Family Vacation

Destination: Gatlinburg Tennessee

What could be more fun than four females on a road trip? We get along fine, I kid you not. I am blessed with family who invite me on vacation. But four of us, cooped up in a car for two days – would it work? We would make it work. My daughter and two grown granddaughters and I, planned to have an rip roaring good time without husband, father and son-in-law Greg who wisely decided to take to the back roads on his new motorcycle. And we were pleased to let him do it. He of the “Why do you want to stop for a soda? You’ll just need a rest stop. We can’t stop at every flee market, antique store you see.” And “If we are going to get to Gatlinburg we have to keep truckin.”

Needless to say, we planned to stop at every flee market, every antique store, every cute restaurant and every time one of us needed to ‘rest.’ And if he made it to the Gatlinburg cabin before us, he could shop for groceries, prepare dinner and wait for us to appear. Our battle cry was ‘of course, we’ll stop for ice cream, we’re on vacation.’

We had every type of snack invented in the car. We weren’t going to get hungry, no siree. Had them handy too. Snacks in the back seat. Snacks in the front seat. There was chocolate – oh was there chocolate. We are related remember and we have chocolate in our genes. There was twizzlers. I really haven’t figured out why people like twizzlers. They taste like flavored wax to me. But I go along with the crowd and chew and chaw like everybody else. We had crackers and cookies and M&M’s. We had water and tea. Like I said we had everything. Everything that is but room.

The Luggage Snafu

And that is where things became interesting. Four adult females on vacation have a lot of baggage. Daughter Dayna has a large luxury car with lots of luggage space but… Besides our luggage, we had a cooler of water and soft drinks and a motorcycle helmet. A motorcycle helmet? How did that get there? Well, let me explain. If any of us gypsies of the road wanted to ride on the new motorcycle, we needed a helmet. Capice? So let’s begin again: that is four suitcases, a motorcycle helmet, a cooler, and each of us had a small bag besides our suitcases. Oh come on, you didn’t expect me to get everything into one small bag did you?

We packed the trunk of the car. We unpacked the trunk of the car. We packed. We unpacked. I gave up. They packed the trunk of the car. They unpacked, they packed. They finally put the cooler in the back seat of the car. Crowded, but that made sense didn’t it? It if we wanted water or tea, it was right there. “Sure, right there, under someone’s feet.”
“Well, we will take turns sitting on that side of the back seat.”
“Grandma can’t sit back there all doubled up. She already has back trouble.” And so – age has priviledges.

Stay tuned for episode number 2 of Family Vacation coming soon.