Late Night Road Trips Cost Nothing but Gas

When my children were young, we didn't have a lot of money. When I was married and a stay at home mom, my husband worked "sometimes". I got pretty creative with entertaining, but it was so easy when they were little.

Later, after I divorced and became a single mom, the money situation didn't really improve for several years. I will admit, the bills didn't always get paid on time. There were times that I worked two and three jobs, doing whatever I could to get by. However, sometimes we just needed to do SOMETHING, anything, for a change a pace and to get out of the house.

Gas was much less expensive back then and I became a whiz at finding free things to do. All I needed to do was drive somewhere out of our little town. There weren't many opportunities in this little town - even the park gets boring after awhile.

Something that we did many times was drive to downtown Columbus to walk on the riverfront near the Santa Maria on the Scioto River. We did this in the evenings, sometimes late at night when the house was sweltering and none of us could sleep. Perhaps the kids were humoring me, but I thought they were having fun. We couldn't actually get on the boat in the middle of the night of course. The kids would play while I sat and watched. Often, we just walked for awhile.

It always seemed so much cooler. There was always a breeze, even on the most humid Ohio August night. We usually slept well when we arrived home. Maybe we were all just exhausted because it was the middle of the night.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it was the feeling of doing something almost "naughty" - driving around in the dead of night when everyone else was sleeping - that made it seem so enjoyable.

Having very little money does have its advantages. The well-off will never understand the joy in the faces of their children when they first hear the words "I don't care about the money. We're going to have fun."