Something Happened On The Way To The Lodge

At mile marker 57 on the Washington side of I-5, we hit a small snag.  This silly little part of van decided to “go out”.  Any guesses?  Perhaps I should set up the scenario a little better for you all. 

We planned a school’s out trip to Great Wolf Lodge all the way back in January.  We went last year with my brother’s family and had a great time so we decided to make it a tradition to mark the beginning of summer.  We stuffed all of our over-packed bags into our lovely white Dodge and pulled out of our driveway at 10:00 in the morning.  My brother left about a half-hour before us and we were trying to catch up so that we would arrive at the lodge at around the same time.  All was going well until lunch time.  Sean was not pulling over fast enough to fill our bellies, so the car decided to give him a hand.  The transmission dropped out – just like that – no hints, no clues – just there one moment, gone the next.  At mile 57.  At that point my brother was at mile 77.  We were almost caught up.

But what can you do?  We pulled into a truck stop, called a tow truck, got some lunch, arranged a rental car, and took some pictures for posterity’s sake.  We taught our children a valuable lesson about balance in marriage by pointing out that mommy is absolutely amazing in extraordinary, stressful situations – dad is a wreck; on the other hand mommy is a mess when it comes to day-to-day stress – dad is the picture of calm.

Because we are a family of six (why does that number seem so much smaller than five all of a sudden?), we could not all fit in the cab of the tow truck.  So we got the experience of a lifetime (I hope).  We all buckled up and rode on top of the tow truck for the half-hour it took to get us to a Dodge dealer in Longview (going backwards here, people, away from our desired destination).

The freakiest/weirdest moment on top of the tow truck (and I so wish I had a picture of it) was when I was looking out Sean’s window and a very large curvy woman lying on a mattress came riding by filling up all our windows (she was on the side of a Sealy mattress semi-truck).  Very bizarre.

 

I thought the above picture was funny because here is Sean zooming down the freeway at sixty miles an hour with a computer on his lap, cell phone in hand and nothing touching the steering wheel.  It was almost surreal.  We all pretended we were on the Apollo 13 mission – the main engine was out and we were rapidly losing oxygen (thank goodness we could roll down the windows without starting the car).

 

We wound up with a twelve passenger van for the remainder of our trip.  It was ridiculously huge and not very comfortable.  All the rental mini-vans in Longview were being used on Wednesday.  Sean did not like driving it, but the kids loved it.  Djeryd informed us that if we had a twelve passenger van he would be alright with us having more kids.  Ha! (Isn’t that the cutest little stair-step of people you ever saw?)

 

Our trip felt rushed this year because we lost nearly three hours with the whole van thing.  We only stay for one night, so three hours is a big deal.  We still managed to pack in lots of swimming and fun with the cousins and a little MagiQuest.  And since we don’t have a television, a highly anticipated part of every vacation is squeezing in access to Disney channel (call me crazy, but I think Phineas and Pherb is really funny).

Sean and my brother even squeezed in a half hour, or so, to talk computers (I know, you’re getting excited too!).

 

Right before we left the kids watched the story time show in the lobby we missed the night before.  Sean’s dad rescued us at the car rental place in Longview and got us all home at a decent hour.  Despite the drama (and perhaps a little because of it) it was a really fun trip, and I can’t wait for next year.