I write those words and immediately think of “Animal House”. Having said that any one of my road trip memories will pale in comparison. My favorite road trip was the first one we took with out kids when we first relocated to Florida. We were driving north to visit family for the first time since our move. We would be together, in the car for over 1,000 miles. Me, my husband, our twelve year old twins and our 10 pound Yorkie, Ted, were off and ready for our first, very long, road trip. The first 250 miles, we were just like the Brady Bunch. Singing, laughing – it was grand! We began to get hungry so we pulled over to a rest stop, picked a shady spot, and I handed out the sandwiches and snacks I had lovingly picked out that morning…I could almost see myself morphing into Florence Henderson, even if I did look more like Alice.
At the 600 mile mark, we trudged, tired into our hotel for the night. We stopped at Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was a hot August evening and we decided to go to the pool and relax a bit before ordering room service. Ted is an older dog and he was content to fall asleep and we were back within 30 minutes. Still, we were tired, and 4 burgers later, we were all sound asleep, ready to begin part 2 of our drive in the morning.
Our twins were always like day and night, from day one. One easy going, the other just a bit on the demanding side and I should add, it appears when she is both tired and hungry. For purposes of privacy, I will call them Thing 1 and Thing 2. Thing 2 refused to eat the hotel breakfast, and I offered her one of the car snacks, but she wasn’t having it. There was no singing. We would be arriving by 1pm at our destination, so there was no packed lunches. There was just constant moaning. The complaints began, the dog jumped up into the front seat, the girls are now fighting, first verbally, then things start to get airborne in the back seat. Dad is now yelling, the dog is barking and just like that, we have gone from Brady Bunch to The Shining! Well, maybe not all that bad – but I learned that day that there is a limit to road trip happiness – for us, it’s 600 miles.
Laboccadellaverita 