6 years ago while we were on vacation in Florida, we stopped at a "scenic lookout" in a state park in Florida with my husband, children, and my parents. On one side of the road of this "park" (aka swamp) were a bunch of logs (alligators?) in a large muddy body of water while there was a big thicket on the other side of the road. My children were still quite young and were very excited at the thought of being able to see an alligator in the "wild". I'd left the sliding door to our minivan open, just on the off chance one of those logs was an alligator who was looking for dinner.
As we stood there looking at a log trying to determine if it was an old tree or something a bit more sinister, we started to hear rustling in the woods on the other side of the road. Having watched one too many Nat Geo shows on how alligators can sneak up on you, we all jumped at the sound and stepped closer to one another.
We looked intently as we tried to see what animal was making all that noise in the dense growth of the forest. While I wanted to see what was in those woods behind us, I also couldn't take my eyes off the swamp. With as much as I kept looking back and forth, my son said it looked like my head was on a swivel. My husband as I mused that we might as well have chickens dangling from our necks with how it felt like we were being sized up as dinner from both sides of the road.
We heard more rustling accompanied by the tell-tale snorting of wild hogs foraging for food. I laughed at myself for having thought it was a gator coming to eat us. And then, without any warning whatsoever, my husband tried out the Arkansas Razorback yell he'd been forced to learn as a right of passage when we'd moved to Little Rock some years back. "Woo Pig Sooiee!!!". We all jumped out of our skin as he yelled loud enough so every hog in a 100 mile radius could hear him.
Those faint pig noises instantly turned to very loud, and very ticked off, snorts and squeals of a wild boar who was not happy at having another wild boar in his territory. We froze in fear. In the next instant, the sound of a herd of pigs stampeding toward us broke us out of our trance.
"GET IN THE CAR!!" I yelled. I tossed the kids through the open door of the minivan, while my parents jumped in quickly behind them. I leapt into the driver's seat before my husband had even gotten the passenger side door open. I turned on the car and slammed the gear shift into "drive" while pushing the gas pedal to the floorboard as my husband was still trying to close his car door.
As we left the danger behind us faster than a speeding bullet, my mother said with that age old motherly you-know-you're-in-trouble tone in her voice "Michael..........". No other words were necessary, the tone said it all. He replied "I know......".
A couple of weeks ago when we were in Florida on vacation, we reminded our kids of this little escapade and asked them if they'd like to drive through the same state park this year. They quickly and emphatically declined the offer. I guess some things you only need to experience once in a lifetime.
Written by Christie Bielss
Our much anticipated summer vacation had finally arrived. The kids woke up on the first gentle nudge and excitedly sped through their morning routines in an effort to get out the door early. As I was trying to put the last toiletry items in mine and my children's luggage, my husband was cutting his hair .......... while his suitcase sat on the bed just as empty as it had been the night before. Typical. He always packs at the last minute and always ends up forgetting something. Heck, one year he forgot to pack any pants. Yep, takes the phrase "going Commando" to a whole new level.
We ended up leaving an hour and half later than I had planned, but it was vacation and we were driving, so our schedule was flexible. As we were leaving town, we went through the McDonald's drive-thru for breakfast. My husband ordered his favorite: sausage biscuits, while the rest of us ate syrup-less hotcakes. That's right. We had pancakes without syrup because I don't want sticky gunk all over my car.
My family happily gnoshed on their breakfast while I put the pedal to the metal and tried to make up for lost time due to my husband's primping. We were about an hour down the road when our senses were assaulted by the smell of a skunk. We didn't see it, but we sure could smell it. We rolled the windows down and quickly aired out the car. I felt sorry for whoever hit that skunk because their car probably had to be fumigated to get rid of that stench.
We continued blazing a trail down the highway barreling towards Amarillo, TX for our lunch break/refueling destination. When we arrived in Amarillo, we stopped at a truck stop that also had several fast food restaurant choices inside. The family chose Burger King and while I'd have rather eaten the tail end out of that skunk we'd smelled than something from Burger King, I sucked it up and ordered something that resembled chicken. My family chose to go with cheeseburgers, fries, and a free ice cream cone.
Little did I know when they chose their lunch at that truck stop, we would be fueling more than the car's gas tank. We hit the road and cheered when we crossed the Texas/New Mexico state line. It wasn't long after that border crossing when we started encountering some strange aromas. There was the older pickup truck in front of us that was emitting an odd smell, an open field where, from the rotten egg smell, someone must've hit a natural gas line while drilling. We were also certain we drove past either a cattle auction yard or dairy farm due to the overwhelming smell of fresh manure.
This trip was definitely having a very negative effect on my olfactory senses. We stopped at a rest stop in New Mexico to check out an extinct volcano and stretch our legs for a few minutes before braving the mountain passes through Raton, NM and Trinidad, CO. I used the break to breathe in some fresh mountain air and settle my senses down a bit.
As we headed down the highway I was again assaulted by odors, but this time it became quite apparent what the source was............ and he was sitting right beside me. I asked him ever so sweetly and discreetly "Ummm honey? Did you do that?". He busted out laughing so hard he was crying and managed to squeak out the words: skunk, truck smell, cow manure, and natural gas.
Apparently I hadn't smelled any of those things, I had been smelling his emissions. As he was cackling like a hyena and I was grumbling about how courtesy dictates at least rolling down a window, we were both hit with the motherload of stench.
"Oh good heavens!" I yelled. I looked over at my husband ready to tie him to the roof of the car when I noticed that he was clawing at the window trying to get it to roll down faster so he could stick his head out and get a breath of fresh air. As I put my hand over my nose and mouth in an effort to breathe in air less odiferous, I hear a very quiet and polite "pardon me" and then another voice said "excuse me". Great. Now 3 people were battling each other with chemical warfare and I was stuck in the car with them.
Yep. My great idea of hitting some fast food joints so we could make better time on the road had just backfired........... literally. I was trapped in the car for another 4 hours with 3 people who were emitting toxic fumes. Between my eyes watering and nose burning, I was pretty sure I'd been hit with the equivalent of a nuclear bomb or sarin nerve gas.
By the time we made it to our hotel in Colorado Springs to spend the night, their three tummies had finally calmed down. Burger King and McDonald's sausage biscuits were permanently banned from their diets for the remainder of the trip. There was one upside to the whole situation. Apparently when you have a green haze surrounding your vehicle, it does seem to deter tailgaters or anyone from trying to pass your vehicle on the road.
by: Christie Bielss
We are taking a vacation this summer by car which will encompass 5 states and several thousand miles with 2 kids. Yeah, this could get interesting but we've done it several times before and survived with sanity intact ........ ok, partially intact. If nothing else, we will make lots of memories.
We took our first road trip with our son when he was just 14 months old. We were moving 700 miles, so it was going to be a pretty interesting trip with a very active toddler strapped into a carseat for 2 days worth of driving.
We left the deep south late in the afternoon, headed for our new home in Texas. I had our son strapped in his carseat in my minivan, with my husband following us in his pickup truck.
Our son was having a grand time making the pulling down motion and getting the truckers to honk their horns. Scared the beejeevies out of me a few times, but that's better than listening to a crying child for 700 miles. As we crossed the Alabama/Mississippi border, the sun set and darkness started to creep in on us. This was the part of the trip my husband and I were the most nervous about. Pitch black, a baby who's afraid of the dark, and strapped in a carseat for hours. Yeah, this could get dicey and very uncomfortable ....... for both of us.
The darkness really set in and boy, you couldn't see a thing outside of the car windows. It was very creepy, even for me. But having driven this before, and knowing how dark it gets, I had thought ahead and brought our son a little kid-proof flashlight to entertain him and light his little area. I had shown him how to use it the day before, so when I reached back and handed it to him, he giggled with excitement. Haha! "How smart am I?" I thought to myself. "Why - I am BRILLIANT!!!!". Famous last words.
Our son was having a grand time trying to find alligators, bears, and lions outside the car windows as we drove through the forest. That was fun for a while but when he didn't find any wild animals, he quickly lost interest. He started looking all around the car with the flashlight, entertained with how the light could bounce around on the ceiling and floorboards of the minivan. After a while, he quieted down and relaxed with the darkness that enveloped our car.
I noticed as we continued to drive that several passing cars must have some tired drivers, as they kept hitting those grooves in the pavement which alert you to your vehicle leaving the roadway. After a number of vehicles had crossed onto the grooves as they passed us, it dawned on me that something might be wrong with my car and maybe they were giving us a wide berth. As the next car drove past, I looked in my side mirror and discovered the reason. Our sweet, beautiful, little innocent baby boy, in his eagerness to see who was driving the car passing us, was shining his flashlight directly into the unsuspecting driver's eyes and creating a beam of death!
Considering that we were in the middle of a forest preserve with all sorts of wild animals, I was not stopping to take back the flashlight for fear of being eaten by the alligators, bears, or lions my son had been looking for. All I could do at that point was to ask my son in my nicest June Cleaver-like voice, to please not blind the helpless unsuspecting drivers with his flashlight because he will cause them to all crash and die.
We reached our hotel and my husband walked over to our minivan laughing hysterically. Before I could say a word, he told me that our son had been blinding drivers for over 100 miles before I'd noticed. Welcome to the great time-honored American family road trip where the best laid plans usually go awry.........
by: Christie Bielss
