Family Time: Road Trips

Growing up, family-time was always important to me. Spending time with the people you love... until long after they start driving you crazy! Road trips were always fun. Mom over-stressing on every detail until we finally left and scheduling in the "fun". Haha! Gotta love Mom! (Really... would we have remembered to pack important things like clothes and underwear without her?!) And then there was Dad. Always being somewhat clueless as to why Mom was in a bad mood as we loaded into the van, he'd start off the "happiness" with Beach Boys music as we pulled out of the driveway. And then, from us (the kids/siblings) came the never-ending questions of "Are we there yet?" or "Can we stop to go to the bathroom?" Our stops usually involved many historical places such as battlefields and old homes... which, of course, we never appreciated until after we left home.

Road trips didn't end when I got married, I'm excited to say. In fact, being on the road with my hubby over the last 8 and a half years has been good for our relationship (in more ways than one). For one thing, we found out that the mountains don't actually give me colds! The mixture of my allergies and the elevation do... unless I remember to take Benadryl with me! This has solved many travel problems, in that now I LOVE going to the mountains and don't get sick anymore! Wahoo! (We've been to see some part of the Rockies at least 6 times since we've been married, if that gives you any indication as to how often we go.) By the way... if you haven't ever been to Colorado (West of Denver and then South of Vail) in the fall... GO! It's beautiful!

We have our system worked out pretty well while in the car. He drives and I navigate. I love to look at the maps in the atlas and figure out our route. The only part I don't like is when we get to a big city and I can't figure out the best way to get through it, especially if we get on a One-Way and we need to go the other way. We've talked about getting a GPS for times like that.

And then there are the endless jokes we tell, the books I read to him, the silly (and some serious) songs we listen/sing to... and, occasionally, we even manage to have some good conversations! Haha! All in all, our trips are very relaxing and enjoyable... haha... oh yeah... and... did I mention that we rarely make reservations for anywhere we go?! It usually works better for us if we don't. For example, we have only made reservations 4 times since we've been married... I don't mean just for a vacation... I mean period! That's it! The trips are still very enjoyable, but something always seems to happen:

1st Time: (Honeymoon) - Yellowstone National Park - Since we got married in February, during the school year, we decided to take our honeymoon when school was out and before we moved to Chickasha. So... we went to Yellowstone in mid-May. The snow was still higher than my car (on the side of the road) and the ENTIRE Yellowstone Lake was completely frozen over! Then, it started sleeting on us while we were driving through the park! Our reservations were for 3 nights. We stayed one and ended up down in Arizona to visit some of my family.

2nd Time: (Vacation) - Estes Park, CO - To make a long story shorter... our car broke down on our only full-day there and we spent the whole day (thankfully, at least in our cabin) waiting for the car to get fixed. The repairs cost more than the entire trip!

3rd Time: (Vacation) - Disney World, FL - (Not a road trip, but still a "reservation" experience.) This one was actually funny. I wanted to go to Disney World because, according to word of mouth, Orlando was less likely to get hit by a hurricane than the beach locations we were looking at (and our vacation was during hurricane season)... not to mention, I hadn't been since I was 6 and John had never been! So... we booked everything in advance. Then... a hurricane headed straight for Orlando before we left and sat on top of it until the last day we were there! (Yes, there were no hurricanes in the beach locations we looked at that year... only in Orlando.) How crazy is that?! It was a good thing, I know. The last day, where we actually had sunlight (instead of rain, rain, and more rain), I got sick from all of the heat and we went back to the hotel pretty early in the day.

4th Time: (Anniversary Weekend) - Mount Magazine, AR - We don't get snow around here very often, but it began snowing a couple of hours before we headed to our destination. We called in advance to see if the snow was sticking on the roads (to see if we should take my car or John's 4-wheel drive truck). They told us it wasn't, so we headed out in my car. Well, they were right... it wasn't sticking to the roads! The parking lot, however, was more than a few inches deep in snow that was packed over solid ice. We almost didn't make it out of the parking lot the next day!

Like I said, we still enjoy them and have fun, regardless of what's come up! Every family should have the fun experiences of Road Trips!