Road Trip!

The family road trip.  This is truly an American institution that is held in high esteem by most people I know.  The road trip is a chance to get out of our little spheres of influence and get connected to new environments.  Each year thousands of parents say to each other, "Lets plan a trip.  I know we can take a drive to ________(fill in the blank)."  And so, each year, thousands of well intentioned parents carefully plan, pack, save, and get excited to take the American road trip.  Road trips do not have to be far excursions, the only requirement is that the whole family will spend a generous number of hours sitting in car seats, moving down one highway or another. 

This past weekend was our families version of a mini rad trip.  We live in central California and my in-laws were flying in from Maui (yes, my in-laws live in Maui - lets not get gushy).  We decided that we would take a road trip to southern California to meet up with my husband's family.  Here was our plan: 

1) Leave Friday afternoon after the pre-school Mother's Day luncheon my kids' school was having and drive to Riverside County to visit my sister for the night (if you know anything about southern California, you already sense problems - we'll get back to that).

2) Spend the night with her then drive to Long Beach Saturday morning for a family reunion in the park.

3) Saturday afternoon drive to Escondido to a hotel

4) Spend the night and on Sunday, go to the wild animal park (Safari Park) with the in-laws.

5) Stay one more night and drive home on Monday - approximately 6 hours north of Escondido.

We'll go step by step.

Step 1

We left our town around 12:15 after having the luncheon.  We headed south via Interstate 5 and were tootling along quite nicely.  We merged onto the 210 East around 3:15pm.  This had taken us bout 3 hours and we estimated we had about one more hour to go.  Uh-huh.  As we traveled along the 210 we all of a sudden encountered the Friday afternoon southern California traffic.  We literally came to a screeching halt.  For the next 2 hours, we  traveled about 17 miles.  On the return trip on Monday, this same stretch of road took us 12 minutes.  As we were in this stop and go traffic, our children decided they had had enough of this car business.  At once, both of my dear sweet kiddos decide they have to poop and absolutely can not wait.  Our car was stuck somewhere near Rosemeade/Altadena/No Idea and we were in the lane next to the car-pool. Being the nice understanding parents we are, we told our kids, "Too bad, we can't stop so either you have accidents or you'll just have to hold it."  This lasted for about another half hour and they started to sound desperate.  So we eased our way off the freeway and found a potty.  Just to keep things interesting, neither kid pooped - just peed.  Thanks.   

The other thing that was happening during the stop and go was a phone conversation with my sister informing her of our progress.  Somewhere my sister had come across a website which gives the status of traffic via a color code system.  If a road is green you are good to go, yellow means so=so, and red means good luck.  So as my husband drives along, I am on the phone with her getting updates on what the website says our traffic situation is - red, yellow, or green.  I don't know this site but I can say that it is full of s@*!   My sister also kept yelling out alternate routes to try to reroute us around the traffic.  But, as she would come up with a plan, our road would turn green on her screen and we were apparently moving much more quickly.  Sure.  We finally made it to my sister's house (another potty break later) around 6:15.  Seriously, we could have been in Vegas with that pace.

That night my daughter wrapped up this easy going day with a major protest about going to bed.  Basically she decided that everyone in my sister's house should stay awake since she wasn't interested in going to bed.  Bed time for everyone wound up being 11:30ish thanks to her efforts.  Good news was that her uncle taught her a new video game the next morning.

Playing Whack a Mole

Step 2

We went to Long Beach for the  reunion and it was uneventful.  

Geoffrey and I at the reunion

Step 3
The four of us piled into our car to head to Escondido and wound up taking a toll road by accident.  Now, most people carry enough change to pay a small toll but we weren't planning on this so we decided to get off before having to pay.  Little did we know that the off ramp had a toll booth too and we had to pay anyway.  They problem was we had almost no money with us.  We searched the entire car and came up with $1.35 in change.  The toll was $1.50 and the fine for not paying was $57.00.  No, they didn't take cards or checks.  So, here we are, on an off ramp that leads to Laguna Beach of all places with no money to get off the freeway.  I would up having to run to the Mercedes behind us and begging for a quarter so that the ten other cars behind us would stop thinking evil thoughts about us.  On the bright side, I had never seen Laguna Beach and it was beautiful.  As a side note, apparently everyone in Laguna Beach drives black Mercedes. The kids slept through most of this so thank heaven for that.  They woke up just in time to see the end of the beach scenery and conveyed their feelings loudly about being denied a chance to go to the beach.

Sleeping through the whole toll road debacle

Step 4

We did go to the wild animal park and it was wonderful.  Nothing major happened that day except somehow Geoffrey and I wound up watching 2 1/2 hours of a Sister Wives marathon before bed time.  Yeah. Moving on.

At the wild animal park - great place!

Step 5

Monday it was time to go home.  So, in an effort to be home for my daughter's ballet class at 3:15, we left the hotel at 8:15 and made the following stops:

-Back to my sister's house because I had forgotten three things and Geoffrey needed to poop

-Stopped in Glendale because the kids needed to poop

-Stopped in Camarillo at In N Out because everyone was starving

-Stopped in Santa Barbara to see my friend J who is wanting baby #2 to get here asap

-Stopped in San Luis Obispo because I had to poop

We got home around 4:30 and yes, we missed ballet.  I blame the bowels.

Let me sum up by saying in my experience with family road trips there are definite truths:

The kids always have to poop when there's no potty, always add on two hours to any schedule because it will take you two hours longer then planned, Benedryl will be needed to get the kids to sleep the first night, and the car DVD player is the best invention ever.  Oh, and you must go on road trips because they are how memories are made - memories you will talk about for years to come.