Remember those road trips that your dad loved to take when you were a kid. The whole family would pile into the ol' station wagon you'd grab your pillow and a favorite toy, book, snack, whatever and drive until you got where ever your crazy dad was taking you?
My brother and I had the "He's touching me!" "I am not" screaming match within the first hour and would spend the remaining time in the car with a mental ruler making sure that none of each others items were over the imaginary middle line...
"His stupid football game is on my side"
Then sweaty, nauseous and irritated we would arrive from hours of travel ready to have some fun, ready to get things going and be told to go to sleep...
I never really looked at it from the parental standpoint before and now that I have I really have to ask Why do we do it?
We had a wonderful "long" weekend away in Sunriver. Friday morning we loaded ourselves, our stuff, our good friends and their stuff up in the jeep. Lets count. That is one, two, three, four adults and one kid. Yes five of us. in the jeep.
The back was piled high with all sorts of things... a lot of which most people wouldn't have packed for a 2ish day trip to a winter cabin, but we are not you everyday 5 crazy people heading to a cabin 4+ hours away...
There was your normal stuff, snow boots, mittens, helmets, hot chocolate mix... some groceries, you know, cookies, apples, pork rinds, saffron threads, sushi grade tuna, kosher salt, bay leaves, smoke house almonds, the most amazing cheese in the world, wasabi powder and for some reason 2 pineapples. We had bikinis and helmets, a paella pan, juice boxes, wine, champagne and cola, water, water, and more water, books, dvds, mp3s, cds, radios, cell phones, a laptop, cameras, toys, you name it, we considered bringing our kitchen sink too but since we aren't too fond of it we figured we would leave it at home with the cats...
After a long and harrowing trip through the Portland metro, then the mountains with sandwiches, tom waits, pirate music and one vomit bag along the way we finally made it to our destination.
The bear house. (yes it was the stuff of Stephen Colbert's nightmares)
Upon our arrival we discovered that even with all the crap we packed we had left some important items at home. Here is a brief and I am sure incomplete list... facial moisturizer, sugar, tortillas, an onion, nutmeg, 1 can of tomatoes, slippers, extra vitamins, tiki drink ingredients, game boy charger, music that was not Tom Waits, Captain Bogg & Salty or They Might Be Giants (what a soundtrack for a weekend getaway)...
We made do. Mostly we made do by stripping down to our bikinis within 45 minutes and climbing into the hot tub...
It was a good weekend overall (excluding the 8+ hours in the car), great food, great friends and a rocking bad 80's station that danced us through countless games of pool and basketball, mini bowling, magnetic darts and so much more fun.
Too soon it was over and though we all would have loved a couple more days away in our winter cabin we had enough of the ice skating, rich food, sleeping in a strange bed and missing our pets and we packed up in a big hurry to hit the road for Portland after 2 nights and only 1 full day...
This time I gave little K some dramamine to deter a repeat performance of her mountain spew and we headed straight on through to home stopping only for bathroom breaks and Mexican food...
Will we do it again? hell yeah. And K will ask "are we almost there?" the whole way...
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