Road Trip to Florida

2011. Our first road trip as a family.So there we were my husband, my mom (this was when I still talked to her), me and two kids one which was still in diapers. (Side note: Road trips and diapers go together like two peas in a pod; no really they do…NOT!!)

From New York to Florida (The beautiful Sandpiper Beacon Beach Resort a place I highly recommend) in our trusted Suzuki Grand Vitara XL7 SUV. We were all so excited. I’m personally a summer person so that thought of spending the whole week by the pool/beach in warm weather was heaven on earth.

When I started packing for our trip my husband suggested that I use a big suitcase to put all our stuff in and we would attached it to the roof BUT I thought I had a better idea of using multiple bags (my thinking was it would be easier to get something if I needed it rather than taking a big suitcase down from the roof) and filling our car to capacity so that my two kids and mom had to sit in the second raw the whole way there. I know, Mother of the Year Award! What the fuck was I thinking? Now don’t get me wrong I did realized my mistake almost immediately after we started stuffing the car but at that point it was too late. We needed to hit the road and get to Florida ASAP to start our vacation.

You’ll be happy to hear when we were coming back we bought one of those duffel storage bags that go on top of the car and the whole back of the SUV was empty. We put a bunch of towels and pillows and the kids slept very comfortably.

We left our house around 3:30 PM and by our calculations we would be in Florida by 12-1 the following day. Perfect timing since check in was 12.

I have to say considering that it was our first ever road trip with two small kids and a car filled to capacity with stuff (BTW now that I think about it what the fuck did I pack that it filled the whole car, we were only staying for a week) and my mother the whole road trip went pretty good. I came prepared. We had a DVD player with many DVD's. Coloring books, cards, food and drinks and we made it a point to stop every 3-4 hours. The kids did really well. I think they started complaining the last hour and honestly even we (the adults) were all "Are we there yet"?

BUT no trip can be complete without some fuck ups.

We did have a moment in Virginia where out tired popped. I frantically tried to call every place I could find on my navigation system on a Friday night around 10. Everything was closed. This doesn’t happen in NY and I was completely unprepared. In NY you can always find anything you need with a 10 mile radius. I guess I just assumed that it worked like that in every state. It doesn't. In Virginia everything was closed by 8PM. My husband tried to find all the tools to change the tire himself but we couldn’t find it in our trunk so we had to call someone. We finally found someone who had some kind of an accent and we barley  understood him. After the phone call finished I wasn’t sure if he understood what we wanted or where our location was but almost an hour later he did show. During that hour the kids constantly asked what’s going on, can we look? And we were just trying to keep them in the car. You know the whole highway, kids running around like crazy thing. After the guy came he told us the tools were actually under the driver’s seat but don’t say duh yet cause it turns out our tires needed a special key (that Suzuki so graciously did not provide) to get them open so even if we had found the tools we would have to call someone. $200 dollars later and we were off to Georgia where we would buy a new tire (the one we had was a spare). Another $165 and we were off to Florida. See bump $465 spent and we hadn't even started out vacation.

As a side note we left NY one a nice warm/cool May day (about 65-70). Once we got to a Wal-Mart in Georgia to buy our tire holymotherofsunwhatthefuck it was like 99 and not even noon. This I was not prepared for. Like all the saliva sucked right out of your mouth, can’t breathe, just need water now, feel like a vampire that's about to melt in the sun kind of hot.

The other bad thing was my driving. I’ve been a driver for almost 16 years. I’ve spent many years and many times driving from my house to my friend’s house in upstate (that’s 4 hours each way). I never had any issues. I just did it. For whatever reason this time I just couldn’t do it. My husband drove the first 4 hours and then I offered to drive so he can rest. I just couldn’t do it. As soon as I started driving I couldn’t keep my eyes open and as soon as my husband took over the driving I was fine. I felt like someone had hypnotized me; I tried everything; loud music; coffee; my husband talking to me to keep me company fuck if anything worked. All I wanted to do was sleep. So hubs took over the wheel and guess motherfucking what I’m up like a baby at midnight. I felt so terrible. I really wanted to help him. As a reward while we were in Florida I drove to most of the place cause wouldn’t you know it when we were coming back the same thing happened.

The rest of the trip was amazing. We had a wonderful time. My kids still talking about Florida and how it was the greatest vacation they ever went on.



So Beautiful. No that is not any of us!



This was my view from my balcony.

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