I’m a weird mix of spontaneous and planning.
I’m all up for an impromptu road trip where we throw some clothes in a bag, hit the road, and go see the sites of the billboards that look the most interesting, or wherever the Roadside America website tells me I’d love.
But, if I’m planning a trip, I’m planning the &%$* outta that trip.
And over the course of the next month or so, I emptied a bin of holiday decorations that would house the snacks and water for the car and the hotel, booked our hotel in South Carolina on the way down and back, and booked the hotel for Orlando.
Side note: my hotel booking rules for any trip are as such
- There must be free breakfast
- There must be an indoor pool (if we are traveling north) or an outdoor pool (if we are traveling south)
- The WiFi must be free
I made sure to book at an extended stay hotel so we could have a kitchen and not have to OD on fried food from the park all week.
Monkey Girl, who has inherited my list-making, planning genes, researched the parks and typed up an adorable, hysterical, thorough list of all of the rides and attractions our family must hit, based on each family member.
“Mom will LOVE this one. Tiny will never forgive us if we miss this!” Etc, etc, etc.
We were ready
Except, it’s not really possible to ever really BE READY when there are six of you, and as we packed snacks and water and clothes and games and books and homework, Monkey in the Middle had a sinus infection.
A fourteen year old boy with a sinus infection produces a LOT of snotty tissues, so immediately, extra garbage bags for the car were added to the mix.
We all went to school, that Thursday, and after school, Monkey Girl went to work, and as soon as I got home, I packed the car.
At 5:30, I picked up the girl, Real Man got home, added his suitcase to the car, and off we went
We drove a whole five minutes to McDonald’s, where we picked up dinner to go and started driving.
This first leg of the trip went quickly and we arrived in our Aunt Beth and Uncle Warren’s house. There were hugs, kisses, and exclamations of how tall people had gotten, and the kids (and I) headed to bed and passed out while Real Man shared family pics that had been scanned to a flash drive with his family.
The next morning, we woke up, ate breakfast, chatted for awhile, and then hit the road, once again.
Another one of Amy’s Road Trippin’ Rules is, “When in Rome,” meaning I prefer to hit local restaurants instead of chains. I like to feel the local flavor, and support local business wherever I go.
In fact, the book that started my love of the road (and my love for blogging, as it’s non-fiction writing in the digital era) is a book called “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon, who left everything behind but his car and a map, and traveled the country, taking only the back roads.
He ate at local diners and chatted with the regulars, and often stayed the night in their homes.
Amazing book, people.
But, I digress…
Day two of the drive was uneventful.
Lots of traffic, which extended the trip about two hours, but there was homework getting done, books being read, logic puzzles being solved, and Mama’s music being blasted.
A colleague had lent me a portable DVD player with two screens (because we are also the ONLY FAMILY who has a car that doesn’t have a DVD player) and the kids also watched a few movies as we went.
On a road trip, we try to stop as little as possible, which means there is a lot of potty dancing in the car, but we seem to make it work.
At one point, I couldn’t hold it any longer and pulled off at a local gas station.
Side note: I’m not sure how I do it, but I seem to have a tendency to find the filthiest bathrooms in the country when I’m on the road.
And as we all reconvened in the car after one such potty break, we discovered that one of us had their phone fall out of their pocket into the toilet.
Post-pee.
So, I immediately went into Mama-mode, found the closest convenient store (an interesting, barely lit Mom and Pop operation) where I bought Ziploc bags and rice.
The phone stayed in the rice for two days and came out working just fine. This is life hack that works, folks.
Back to food…when we got to Florence, South Carolina, I looked around for local fare, but the hotel was right off of 95, and the result was that it was all chains.
We decided to hit a Ruby Tuesday’s simply because it was possible to get a vegetable and possibly some fruit there, as opposed to the chains.
In we went and were greeted by our lovely waitress who immediately began to take our orders in her thick, southern accent.
It’s at this point that I need to remind long time readers about one of my very first posts on this blog. (Found here)
In 2009, when we took the three monkeys to Topsail Island, NC, we ate at a Waffle House after driving all night.
We were all a little punchy and when the waitress arrived at the table and asked if we wanted bacon with our eggs and pancakes, Baby Monkey said (right in front of her) “Mama…why she say BAYcon?” Which sent us all into hysterics.
That story has been repeated so many times in our home, that when the Ruby Tuesdays waitress began to take our orders, the kids all began to giggle, and when she walked away, Tiny, who wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye at the time of the NC trip said “Why’d she say BAYcon?”
And then we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Our food took forever, and when it arrived, it was not particularly appetizing.
But we were starving. We had snacked through lunch out of the food bin, so we wouldn’t have to stop, and ate every bite of every thing that was placed in front of us.
So, of course, we all ordered dessert.
And then waited.
Again.
After (no lie) 20 minutes, my dessert came out, but the rest needed to still wait. For their ICE CREAM. Our guess was someone was running to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up some more.
Then it finally arrived, we ate and hit the hotel.
The Disney channel was showing Zombies (which I have been waiting to see) and everyone watched from their beds or fold-out couches, except for me, who feel immediately fast asleep.
The next day when we woke up, we began to suspect that the waitress had heard us giggling about the bacon story and thought we were making fun of her accent, and had told the kitchen staff to add a little special something to our meals, because no one was feeling very well.
Particularly Real Man and Baby Monkey.
This leg of the trip was slated to take six and a half hours.
Without going into too much detail, I will tell you that this leg of the trip actually took about ten hours.
In addition to traffic, we stopped at approximately every other exit for someone to hit the bathroom, and stopped at yet another convenient store so that Baby Monkey had baggies to vomit in.
Which he did.
For Ten. Straight. Hours.
We got to the hotel, finally, blessedly, and were ready to collapse, but some of us were hungry.
So, forgoing local fare, we had Papa John’s deliver some pizza and four of us ate and two of us went to sleep.
But people, we had made it.
