F4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019
ing to dive. This was another hen
harrier, a female, obviously pro-
tecting its nearby chicks. I was in
no mood to add to its woes and
turned back.
I found a beachside cafe and
started chatting to the kindly,
silver-haired lady at the register
while I waited for my coffee. The
cold rain was playing on the
picture windows, and I told her I
was escaping the heat and hu-
midity of Washington, where, I
explained, it was now up into the
90s.
“Och,” s he said, “it’s not right.”
[email protected]about it, too. I was glad at that
moment not to be a rabbit or a
fish.
The next day, I set o ut to see the
machair of South Uist and was
determined not to let the weather
interfere. It was raining steadily
and windy with it, so the droplets
were like pellets against the skin.
I focused on the flora, here more
rye mixed with charlock, and
more lady’s bedstraw and wild
carrot. The track behind the
dunes took me to a farm gate, but
as soon as I entered the field, a
bird rose up from the right and
started chattering and threaten-he said, with a hint of excitement
in his voice.
We spent the next 30 minutes
tracking its rapid progressions
between the i slands, t he seaweed
mats in the fast-moving water
and the near shore. It was su-
premely at home in each envi-
ronment, moving swiftly and
with purpose. At times it would
disappear beneath the black wa-
ter and emerge on its back,
appearing to feed. Looking
through the scope, I could tell
this was a born predator, with
broad jaws and efficient teeth.
There was a burning intelligenceBY JOHN BRILEYstill sticky from the doughnuts
they’d vaporized an hour prior.
The antidote: Assume every
drive will take 20 percent longer
than the GPS ordains and make
contingency plans around that,
like learning your lodging pro-
vider’s late check-in procedures,
identifying towns where you
could have a layover in a pinch
and packing a mobile cocktail
bar in case you need to sleep in
your car. Also...Plan for longer rest stops. At
heart, I’m a manic road tripper,
fueled by a get-there-fast-then-
have-fun ethos that has com-
pelled me to hold my bladder for
hours a nd, with the low-fuel light
on, pass cheerily illuminated gas
stations in the middle of nowhere
at midnight hoping to milk every
mile out of my tank before refill-
ing. Bad moves both, and espe-
cially foolish with dependents on
board. These days, we keep base-ball mitts and a ball, a Frisbee,
and other diversions in easy
reach and frequently take an
extra 10 or 20 minutes at a grassy
rest area to play catch with the
kids. This isn’t feasible at the
more industrialized service cen-
ters of, say, the Jersey Turnpike,
but when space allows, it does
wonders for our collective calm.
Of course, there are times when
we really need to get there, and
that’s when we...Drive in the dead of night. Kai
and Christina love night driving,
especially when that entails be-
ing lifted from their beds at 3
a.m. and placed in a prearranged
nest in the back of the car. My
wife does n ot love this, so to make
it go as smoothly as possible, I
pack the car to the 99th percen-
tile before going to sleep, then get
up before everyone else and
make coffee, arrange blankets,
fluff pillows, position stuffed ani-mals, ensure the iron/thermo-
stat/circular saw is turned off
and pull the car to within three
feet of our back door. Then I take
a deep breath and accept that it’ll
be another 30 minutes before
we’re on the road.
The benefits of this extend
beyond the smug satisfaction of
having 100 miles behind you at
sunrise and include at least a
couple of hours of light traffic
and the nostalgic bliss of listen-
ing, uninterrupted, to the tunes
of your choice.(Almost) forget about healthy
eating. Over the past 20 years,
I’ve become a bit of a health nut.
For a stretch, I also became a
whole lot more ambitious in the
sense of thinking I could coerce
my family into eating healthy on
road trips, despite the fact that I
can’t accomplish this even at
home. This often resulted in
arriving at a destination andcrankily gathering up trash from
my reluctant fast-food stops
while staring forlornly into a
cooler full of neglected,
meltwater-soaked produce.
But road-mode dining is a
serious issue, with many fast-
food brands contributing mighti-
ly to the problem of single-use
plastics and other wasteful pack-
aging. To counter that, we try to
hit grocery store food bars and
march i nto these and o ther carry-
out environments wielding our
reusable cups, cutlery and
straws. And occasionally we get
lucky, as when we stumbled upon
B. Good, a gem just off Route 17 i n
Ridgewood, N.J., with a menu —
huge salads, smoothies, hot dogs,
grilled cheese — tailored to our
crew.Empathize! Imagine the longest,
most insufferable meeting of
your life. Now imagine enduring
it without pay or your phone orthe neural pathways to grasp that
it might eventually end. That’s
how many kids feel on long car
rides.
That doesn’t mean parents
have to tolerate mutiny, but it
does mean we need gentler ways
of regaining control than, say,
threatening an extended stay in a
condemned motel or, as my
friend Zoe admitted to doing,
dropping her daughter’s peanut
M&Ms out the car window one by
one while speeding down the
highway in hopes of getting her
to calm down. (Field report: Epic
fail.)
My Michigan tantrum — and,
um, a few others — aside, I’ve
found that less is more when it
comes to road-trip parenting.
Less emotion, fewer threats, low-
er voices, less prosecutorial
blaming. Cathleen and I try to
diffuse fights by asking each kid
to tell their side of the story,
ignoring most of what we hear
and then reminding them they
love each other and we love them.
We’ll also occasionally check in
to see if whoever lost the fight
can wait until the next gas stop to
receive medical attention.Improvise, and stay flexible.
Our Adirondacks trip came to-
gether last-minute, and while we
wanted to bring bicycles, we
didn’t own a bike rack. So 90
minutes before we planned to
leave, I called our local bike shop
and asked if they had any old,
used or otherwise cheap-but-
functional racks. Sure enough,
the owner dug one out of the back
and sold it to me for $50. Install-
ing it on a sweltering July after-
noon delayed our departure by
45 minutes but saved us hun-
dreds of dollars in bike rental
fees.
On our drive to First Landing,
we opted for the slightly longer
Eastern Shore route because we
knew the kids would get a kick
out of crossing the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge-Tunnel. We then
made a last-minute call to divert
into Chincoteague, Va., for a
night and, by sheer luck, got to
watch from the roadside as NASA
launched its Antares rocket from
the nearby Wallops Flight Facili-
ty. Knowing about that in ad-
vance might have been nice — we
paid a premium for the last
available condo in town — but
then again, that knowledge only
would have caused me to stress
about getting there in time to see
the launch.
If most of this advice sounds
like common sense, well, that’s
because it is. As with most family
activities, t he success or failure of
a road trip rests with the adults
in the (very small) r oom and t heir
ability to expect the unimagina-
ble, roll with it, and, when things
get really hot, envision them-
selves stuck in a middle seat on a
tarmac during a five-hour weath-
er delay, vowing to never fly
again.
[email protected]Briley is a writer based in Takoma
Park, Md. His website is
johnbriley.com.How to road-trip with kids
without driving yourself crazy
Lessons for surviving thousands of miles of family togetherness, minus a minivan
ISTOCKenough for the day, but I discov-
ered we were ensconced in a
circle of great granite stones,
which turned out to have been
placed on this perch 5,000 years
ago by the indigenous Neolithic
population.
Jamieson said he had won-
dered why they chose this loca-
tion for the stones, and then one
evening he glanced northward to
the distant mountain. “My jaw
dropped. I saw a huge full moon
come up, and it appeared to roll
up the hill.”
One mystery solved, but where
was the otter? We w alked along to
the end of the loch, observing
some waterfowl and a colony of
basking seals. But we were get-
ting cold, and it was time to head
back. In an area marked by is-
lands amid the coursing tide, we
saw a creature breaking the wa-
ter. Another seal, we surmised,
but Jamieson was soon on it with
his binoculars. “That’s an otter,”movement and, we hoped, of
seeing a hungry otter or two. “I
must say,” Jamieson began, “the
odds are against us. For every 24
hours, they’ll be asleep for 18.”
Half an hour into the walk,
with no otter to be seen, the
attention turned inland to the
upland moor where Jamieson
had spotted a bird that from afar
looked like a big gull, but with a
white rump. It was a male hen
harrier, quartering over the moor.
“That’s the most persecuted bird
in the U.K.,” Jamieson said, echo-
ing the view that the birds are
systematically and illegally killed
by gamekeepers to protect lucra-
tive grouse shooting operations.
Twenty minutes later, we saw
the female, with prey, and Ja-
mieson was able to locate it on a
rock outcropping with his scope.
He i nvited me to look through the
lens, where I could see it feeding
its chicks.
This might have been thrilland long, bright-orange bills.
Skylarks hung high in the air,
twittering, and we first heard and
then saw the melodious little
corn bunting, a bird that has been
lost to much of Britain because of
modern agricultural practices.
These grasslands also support an
even more threatened species, a
shy, partridge-like bird called the
corncrake, which remained silent
and unseen.
One birder thought he saw a
short-eared owl, which hunts by
day, and I was scanning the skies
for another raptor, the white-
tailed eagle (wingspan eight feet),
which was successfully reintro-
duced to the Isle of Rum after
being killed off in the past cen-
tury due to its taste for lambs.
The tour had opened up the
Uists to me in a way that wander-
ing on my own would not, so
when I heard Jamieson mention
he was leading a three-hour na-
ture walk on the other side of the
island the next morning, my re-
sponse was, “When and where?”
The day was cloudier and cool-
er as we appeared in the parking
lot of the Langass Lodge hotel,
the starting point of the trek
alongside tidal Loch Langass.
The loch lies between a ridge and
the distant sea on the eastern side
of North Uist. It is a terrain
markedly different from the ma-
chair and more typical of the
landscape of western Scotland, a
place of acidic peatlands and rock
outcroppings supporting colo-
nies of heather, bracken, sedges
and mosses. Below us, the loch
was ebbing, the time of fishSCOTLAND FROM F3Nature’s handiwork is on display in the machair of Scotland’s Western Isles
ADRIAN HIGGINS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Naturalist Martyn Jamieson (left) leads a bird- and otter-
spotting tour alongside tidal Loch Langass on North Uist.If you go
WHERE TO STAY
Ronald’s Cottage
Lochcarnan, Isle of South Uist
011-44-18 70 6-10274
ardmoreaccommodation.co.uk/
A one-bedroom stone-and-thatch
cottage at the north end of South
Uist. Rates range from about $382
to about $613 per week.Langass Lodge
Loch Eport, Isle of North Uist
011-44-018 76 -580-285
langasslodge.co.uk/
This family-friendly hotel offers lake
and mountain views and an on-site
restaurant; the decor is an homage
to its past life as a traditional
shooting lodge. Rates vary with
season and occupancy; seewebsite for details.WHAT TO DO
Balranald Nature Reserve
Balranald, Isle of North Uist
011-44-018 76 -560-422
rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/
reserves-a-z/balranald/
The nature reserve run by the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds
has a small visitor center and a
4.5-kilometer walking trail. See
website for schedule of guided
nature walks. Open daily, year-
round. Donations.Hebridean Way
visitouterhebrides.co.uk/see-and-do/
activities/hebridean-way
This 156-mile walking route and
185-mile cycling route passes
through 10 islands and over sixcauseways. Build your itinerary on
the tourism board’s website, or
book through its partner,
Hebridean Hopscotch Holidays.Kildonan Museum
Kildonan, Isle of South Uist
011-44-18 78 -710343
kildonanmuseum.co.uk/kildonan-
museum
The small museum offers a
comprehensive look at the history
of South Uist, including the life of
the crofter. Open daily 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. from April to the end of
October. Adult admission about $4,
children free.INFORMATION
isle-of-south-uist.co.uk
A.H.I
am standing outside my car
on a sun-dappled two-lane
road south of Benzonia,
Mich., on a glorious August
Sunday, trying in vain to make a
point. My kids, Kai, 1 0, and
Christina, 7, have been fighting
off and on since we left Ann
Arbor three hours ago — en route
to Frankfort, Mich., for a week-
long vacation with my in-laws —
much as they sparred during
yesterday’s eight-hour drive from
our Ta koma Park, Md., home.
Now I’m throwing down that
emptiest of parental threats:
“We’re not moving until this be-
havior stops. We’ll find a motel —
the dirtier and sketchier, the
better — and you won’t see your
cousins for days.”
My children roll their eyes, my
wife arches an eyebrow at m e and
a gust of wind rolls down State
Route 115, scattering my resolve
across the road.
In fairness to me, a weaker
man might have cracked long
before this, our fourth road trip
in as many months. In April, we
drove 440 miles round trip to
First Landing State Park, in Vir-
ginia Beach, for spring break;
next, we built a mini-vacation
around Independence Day and
punched it — 1 ,000 miles there
and back — to the Adirondack
Mountains in Upstate New York;
later that month was our annual
trip to Cape Hatteras, N.C. (710
miles r ound trip); and now this, a
1,520-mile boomerang across
four states.
Although none of these was a
#vanlife-type epic, together they
marked a departure from our
fly-first approach to vacationing,
a conscious decision to both re-
duce our carbon imprint and
save money we would have other-
wise spent on airfares. All were
undertaken in our 2009 Subaru
Forester, a capable vehicle to be
sure, but definitely not a blinged-
out minivan, with seat-back en-
tertainment systems, personal-
ized climate controls and en suite
bathrooms.
So what did this quartet of
road trips teach me, other than
that I really need a blinged-out
minivan? Glad you asked!Ignore the clock. Among the
many wonders of the technology
age is the discovery of new natu-
ral laws, such as: Once in a car
with children, you will never,
ever, transit a distance as swiftly
as that clearly childless voice on
your GPS says you should. This
maxim neatly accompanies the
age-old wisdom about haste,
waste and the pointlessness of
stressing over being late.
Knowing these things did
nothing to prevent my cortisol
levels from spiking when my
daughter announced she needed
a bathroom — at 11 p.m. on a dark
highway in Upstate New York 10
miles after we’d stopped for (you
guessed it) a bathroom break. Or
when my wife went rogue and
allowed a pre-announced “five-
minute gas stop” t o devolve into a
30-minute junk-food shopping
spree, even as the kids’ fingers —
and most of the back seat — were