culture look like ancient fortresses to me, and can really only be appreciated when you see their layout from above.

Don't miss (above): Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. My son has this view as a wallpaper on his computer, and I have to admit I always thought it was fake until I spotted it in a brochure. So then of course we had to see it for real even though that meant getting up at five in the morning to squeeze that into our trip.

Best tip: Ask each family member what he or she would most like to do -- then do it. That keeps everybody engaged. Our list:

1. Fifteen-year-old daughter (above): See wild horses in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas. Her verdict: "That's my favorite memory."

2. Fourteen-year-old son: See the Grand Canyon. His verdict: "Okay, so it's mountains, not much different from the Alps, but red."

3. Eleven-year-old son: Stop at Four Corners. Since this was rather minor, he got another wish: Fishing (see best meal). His verdict: "That was awesome."

4. Husband: Raft trip down the Colorado River. His verdict: "Thank God we did this in the morning."

5. And me? The whole trip was my idea.

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