Some trips are planned, while others just come together one stop at a time. The trip to Bennett Springs was a little of both.

Beth and I loaded up the four kids, from newborn to 8, into our Pontiac Transport, which, if you remember those, looked less like a minivan and more like something from NASA. Ours was Malibu Blue, a color that made it easy to find in a parking lot and hard to describe without using the word “bright.”

We didn’t go straight there. Trips like that rarely start with a destination. They start with breakfast.

We started early and drove over two hours before stopping in Sedalia at the Wheel-In Drive-In, home of the Goober Burger, a hamburger topped with warm peanut butter. The kids were doing what kids do in a diner when a man nearby turned and said, “Shh.” No explanation. No follow-up. Just “Shh.” He left shortly after, and we laughed about it the rest of the day.

We made a few more stops along the way, including a small antique mall with items that make you wonder how they lasted long enough to be sold again.”. Eventually, the road did what roads tend to do, and it led us to Bennett Springs. We arrived late in the afternoon, just a few hours before the end of the fishing day.

If you’ve never been to Bennett Springs, fishing there comes with structure. The start and end of the day are marked by a whistle. When it blows in the morning, fishing begins. When it blows in the evening, it ends. With game wardens nearby and a riverbank full of people who know the rules, you follow the whistle.

The kids saw the water and fishermen and were ready to start immediately. Beth, being the voice of reason, explained we weren’t going to fish that evening. We were too close to the closing whistle, and there was no sense getting started just to stop.

Sylvia, who was 6 at the time, listened carefully and then asked the question: “How will the fish know?”

It was a fair question. In her mind, the whistle wasn’t for the fishermen. It was for the fish, a signal letting them know when it was safe to swim around and when it was time to stop.

Of course, the fish don’t know. They don’t check watches. They don’t listen for signals. They don’t operate on a schedule posted at the park office. The whistle isn’t for them. It’s for us. It’s there to create order where there otherwise wouldn’t be any, to keep “one more cast” from stretching into the dark.

We stayed at Larry’s Cedar Resort, just a short walk from the mouth of the springs, close enough to hear that whistle without wondering if you imagined it. The next morning, we were ready.

Licenses in hand, daily permits purchased, we joined the line along the water. There’s a rhythm to fishing at Bennett Springs.There’s casting, waiting, and quiet glances at other lines, along with the question, “What are you using?”

We fished for a couple of days, long enough for the kids to settle into it and learn that fishing isn’t always about catching. At one point, we took a break and visited a U-pick blueberry farm. You paid by the pound, which seemed reasonable until you realized it included everything you ate while picking. Based on that, we did very well for ourselves.

Trips like that don’t hinge on one thing. Not the fishing. Not the stops along the way. They hold together because of small moments: a man in a diner who decides he’s the keeper of quiet, a minivan that looks like it belongs on a launch pad, a bucket of blueberries that never quite makes it back full, and a 6-year-old trying to understand how fish keep track of time.

Looking back, I still don’t know that we ever gave her a satisfying answer. But in a way, that might have been the point.

Tom Brand writes about faith, family, and life in Misouri. He still believes the best parts of a trip happen along the way, even if his fly-fishing success has been limited to a handful of trout. He assumes the fish are still ignoring the whistle.

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