Planning Your Summer Family Vacation

The family vacation road trip is a beloved American tradition dating back to 1846, when the Donner family traveled all the way from Illinois to California, where, unfortunately, they got stuck and wound up eating each other.This tragedy teaches us two important lessons about planning a family road trip:Lesson One: Take an adequate supply of snacks. Most modern historians believe that if the Donners had carried a 50-pound keg of Gummy Worms, they would still be alive today.Lesson Two: Be prepared for emergencies. You probably will not face, as the Donner party did, an early-season blizzard blocking an already almost-impassible mountain pass. But you could find yourself face-to-face with something equally daunting: a dashboard warning light.When I was a youth, cars had only one warning light. It looked like this:This light, as the label suggests, had something to do with the oil, a vital car ingredient. Basically, if the oil light came on, it meant you had to replace the car.…