Lessons from a Road Trip
Well the return trip from Sanibel, Florida to Manitou Springs in January was quite the adventure. We knew there was a small window between snow events so we decided to thread the needle. Leaving in the afternoon and going a few hours to Northern Florida on the first day. All was well, until …. Leaving our hotel it was rainy and cold, but was it really that cold? The more north we drove the more we learned that Florida and Georgia don’t deal with snow and ice. Even though it had already dumped snow the day and night before, the interstates had not been cleared. We weaved and wobbled and slid and finally moved to the side of the road for an hour. I quickly relinquished driving to my Northern born husband and he was my hero for the day. I closed my eyes as we travelled 4 hours worth of distance in 10 hours, cancelled and rebooked plans on where to stay, watched at least 20 professionally driven semitrucks upside down, backwards, blocking the roads, in the ditches and crossed our fingers for a blessed journey while others were not having such luck. I did learn several lessons from the road:
1) Listen when your wife tells you the room number as you sneak the kitty into the hotel on a cart buried in blankets as she agrees to take the dogs on their potty break walk before tucking in for the night. I showed up to the room and knew there was a problem when I discovered I was there first. David didn’t have his phone, but I found he and Livie outside the hotel near the entrance, “What floor are we on?”
2) When the interstate closes and you sit for hours streaming Ted Lasso on your phone, you may be able to fill up at the automated gas stations, but no one is coming to open the store… no snacks and pot to **) in. So you walk around the store with immediacy to find no porta potties. Suddenly you see another woman sneak to the side and decide she has the same potty-walk as you….She apologizes profusely, but you’re a mountain girl so you just tuck yourself into the rose bushes as the stray tabby cats walk by. You survive relieved with just a few scratches but they aren’t visible to anyone else. (The cats are relevant, because almost every vacation for awhile, we were picking up stray cats, dogs, etc… they just seem to seek me out. I told them not today, because we were already travelling with 2 humans, 2 dogs, and a cat in a small jeep for a 4 day journey.)
3) Even though I find it my duty to constantly give advice on how to drive, where to drive and how fast to drive. My husband is better than me in tense driving that sends me into panic attacks. Yes, David, I did just admit it!
Still have PTSD on the Colorado snow today. Hope it passes soon. As a side note, David has two phones hooked to the same number. His old one, he used as an internet machine and somehow it also hooks to his emergency Fire Department messages. He was asking me where is my phone days after we unpacked. I look on his “Find my phone” app and there it is….in Georgia. Oops, no one at the hotel seems able to find it in the field near the parking lot.
