Let me preface this by saying that I love my husband dearly and I married him for all the right reasons with the exception of travel planning. He is more of a fly by the seat of his pants type of guy, which is fine and I can keep up with that if we didn't have small children.
We have planned to spend the week on beautiful Bald Head Island, North Carolina with Golf Husband's family. Our family would be sharing a 3 bedroom home on the island with his parents, my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and their two children (ages 5 & 3). (We shall call them the T-Stocks.) Yep, that would be parents in one room and a room per family unit of 4. Tight quarters should make it more interesting.
After packing myself, Why Child, and the Vanilla Gorilla with a weeks worth of clothes, toiletries, diapers, wipes, toys, beach gear, etc., etc., Brian gets himself packed in about 5 minutes and is ready to drive 5 five hours to Bald Head Island. He told me we were going to wait until Monday to leave, however changed his mind Sunday morning and decided to load up and make the trek. At this point, he's looking at me in impatiently, like I'm taking too long to pack up the car.
I advised Golf Husband to stop for gas in North Augusta, which as ya'll know is much cheaper than Georgia gas. It was a Shell Station too, which means we'll save even more with our Kroger card. I had to explain the Kroger savings to him on this day even though he has had a Kroger card for at least 3 years. Perhaps the signs in the store and at the pump never clicked. (For those who don't know, you can save $.10/gallon on gas with your Kroger card.)
So, it is lunch time and Golf Husband goes inside the gas station to get some lunch. I didn't realize that there was a sub shop inside, however getting lunch from a gas station didn't sound too good. The grey hotdogs scare me. I told him I didn't want gas station food. He went inside and got a few sub sandwiches and we all shared the food in the car.
The tension is high, but we're making it happen.
By the time we passed Florence, South Carolina, somewhere in BFE we noticed the car's air conditioning was no longer blowing cold air. Huh? This would be a big problem, since we have a car full and two small children, loads of anxiety and tension, and yes let's throw in high temperatures to make things more interesting. (No, I was not praying for patience.)
We pulled over to a gas station and Golf Husband notes that the car is over heating. WHAT!? Seriously, this is how we are going to start this thing? We are halfway to the beach and the car is going to crap out on a Sunday? This is what I was thinking, but thankfully I remained really quiet while Golf Husband popped the hood and inspected the engine. He decided it would be best to keep traveling with the air off and he would take the car to the dealership in Wilmington on Monday.
As I stated earlier, I love my husband, but he is not a travel planner. We had never been to Bald Head Island, so he was using GPS on his iPhone to get us there. This is sort of like doing a mapquest and then realizing they give you the shortest, but most time consuming route. So, iPhone and Golf Husband took us straight through Myrtle Beach's main drag. If I had died and gone to hell, this was it... or so I thought.
Here we are driving down the strip in the armpit of Myrtle Beach (my opinion) in stop and go traffic, windows down, humid 90 degree weather, car fumes, and it begins to rain. Fabulous. And when I say fabulous, I mean this sucks donkey balls big time.
I look back at my kids and their hair is matted to their sweet little heads and Why Child says he's thirsty. I give them both Capri Sun juice pouches and they sit quietly in their booster chairs watching Despicable Me for the 468th time. Then I hear this coughing and gurgling and sputtering coming from Why Child. Uh huh, he threw up all over his lap and below is little feet on the floor board of my car, which has no a/c, windows down, 90 degree humid heat, and raining.
Golf Husband doesn't want to get the Vanilla Gorilla wet, so his window is actually up and my window is down. Unfortunately for Why Child, that means he's got a little over spray action from the rain whipping back from my window. At least, the rain may help clean him.
At this point, I was imagining what would it be like to actually jump out of a traveling car or what people would think I was a different breed of labrador sticking my head out of the window or perhaps one of the dealerships were open on Sunday and we could just trade the car in on a Pinto or anything that would carry all of our crap and have air conditioning. My head was swimming with thoughts of how to remedy the situation and if the vacation is beginning like this, how would the rest of the week pan out for us.
I was keeping hope alive and just praying that God would not allow my car to overheat and leave us stranded on the side of the road. God got us to the ferry thank you very much.
Finally, after lapping the Ferry station twice, because we didn't see the drop off sign (I love you so much Golf Husband), we unload our vehicle, clean up Why Child, and corral the wild and loving Vanilla Gorilla to wait on our ferry ride to the island. The T-Stocks were already there, so the kids were getting excited and Golf Husband got all excited. He began to walk off and look around. He likes to explore his new surroundings even though there is vomit to clean and loads of crap to unpack.
Here's me trying to contain the Vanilla Gorilla on the ferry ride. I look so excited.
The Vanilla Gorilla waiting on the boat.
Here is Why Child and T-Stock nephew waiting for the passengers to get off the Ferry, so they can get on the boat.
Part II coming soon...
