Day three started out at Aunt Minnie and Uncle Fred's house in Colorado Springs.  We were trying to get on the road by 9am since we had arrived at Aunt Minnie's so late the night before.  We woke up early and had breakfast on the patio.  It was a lovely morning.  We even watched the bunny family hop around the yard.  Then we divided up to dress and pack in shifts.  Divide and conquer.  This is Uncle Fred out on the patio.

My daughter and the baby were packing and getting dressed while Allen watched some cartoons and I spoke to Aunt Minnie.  I noticed the first few days I was at my daughter's house that she would get impatient or frustrated with what I thought was typical baby and three year old behavior but I figured she has been doing it ALL by herself and I wouldn't have lasted nearly as long without getting a bit snippy.  Aunt Minnie and Uncle Fred are retired and they have a nice house with nice furniture and Catty's big pet peeve from way back in her mommy days, is children who jump on furniture or use it in ways that it was not intended.  So when Allen stood on the sofa or the coffee table, I asked him to sit down.  When he wouldn't sit, I took him to the time out chair.  When he wouldn't sit in the time out chair, grandma Catty sat and restrained him while he screamed.  I am now known as "the mean grandma," but after that all I had to do when he wouldn't listen was throw him "the look" and ask if we were going to have to sit again.

We gave the car a quick cleaning and reorganizing, then stuffed in the suitcases, kids and adults.  It was time to hit the road.  Only 10:30am!  What the heck, nothing else was working out as planned.  We didn't get more than an hour into the drive when we had to make a pit stop.  Then half an hour after that we were hungry again.  We were going to dip into the goody bag that Aunt Minnie packed with fruit and drinks and those yummy maple leaf cookies that I hadn't had for 30 years, but out of all the things we could have forgotten to pack the goody bag was it.  Now we were depressed and starving.  Drive through!  Then freeway.  Then Kansas state line.  Rats, another time change.  For crying out loud, we've barely started, the day is half gone and we are already tired. 

We force ourselves to drive until we have to stop for gas.  We throw in some cold drinks and 15 minutes on the local church playground.  It's 90+ degrees.  Kansas is flat and brown.  Where are the trees?  Our tempers are getting short and we decide to stop in the closest town to 6pm.  Salina, Kansas.  The fields are brown and some are smoking.  We find the nearest hotel that has a pool.  Best Western.  We almost miss it because it looks like it's under construction.  I ask if they are remodeling, the desk clerk says they got hit twice last month.  I don't think anything about it.  The room is on the second floor, it's newly remodeled, and the pool is beckoning.  We go for a swim and then out for a bite to eat. 

Now what I find strange is that we stopped at a Ponderosa Steakhouse thinking the buffet would be good with the small kids.  But this Ponderosa was a regular sit down restaurant without any buffet.  I thought they were all buffets?  We ended up leaving and going to the IHOP across the street.  No buffet, but the prices were better for us to finance their remodeling after the kids got through trashing the place.

We were whipped and stopped to fill up the gas tank.  We were discussing how very off the plan we were.  A half a state behind.  We vowed to wake at 4am and throw sleeping kids in the car.  We grabbed some donuts and juice at the gas station and went back to the motel.  The kids were getting ready for bed and I was reading the guest book about the area.  We became alarmed when we read that in the event of a tornado the staff would sound the fire alarm and then knock on doors to take us to safer areas of the hotel on the first floor.  That's when we started thinking about the clerks comment about being hit twice last month.  We watched the weather channel to make sure there weren't any red blobs headed our way, then satisfied, we went to sleep.

I woke at 4, showered, woke my daughter, then organized the car.  She told me about being awakened at 1am by someone beating on the door.  I immediately thought I slept through a tornado, but it was just someone knocking on the wrong door.  They finally left when my daughter called the front desk and had someone re-direct them to where they really wanted to go.  We finished the packing and moved the semi sleeping kids to the car.  They did fall back to sleep.  It was 6am and we were off.  Yea, we did it.  Now we had to make up time.

Kansas is a flat, dry, treeless, evil place.  Mother nature keeps wiping everything out in that area and no one seems to get the hint that humans are not wanted here.  I think it's width is grossly misrepresented on maps and I'm almost positive time was moving backwards.  I was going to comment on how anyone could possibly get caught speeding since there was no where to hide a police car when flashing blue lights appeared in the rear view mirror.  My daughter pulled over and took out her ID.  As she rolled down the window to the approaching cop the children both woke up screaming.  They screamed while he went back to his patrol car, they screamed when he came back.  He handed my daughter back her paperwork and cautioned her to slow down.  It was just a warning.  Then I think I saw him poke his fingers in his ears and run back to his car.  Too bad.  He was really good looking.  I almost got my camera out to take a picture but that would have required digging through the junk covering my legs and feet and I just didn't want to deal with it.  Instead, I passed out the donuts and juice and we ate breakfast on the road.  At a much reduced pace.  With filled mouths that can't scream.

After 4 days in a car, the assortment of toys we brought for the kiddies were losing their appeal.  Books equaled 5 minutes of amusement.  Push button activity boards lasted 15 minutes and the batteries were sounding like you were playing a record at the wrong speed (you have to be old to get that one).  We sang along to the 7 CD's of kiddie music four times each CD.  I bought 2 new DVD's to play in that wonderful portable player my brother loaned me, and when added to my daughters collection of kids DVD's we could have easily watched different cartoons and movies the whole trip without seeing anything twice, but that would have been too easy.  Allen was in love with the Sponge Bob DVD that we bought before we left San Diego.  It  has seven full length Sponge Bob shows on it.  I'm not familiar with Sponge Bob but during every show he has to scream a couple of times which wouldn't have been so bad if we didn't have to listen to the DVD four times each day. 

The real bright spot in our traveling toy collection turned out to be one of the toys in the kids' meal we picked up at Wendy's.  It was a book on tape.  "Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed."  We all enjoyed this one though my daughter and I cringed and made faces when they explained that the drool on your pillow came from the monster under the bed crawling up beside you at night and practicing putting your head in it's mouth while you are asleep.  We thought for sure this would be a nightmare producer but me and my daughter seemed to sleep fine.  We were so tickled with this toy we stopped in Misery for lunch to buy the other two that were available.

Misery.  The show me state.  I renamed it Misery the "show me how a passing lane is really supposed to be used"  state.  At least it was green and had a couple of hills, and  a couple of trees.   We ended up stopping for gas and lunch there.   Contrary to what this picture shows, I did not swear in front of my grandchildren.  I did say A$$ hole (look ma I'm cleaning up my language) once but I had my mouth full of french fries so it sounded like aaaaaaa ooooooooo.  My daughter was the only one who recognized it for what it was and she smacked me and gave me the stern and effective, "MOTHER?!?!?!".  I considered myself properly chastised.

The world would be a perfect place if everyone would put one of those baby changing tables in their restroom.  Our adventure was drifting over the line into ordeal.  Now I had to hold the baby up in the air while my daughter removed, wiped, and fastened a diaper.  While we were changing the baby, Allen was doing what I thought was so cute three days earlier, picking the perfect stall.  On his third round of inspection we stopped with baby in mid air to scream, "JUST GO ALREADY!!!!!!"  I don't know if it was the tone of our voices or my PMS monster head spinning but he closed the door and went.  We ordered our food to go and ignored the looks of disapproval.  Apparently Wendy's in Misery has a dress code and babies in diapers, three year olds in pull ups and socks, and bedraggled make-up-less women are offensive.  This is one state I don't mind never seeing again.

Not long after lunch and we were entering Illinois.  Finally!  Green trees and normal drivers.  Less than three hours and we were through Illinois.  Just another three hours and we would be on the border of Indiana and Ohio.  We got caught in some traffic from an accident right before our exit.  Just one small delay and we were at our last hotel for the night.  This place was nice.  Really nice rooms with a mini fridge and microwave (not that we were using them).  A pool.  A laundry room which was really nice because we were out of clean clothes.  We took a dip while the laundry was washing, ordered some pizza, and called it a night.  The next morning we hit their breakfast buffet and it was all included in the price of the room.  I would even travel back to Richmond, Indiana to stay at this place.  It was that nice.  And it was just what we needed to get rid of some of that travel frustration.

Four short hours into day five and we were pulling into my Mom's driveway in Ohio.  We unpacked the car and got the kids settled.  We ate a real spaghetti dinner.  We even went to Walmart to get some kid proofing items for my Mom.

The next day after breakfast I hit the road back to PA.  It was 2:30pm.  Toddler time.  I arrived at Honey's at 6:30pm where I unpacked the car and had to go to bed to get up for work the next day.  I actually looked forward to going to work (that ended after three days) and getting back into the normal routine.  I like PA (sort of), I like normal.  It's good to be home.

Now all I have to do is catch up with everyone.

tags: travel  children  adventure  frustration  colorado  kansas  missouri  illinois  indiana  ohio  pennsylvania  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit