Feeling The Force of Star Wars on Vacation
Frank Rocco Satullo
Owner of ZoneFree Publishing, LLC, publisher of OhioTraveler.com, your tour guide to fun!
Once our kids saw their first Star Wars movie, they were hooked.
At this impressionable young age, they were on an All-American trip, “Out West,” on a National Park tour.
We rented what we adorningly called our Little Yellow Box next to Yellowstone Lake inside Yellowstone National Park. It was a tiny cabin that fit two double beds and not much else. While we took turns getting ready for the adventurous day planned ahead, the kids emptied their collective collection of Star Wars figures out on the bed in some sort of parade formation. There were at least a couple of dozen strategically positioned in a design they created. The bed was messy, with covers wrapped in sheets, but they found a flat spot to work on their artistic expression.
When we left, my wife whispered to me, “They are going to be so bummed when the cleaning lady tidies up the room.”
Later that night, we opened the door to the Little Yellow Box and looked at each other, surprised.
The cleaning lady must have removed each of the figures, noting the order and placement in the design. Then, she removed the old bedding, added the new, and made it up so tight you could bounce a quarter off of it. Then, she placed the figures precisely where each was left on the bedspread.
The kids loved her respect so much that they made a case to sleep on the floor so it wouldn’t be disturbed.
A couple of years later, we were in Redwood National Park. My wife noted the various locations where scenes of the Ewoks were filmed in Return of The Jedi. But another popular movie for the kids was Jurassic Park. And scenes from it were shot in nearby Fern Canyon. It was a dramatic location in person as it was on film. Ferns blanketed the canyon walls. Our path at the bottom of the canyon crisscrossed the creek bed. It took some dexterity to navigate the tree trunk and branch bridges. Our daughter carefully picked her course while our son quickly imagined himself in a Sci-Fi thriller and built an air of confidence with his fancy and quick footwork calling back for us to keep up. Near the end, his feet swung out from under him, sending his upper body into the water before his lower half. Our immediate reaction was laughter, but the humiliation on his face and embarrassment in his broken voice rang through as his return to reality was something he couldn’t escape.
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With the kids grown and flown, my wife and I visited Death Valley. The Star Wars years of our kids’ childhood were a distant memory for me. Our first real stop to explore was Dante’s View. My wife informed me it was where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first saw the Mos Eisley spaceport from afar. Obi-Wan says, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
I said, “Oh, okay,” and hiked to a cliffside spot she didn’t want to attempt.
“I’ll meet you back at the start,” she said.
Later, I walked up to her, wondering what the heck she was up to. People watched her as I did. When I saw that she had brought some of the kids’ old Star Wars figures along on the trip for photo ops, I laughed so hard. She had Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi positioned at the very spot where the scene was shot. And so, her photo had them in it with the impressive backdrop of Dante’s View.
My wife photographed R2-D2 at Death Valley’s Artist’s Palette. In Episode IV—A New Hope (the original film), he enters a canyon at sunset and looks down the arroyo that runs along the north side of the Artist’s Palette parking lot. She found the spot and captured it with the miniature R2-D2 she unveiled from her backpack.
At Death Valley’s Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level, we were looking at the hexagonal salt designs that spread as far as the eye could see. It was scorching hot out there, and we had wandered much further off the beaten track to photograph unharmed fields of this incredulous design nature left. On the way out, near the parking lot, my wife spotted a little girl with her dad. She was wearing a Star Wars shirt, so my wife took it upon herself to inform this duo of the spots in the park where scenes from the movies were filmed.
I know my wife was excited to see a new young fan, and it brought her back to our kids’ youth. But as she continued to talk, I saw that dad-look in the eyes of the girl’s father as he now was half-smiling and looking away over and over. I realized she was coming off as THAT “old crazy lady, so I gave the bro nod to the dad and tugged at my wife, “Time to go; I’m sure they want to get out to the salt field.
That dad took the opening, and they left at light speed.
From the Wrong Turns Write Life Blog by Frank Rocco Satullo, The OhioTraveler, Your Tour Guide to Fun!