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Great American Road Trip

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apskip:
Tonight was the first episode of Great American Road Trip. Host Reno Collier is a low-key guy and does a nice job. The 7 families assemble at Wrigley Field in Chicago where they get a brief briefing and go to their RVs for a trip down Route 66 to Los Angeles. Reno states that this is not a race. There will be a morning challenge for a special family treat and the 3 lowest scoring families in that will have to compete in the Elimination Challenge at the end of the day or the next day.

The Families are:

Ricos from Katy, TX
Favereys from Long Island NY
DiSalvatores from Yonkers NY
Cootes from Chicago
Pollards from Newton AL
Montgomerys from Montclair CA
Katzenbergs from Westport CT

The only catch is that the Katzenbergs are still blending a family but their wedding is in the near future. Based on what I see from the children, I pick them to win the whole competition.

One observation I make from the beginning is that these are model families with 2.0 children, one a boy and one a girl(except the Montgomerys and DiSalvatores have 2 boys each. Also, most of the women seem to be the rulers of these families for this type of trip.

Each of the beautiful RVs has been customized for several items the families requested for themselves. The caravan of RVs takes off for Springfield IL where they camp out overnight, empty their "brownwater" from the toilet tank and go the the Illinois State Fairgrounds for a competition. It is about presidential elections and one member of each team has to don a huge head mask, Nixon, Kennedy, Clinton, etc.  One of the parents on each team elects to do this. Then the team loads the "president" up with rectangular ballots which have to be taken through an obstacle course with the other 3 family members guiding the "president." It includes going through a series of inflatable backyard pools, through hedges and over a square area crisscrossed with red tape (what a nice touch!). The winners of this are the Cootes, although another team accuses them of cheating and after Reno restates the rules decides that they erred and apologizes. The Katzenbergs, Montgomerys and Favereys were the unlucky bottom 3.

That evening the RVs drive to Madison IL and the Cootes get to have dinner on the center (Illinois/Missouri border) of a narrow Mississippi River crossing with the mayor. The next day all teams cross into Missouri and drive to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. the elimination challenge is set up there with mini-arches on a course. The goal is to get a zorb through all the mini-arches using a string that is tied to the beginning point and 458 feet long, just enough if the correct course was taken. One member of the team, always a small girl, was strapped inside the zorb for visual effect. The Favereys go first while the other 2 teams are sequestered so they cannot gain intelligence and the other 4 teams watch. They finish in about 30 minutes. The Katzenbergs are even worse at 41 minutes. The Montgomerys blitz through in 2 minutes since the son knows geometry and used it to figure the shortest route before the zorb was rolled.

The Gateway Arch elimination challenge was fabulous. The concept of using mathematics before you act is something that should be tried on the Amazing Race.

So the Katzenbergs will not be winning this competition. They are sent home and the Mrs. Katzenberg-to-be takes this as a sign that she ought to be finishing the planning of their wedding. She invites the other families to attend.

I can recommend this show for light entertainment. It is no Amazing Race but it's fun.

puddin:
I already started a topic here apskips but this is fine. There was not a lot of interest lol ..
Anyway I half watched it but from what I heard is that if I want to listen to screaming whiny children then I could just turn my tv off, no need to watch GART.

apskip:
puddin,

I was aware of the other topic, but it was for Great American Road Trip - Planned and Coming. Now it's here and deserves its own topic in the Other Reality Show thread. Being in a lesser thread has doomed my Expedition Africa(an interesting show) commentary to oblivion so I wasn't going to let that happen here. The adults on this show are more high maintenance than the kids, although there was some sibling rivalry apparent among a few of the kids on the road. I'm sure there will be more based on my experience as a parent. That is pretty much par for the course, as are arguments between spouses, but the arguments between teams are new and different.

TexasLady:
We watched about 2/3rds of this and it's a good summer show. I didn't realize there were 7 families competing and didn't get to see how the motor homes were configured for each family. We began about the time they discharged their "brownwater"

I have to agree with puddin, I don't particularly care to watch or hear kids fighting.  )-** (Grand kids provide enough of this for me.)  :lol:

apskip:
OK, puddin and TexasLady. Go ahead and order the fighting siblings to stop (if that were possible in a previously taped reality TV show). Imagine the compliance (NOT). Do you think you coulkd accopmlish something their parents either cannot or will not?

I grew up in a "motor home" family and had to travel in one for 3 years as a teenager before college liberated me. I found the quarters cramped and generally disliked it, but my brother and sister had better experiences than me and both own motor homes.

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