Road Trip Part 2

(read part 1 of the road trip by clicking here)

When I was younger I always dreamed of taking a leisurely road trip.  

The key word being ALWAYS. 

Ya see, It NEVER happened

Being the only girl in the family, a lot of my ideas were vetoed by the boys. 

They would declare "oh that is dumb," followed by "it would be better if we did...." 

On the rare occasion that my parents decided that my ideas were awesome, I would hear my brothers complaints the whole time "oh this is boring."  

Like the time we drove all the way to Memphis from Kentucky to see Elvis Presley's  GraceLand.
I was in LOVE with Elvis.

 I was excited to head to Grace Land. "We're going to see ELVIS!"
I packed my video camera (always wanting to document even at a young age), several Beetles Cds, and of course Paul Simon's Graceland (i don't think my brothers realized how clever it was to listen to that song on the way there).  

In my mind we were going to have a ROAD TRIP!  

You can imagine my disappointment when my parents informed me "we are driving 5 hrs there, not stopping AT ALL, staying  only ONE NIGHT, then driving back home."  

We were a weekend vacation family with a  strict SCHEDULE to stick to.

Both of my parents are accountants if that tells ya anything about their strict personalities.

As we drove through Nashville I yelled out "HEY can we stop to eat in dowtown NASHVILLE. Maybe we'll see a STAR."   

The answer was "that's not on the agenda."   

While in Memphis I said "Hey!  While we're here lets go downtown to see Sun Studio where Elvis recoded."  

"Nope. That's not on the agenda."

So, with that said,  our Jasper family road trip had no agendas.  We had one destination of course, that being Hancock, Massachusetts (15 hours away) but we had all the time in the world to get there.

And we took all the time in the world to get there.
"hey, that looks cool. Let's stop there."
"oh look at that. what is THAT?  Pull over and let me look at that."

At 3 in the morning, after a day full of packing, driving and sight seeing (we stopped in West Virginia at 9pm for coffee and let the kids play in this cool place near Marshall University that we just happened upon. It was a very lovely evening) we pulled into Maryland to a little hotel run by a mean Arab dude.  

And I do mean over the top rude

He was cranky.

The crankiest Arab man that I have EVER met.

Cranky. Cranky.

We had called before hand to reserve a room.  

We told the man we who would probably not be arriving until after 1am.  

When we got there, completely exhausted, to check in, the Arab dude looked really mean at Roger and said "you were suppose to be here at 1am.  It is 3 am and you are here just now. why is that?"   

Roger and I were both dumb founded.  I kinda felt like I was being scolded by an angry parent and reverted back into my childhood state of "sorry pouty face."   

As we were pulling our luggage cart into the elevator by the front desk the man yelled out in his rude voice, "you bring that luggage cart back immediately.  Other people need to use that."      

We smiled, nodded our heads.
When the elevator doors shut we both rolled our eyes and I gasped "Dear Lord how rude can ya be?" before laughing hystarically.

The kids joined in on the laughter even though they had no clue where we were, what was going on or what we were laughing about. They were still in that dizzy, kinda drunk looking state of being half asleep.  You know that funny state that kids morph into when you wake them at a ridicules time and force them to walk?

Pretty funny.

The next morning I was expecting to be completely exhausted with two whinny kids.
 I was pleasantly surprised to wake up feeling well rested surrounded by a smily, giggly family that was extremely excited to be on the Road!

Anna and Paul jumped around singing to the top of their lungs "we are on vacation!. We are on vacation!"

While we were enjoying a wonderful free breakfast provided by the hotel Roger looked up from his Iphone and yelled out in excitement "WE ARE RIGHT BY GETTYSBURG, PA!!!   We could go see the battle field"

I smiled really big, looked at both the kids and screamed out

"well, LET'S Go!"  

Paul responded "To the Battle Field!"

Anna joined in "To the Battle Field."

(Check Back next Monday for Part 3)