Road Trips

There is nothing that I love more than going on road trips with my family.  It is the thing that I look forward to most, and I absolutely LOVE being in the car, having hours and hours of driving ahead.  A trip to Florida would be a letdown if my parents told my sister and I that we were flying there.  The trip would simply be ruined.   Well, not exactly ruined, but a major highlight would be lost.  I find that it is on road trips when I realize how much I love spending time with my family and how well we get along and have fun together.  One time, my grandparents took my sister and I on a road trip all the way to California.  It was a month long journey, and we stopped at so many memorable sites along the way, including a handful of National Parks and the Grand Canyon.  That trip was absolutely incredible.  I also grew up driving to the cottage, although that is only a 4 hour drive.  Still, I always remember being on long trips in the car with my family, and loving it. 

One may ask, how can you possibly love driving for 19 hours to Orlando, or anywhere else?  Wouldn't you get bored?  Well, there are many things you can do.  Here are a few:

-         * Listen to music and look out the window

-         *Just look out the window!

-         * Play the billboard, sign and license plate alphabet game

-         * Eat tons of snacks

-          *Talk in the car

-         * Play cards or mini-games

-          *Sleep

-          *Write in your trip journal, or any journal!

When I was younger, I would spend hours annoying my sister, asking her if she wanted to play rock, paper, scissors or hang-man, or to make up another handshake.  Needless to say, there have definitely been tense moments in the car.  To be honest, fights in the car with my sister were often started by me, as I believe that it is legitimately the role of a younger sibling to be a bugger.  Where would the fun be without it?  And sometimes my parents would be pushed to the point to say “it’s quiet time now”.  THAT is when we knew we had gone too far with the bickering.  Even the arguments in the car make for good memories and stories later on.  One time in particular stands out in my mind to be the scariest and most tense road trip experience.  It was the time when we drove to Siesta Key, Florida…

It was just the 4 of us in the van, like usual, and I was in grade 3 or 4.  We were almost there, and by that time, my parents were a bit stressed with finding the condo where we were headed.  Finally we found the little building where we had to stop to pick up the keys.  During the trip we had had many snacks in the car, including a tin box filled with the delicious home-made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that my mom had made.  The van was hot, the floor was gritty, and we were all irritable.  At this moment, I decided that it would be nice to eat a cookie…so I reached down to the floor, grabbed the tin of cookies, and began lifting the box upward.  It felt like slow motion when the flimsy lid flipped off, and I dropped the tin, watching it fall slowly to the floor of the dirty van.  The dozens of cookies that my mom had baked especially for our week in Florida were now scattered on the floor mixed with the dirt and grit that had accumulated over the 20 hour drive.  “Ohh no.”, I thought.  I knew that this was terrible timing, and a complete disaster.  We were all counting on those cookies to last us the week! As my dad heard the crash, he turned around, and the look on his face made my heart skip a beat.  I was in trouble, and I was terrified.  My dad rarely gets mad, but when he does, it sucks.  “Mom worked so hard baking those for us and now they’re EVERYWHERE Austin!! Look at this mess!”  The tone was what made it impossible for me to hold back tears. Him and I opened the van door and picked up the cookies one by one, salvaging the ones that didn’t look completely demolished.  As we were just calming down from the trauma that this cookie dropping incident had caused, and as my dad was apologizing for his over-reaction, I saw Ellery out of the corner of my eye.  She was sitting in the back seat.  There were still some cookies left in the tin, and as she reached for them…they spilt again.  It was over, and we both knew it.  We knew that mom and dad would not be happy, and we did not know what would be happening next.  A second cookie tin drop had pushed it far over the line.  It was unbelievable because we had lasted 19 hours with nothing going wrong, and on the last hour, everyone snapped.  “It’s quiet time now” did not need to be said this time.  We all knew that the van would remain silent until we reached our destination. 

When I think back to that time, it makes me remember all of the other road trips, and how they have all been fun, amazing, and memorable experiences.  The tense moments have created the funniest memories for all of us.  This March break, the 4 of us are driving to Charlotte for a few days, and then my sister is flying back for school.  After that, we are continuing on to Myrtle Beach for a few days.  I can’t wait for the drive.