Are We There Yet? A Modern American Family's Cross-Country Adventure (Essential Website Series, 4) [Paperback]

William H. Lohmann Jr.; Bill Lohmann (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential Website Series, 4 | Publication Date: March 10, 2001

1 Van. 2 Parents. 3 Children. 7 Weeks. 28 States. 10,000 miles. One heck of a vacation!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What do one van, two parents, three children, seven weeks, 28 states and 10,000 miles add up to? The answer is Are We There Yet? A Modern American Family's Cross-Country Adventure, a new trade paperback (including a downloadable Web travel guide) by Bill Lohmann, an award-winning feature writer and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The author, who writes about family issues for the newspaper, suggested he cover a real family cross-country vacation for the Times-Dispatch and his editors agreed to the idea. With boundless joviality, common sense (including what not to do), fun facts particularly useful Web sites and family members' take on various sites the articles became a practical, upbeat book, proof positive that Lohmann's harebrained idea was really a mastermind's scheme in disguise and that every family that's game should do the same.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Bill Lohmann is an award-winning feature writer and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He previously worked for the Charlottesville Daily Progress, The Richmond News Leader and United Press International Bureaus in Richmond, Orlando and Atlanta. He is a native Richmonder and a graduate of the University of Richmond. As readers quickly learn, he and his wife Robin are the proud parents of Melissa, Alex and Jack.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Hope Springs Press (March 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963953176
• ISBN-13: 978-0963953179
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,151,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Swiss Family Lohmann, April 26, 2001

By 

Jack Warner (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Are We There Yet? A Modern American Family's Cross-Country Adventure (Essential Website Series, 4) (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book. It's a travel book, of course, but it's also a family relations book, an adventure book and, above all, a humor book. Bill Lohmann, working for one of those rare newspapers that rewards a reporter with imagination, convinced his editors to send him, his wife and his three children on a seven-week motor trip to California and back. It must have been a rare treat for readers of the Richmond Times-Dispatch to read his dispatches every few days, wondering what disaster might befall before the next report reached print. A lot of families might not have survived a social experiment like this. Lohmann's trip put the family through plenty of trials, but insofar as onew can tell no blows were struck and no one was left behind. Indeed, as Lohmann put it, good luck always seemed to follow bad. The family camped out in Yellowstone, where Lohmann professed himself greatly in fear of bears, without any sort of encounter with the local fauna. But upon pitching their tent on a Florida beach, every critter in the neighborhood came to examine them. Lohmann is a graceful writer with a fine, self-deprecating sense of humor that infuses every page. By the time they get back to Richmond, you feel as though you know his children very well. Buy this book, and read it one chapter a day.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cross-Country Trip Is a Journey of the Heart, March 28, 2001

By 

Randy Fitzgerald (Richmond, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Are We There Yet? A Modern American Family's Cross-Country Adventure (Essential Website Series, 4) (Paperback)

"One van, two parents, three children, seven weeks, 28 states, 10,000 miles": that's the summary of a cross-country trip writer Bill Lohmann and his family took in the first summer of the new millennium. That blurb only begins to summarize the great adventures Bill, wife Robin, and children Melissa, Alexandra and Jack had in the mother of all family vacations chronicled first in Bill's articles in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where I first read them, and now in his book Are We There Yet? This is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer. Lohmann as a reporter has covered Southern politics, religious fights and prison riots. But as fearless as he, I don't think he understood what he was getting into when he talked his editors into letting him take not just a two-week traditional family vacation but a seven-week odyssey in a conversion van named Big Blue, packed with everything three children could con their parents into letting them bring along. He didn't realize what sleeping five to a tent or even five in an occasional motel room could do to his constitution. But he and his family got a vacation they will never ever forget, and his Richmond readers got an account of America they hadn't seen since they last read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley or William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways. Now the rest of the country can read about characters Lohmann discovered along the way, like Will Harbut, Man o'War's groom, dead like Man o'War since 1947. We can watch Mark McGwire slam batting practice home runs in St. Louis; sit in the stands at the Iowa field where "Field of Dreams" was filmed; become dude cowboys or cowgirls at the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch in Sandpoint, Idaho; ride along the "world's crookedest street" in San Francisco; peer at the stars in Yosemite National Park; stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona; ride a boat through a New Orleans swamp; see the Big Chicken, the mechanical bird looming over a KFC in Marietta, Ga.; and reminisce about our own family vacations. Inspired readers can even get cracking on their own adventures. Website addresses throughout the book and a "Looking Back" final chapter make vacation planning a snap. I recommend this book to those who were kids in the backseat of a car or wagon or van and to the parents who drove and navigated in front, and to all those others whose great family vacations are about to begin.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family and fun, March 27, 2001

By 

Thomas M.. Mullen (Glen Allen, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Are We There Yet? A Modern American Family's Cross-Country Adventure (Essential Website Series, 4) (Paperback)

Bill Lohmann's wonderful "Are We There Yet?" is a must-read for anyone who appreciates life - and travel - with children. Anyone who has driven more than five minutes in a car with a child can relate to this book. With crisp detail, moving stories and side-splitting anecdotes, Lohmann takes readers along with him and his family on their excellent adventure across the country. This book is a great piece of writing that highlights family and fun and all the lessons learned by being together on the road. In reading "Are We There Yet," I felt like I was on the ride with the Lohmann family - and I enjoyed every minute of it.