I worked with the folks over at Parents Magazine to pick the Top Family Cars of 2008. The magazine just hit newsstands, but if you want to save trees you can read the article at the publication's Web site. 

We focused on the items you would expect to find in a solid family vehicle, including strong safety scores, family friendly features and adequate interior space for child-related detritus (car seats, sippy cups, Hanna Montana backpacks). The usual suspects are all here, including the Honda Odyssey, Toyota Highlander and Dodge Grand Caravan. But we also picked winners in the sedan category (Fusion, Malibu), the small car category (Civic) and the value category (Kia Rondo).

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After 10 days and over 2,000 miles my family and I are safely back in Los Angeles, courtesy of our long-term Chevrolet Tahoe. There is essentially nothing to report on the "problem" side of the equation. The navigation system was annoying me, and the driver's mirror is loose, but you can read the details in the long-term update.

I love doing the Los Angeles-to-Denver drive, and try to do it at least once a year. It's a great reminder of how big this country is, and how not everything revolves around the two Coasts and the people who live there (a concept most residents of the Coasts can't honestly grasp). Talk to people in St. George or Grand Junction and they likely haven't ever heard of David Beckham (and don't care about him -- or his wife -- even if they have).

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After two days and 1,000 miles my 1970 Plymouth GTX is safely tucked in at its new home in Denver, Colorado. My Dad has room for the car in his garage, and next year I'll be attending my 20-year high-school reunion. I've had the GTX since 1986, and the pair of us were well known throughout my junior and senior year (I don't know if it was really the fastest car at my school, but I know I never lost a race). I'm looking forward to showing up with the GTX next year, as plenty of people asked about it during the 10-year reunion. Now, instead of saying "It's out in California" I'll be able to say, "It's out in the parking lot -- wanna go for a ride?"

The original plan was to drive the GTX back to Denver, but the thought of 100-plus temperatures across the desert, with no air conditioning, had me calling U-Haul at the last minute and snagging a car trailer. Our long-term 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe handled the 6,000-pound load (2,000-pound trailer, 4,000-pound car) admirably. I'll provide additional details on the long-term blog, but suffice to say I'm a bigger fan of Chevy's full-size SUVs than I was before -- and I already liked them a lot.

There's a joke about going on vacation: "You have to work twice as hard the week before and the week after a vacation in order to go on vacation." I won't go into all the work I did to prep for this family trip, but I can tell you how much work it took to restore our long-term Jeep Commander to "non-family-vacation" condition. You can probably already imagine what  a family of four, living in a car for 7,000-plus miles, will do to it, but if not I've included one image from the second row area. I spent about an hour going through the car's interior with all the various attachments on our Hoover vacuum. Then I spent another 30 minutes going through the interior with paper towels dipped in hot water. Then I drove it to our local coin-op car wash and spend another 45 minutes (and $6.50 in quarters) using the high-pressure soap, brush and rinse nozzles. Then I spent another 20 minutes cleaning the windows. Now I'm finally ready to hand it off to another staffer without feeing guilty about its condition.

It's good to be back -- I can finally relax again.

Recently I read about certain stretches of West Texas where the daytime speed limit was going to be raised to 80 mph. I believe that's that highest speed limit in the U.S. (at least since Montana ended its "reasonable and prudent" speed limit a decade ago). Well, sure enough we spotted 80 mph daytime speed limit signs about 50 miles west of San Antonio on the 10 freeway. Makes total sense to anyone who has driven through this part of the country, which makes the 15 freeway between San Bernadino and Vegas look like a sprawling metropolis. Here's the catch -- about 15 minutes after taking this photo a Texas officer pulled over the wife. We of course had the Valentine One fired up, and when it screamed to life I looked at the speedo and saw it at 82. I told her, "Well, the sun is still above the horizon, so no worries." Yet the gumballs lit up and he pulled us over. The first thing he tried was the old, "Do you know how fast you were going?" bait on the wife, but she was too smart to fall for that one. "About 80" was her answer. "Well, I recorded you at 86." Bottom line, she got a warning, which in and of itself is pretty amazing. A cop claims you were going 86 and you still just get a warning? Gotta love that high speed limit. However, the out-of-state tags had us primed for a ticket. I'm sure if the Mrs. had fallen for the bait and said a speed higher than 80 (everyone out there does know the rule about never admitting to going faster than the limit, riiiiiight?)  we'd have ended up contributing to the Texas state treasury. One more thing -- this photo is also indicative of the traffic levels on the 10 freeway between San Antonio and El Paso, so doing 80 (or even 82) is obviously a major threat to life and limb.

Ah, speed enforcement -- it's so about highway safety...

A $69 service at South Pointe Jeep (in Austin, Texas) got me an oil change, tire rotation and fluid check. But the most important service I got for free. The dealership technicians confirmed what I suspected -- a piece of insulation had come loose within the climate control system and was contacting the fan. With the insulation re-aligned the grinding sound is gone. The 1,500-mile drive back to L.A. should be a bit more pleasant now.

How cool is this? My uncle, who lives in Orange Park, Florida (outside Jacksonville) is part of a club that builds and runs 1/8 scale railroad trains. They use Briggs & Stratton engines that make 16 horsepower, and you can "ride" the trains and pull cars behind them. The track layouts include everthing from switch junctions to bridges, and you can also pull "passenger cars" (basically they are park benches on wheels) that allow full-size adults to ride along. My uncle told me these clubs are nationwide, but I'd never heard about them. The trains are so easy to drive that everyone in my family (including my eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter) took a turn playing engineer. Not as cheap or easy to store as H.O. scale, but definitely worth the extra expense if you love trains.

After two days, and more than 1,000 miles, of heavy rain between New York and Florida the Jeep Commander has proven quite the water strider. Not surprising when you consider what the vehicle has going for it -- knobby tires, four-wheel drive and 5,000 pounds of water-spreading curb weight. Other niceties, like rain-sensing wipers, very effective fog lights and a variable-speed rear window wiper make it a four-wheeled vehicle Noah would be proud to pilot. A stop for fuel, just after crossing from North to South Carolina, had us wondering over to the adjacent "Rocket City" to peruse a fireworks warehouse of Home Depot-like proportions. Despite protestations from the wife I picked up $30 worth of mostly innocuous stuff (sparklers, smoke bombs, snakes, etc.) that the kids will enjoy. I did, however, spring for one rocket that looks capable of breaking free of earth's gravity. After all, it was Rocket City.

For those who still want to question economic prosperity in the U.S. I simply point to the major interstates criss-crossing this country. Put simply -- there are big rigs everywhere. And unless there's a new fad in using an eighteen-wheeler for commuting and/or family vacation purposes (not likely with today's fuel prices) I'm betting most of those trucks are carrying something somewhere for someone, and being paid to do it. That's the good news. The bad news is that I truly feel like the average truck-driver skill level has taken a dive over the past 20 years. I was driving in hard rain yesterday and I saw trucks hanging out in the middle and fast lanes, where they can spray the most possible cars with water as you try to pass. Of course they regularly come into the passing lane, even when it takes them several minutes to pass and a line of 20-plus cars can build up in the process. The speed differential between the majority of these trucks is miniscule, meaning the time a single truck "saves" by passing another is probably on the order of five minutes, even after a 750-mile day. I was also nearly run off the road by one clueless trucker who didn't see me passing him as he started to come into my lane at night, under heavy rain, to pass -- yup, another big truck. Yes, I know it's not easy to control 20 tons of slow-accelerating, slow-braking, large-blindspot vehicle, but that only confirms my opinion that these guys should drive more convservatively (like they used to). When I was in Germany the last time I noticed that one of the reasons the Autobahns work so well is because you never see a big rig in anything but the slow lane. It's not that I'm suggesting legislative action to require trucks to stay in the slow lane but...well, check that -- I am ready to suggest that exact move.

Here's something you don't see everyday -- a fully functional drive-in movie theatre. This one was called the "Family Drive-In" and we passed it in north-central Pennsylvania. It had all the fix-ins I (barely) remember from that era. The signs outside the gate included "Lights Out Please" and "FM Radio Sound Only" in hand-painted script. I think the last drive-in movies I saw were a double feature of Terminator 2 and Batman Returns in 1992 in Denver. The sound was horrible, as was the picture quality. And yet I miss drive-ins terribly. I know they're still out there (obviously), but I don't believe any are left in the state of California. Too many condo developments and too much coastal commission paperwork to ever see them in the Golden State again.

Plus we all have home theatres now anyway, right?