John Roberts may be having a bummer of a summer break in Maine, but I’m here to tell you the Great American Vacation is alive and well.

Sort of. The annual rite known as the family trip allows you to rediscover your heart, laugh deeply and skid closer than you’d like to the gates of hell.

Those are three provocative enough reasons for CEOs to get off their money high horses, everyday Joes to take a break and soccer moms to put down the schedule for a week or so. Summer may be closing to an end, but get out there.

I know, I know. It’s hard to find time because we all are so preoccupied with making it.

The minister at the little church I attended in downtown Washington once preached about how he sat on the front steps one morning, watching people walk by so quickly, heads down, striding the purposeful stride of men and women on the go. He asked himself something I’ve often thought about since: Where are all those people going? And why are they in such a hurry?

Busy-ness is the sin of our age, if you can stop and think about it. We see it in our economy, where our Protestant work ethic and demand for profit and success makes everyone work so hard they can’t breathe.

We also see it spill over into our personal lives. Being so busy causes us to lose sight of our families, particularly giving dads an excuse to ignore their children and creating a ready out to sidestep some local volunteer project: You kiddin’? I’m Busy-Man (or -Woman).

Vacations, thankfully, slow us down. And the slower pace connects us more directly to life’s highs and lows.

My wife once asked me when I felt most alive, and I got to discover the answer – or part of it – as she and I sat with our children firmly planted in our laps one Sunday evening as a cellist played for a handful of us in an amphitheater at the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

A late afternoon rain had left the air refreshingly cool, enough for us to wear parkas and jeans. The sun was settling down, casting a red glow against the chalk-like dunes that rise out of southern Colorado like towers in the Sahara. Rain fell off and on, but the combination of family, color, sound and sense was so strong that, really, who cared about getting wet? Thanks to the overpowering moment, I had the answer to my wife’s essential question.

Of course, the vacation trail isn’t all sweetness and light. I’m pretty sure I saw those gates of hell when we pulled into a fast-food joint at the precise moment as two church buses. Scrambling to get two hungry, angry kids out of the backseat, I absorbed the, shall we say, unexpected pleasure of seeing an endless swarm of teens race ahead of us to the front of the line.

I don’t know about you, but sitting in a packed, greasy, loud burger joint, waiting for dozens to get served before your starving, frustrated young ones eat is enough of a hellish image to steer you away from Satan himself.

I’m sure the Washington press corps that follows President Bush to Crawford each August probably thinks they’ve seen the gates of hell, too. But that could be because of the class envy that goes along with vacations, especially for those from the class-conscious East.

Crawford isn’t tony, not like Martha’s Vineyard, Kennebunkport or Hyannisport. And the press knows that. Hence, the get-me-out-of-here mentality not uncommon among big-time journalists facing Texas’ August heat.

That’s one reason I love it that Bush spends part of the month there. Crawford is the antithesis of cool, certainly not your one-up-the-Joneses-type vacation.

Which gets us back to being on the road with the family. There’s nothing like losing yourself alongside big open spaces on a lonesome highway, discovering beauty on a bench in a national park or putting yourself into situations outside of your control.

It’s there that you find yourself, warts and all. Start the car, please.

William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News.