Surreal vacation moments

So, in the past not quite four weeks, I have logged roughly 2,834 miles in my car, just in the long trips, not including day by day driving around. One trip to Tennessee, two to Cincinnati, one to Michigan, and one to West Virginia and back. One blown engine and two monsoons later, I'm ready to stay home for a while.

So, we were in the pool at the Fairfield Inn, in Fairmont, West Virginia, the other night. Worked all day, then drove to West Virginia, getting in about 10 or so, and headed straight down for a dip. There were two young boys in the pool, maybe ten and twelve, throwing the football around. Nice young men, these boys and, since they had a football, Dan decided not to miss the chance to work the room and started talking Broncos football.

A bit of small talk later, he inquired where they were from. "North Carolina," they said. "Are you here on vacation," says the hubby, to which they responded, "we're visiting a friend of our dad's. He's in prison."

Wow. A family vacation to the slammer. How very odd. Their mom wandered in later, and hubby talked to her for a while, never sure if she had had a nip, or if he was nuts, but it was pretty surreal when she mentioned that they were visiting a friend who's in prison. "He didn't kill anyone," she declared. "He just took some money."

All righty then.

And so I got thinking about some of the more surreal moments on our vacations, and of course, Utter Chaos being what it is, there was a list to choose from:

The time in Mexico, on a mission trip, when the nurses at the clinic brought Dan some cactus souffle as a thank you gift. He was sick as a dog for two days.

The time in Colorado when Dan decided we were going to find a bed and breakfast to sleep in -- that night, by driving by and just asking. I was mortified, but we ended up in the Teddy Roosevelt Suite, at Red Crags, for less than half the normal price, sipping free champagne in the hot tub, with a group of hearing impaired guests. Dan slipped into the kitchen for a snack, suddenly reappeared, and asked the owner, "is there supposed to be a racoon in the kitchen?" It had snuck in an open door.

The day we went to the Rockwell Museum, in Stockbridge, Mass. We left the two kids (Seth wasn't born yet) with my aunt and uncle, and when we got back, we pulled right up to the back door, which was glass. There stood my aunt, with a very serious look on her face. I looked at Dan and said "you get out first," to which he replied, "no way. It's your aunt. You go first." We made a deal, and both got out at the same time, right as the door swung open, and Aunt Barbara declared, "these are two of the quietest children I have ever seen." We both let out a huge sigh of relief.

Our honeymoon, which almost didn't happen. Well, let's face it, the entire wedding almost didn't happen. But when we finally got on the plane, we started wondering, just how does one get from Orly to the Metro station? I don't worry about stuff, cause it always works out, but Daniel went to work, working the plane, totally unbeknownst to me. He goes to the bathroom, comes back, and points at some guy a few rows up. "See that guy," he says, "his name is Jesse, and he's in school at Emory. He lives in Paris, and he's gonna give us a ride to the Metro station."

How about NO? I told him no way was I getting in a car with a stranger, in a strange country, where I didn't speak the language, but a few hours later, I was climbing in the back of his VW Rabbit, praying that he wasn't a terrorist.

Later in that same vacation, after a large quantity of sangria -- in a French Chinese restaurant, no less -- I found myself in a bathroom stall that literally had two footprints and a hole in the ground. I marched out and informed hubby that there was NO WAY I was peeing in a hole in the ground. He took me back to the car -- we almost got mugged on the way -- and took me back to the room, where we had actual plumbing.

There have been more, like the weekend drive to Florida -- 15 hours one way, with three kids -- to spend the weekend with the inlaws, and surprise my bro for his birthday, and the time I left my purse -- with $700 cash in it -- on the porch at the Visitor's Center in Townsend, TN (yes, it was there when we went back, with everything still in it), but these are just the ones that come to mind, and looking back, maybe a vacation to the prison isn't so unusual, given our history. And to stay with the vacation theme, here's a vintage Paris scarf, proclaiming "Paris and its marvels." It's a marvel we're ever allowed outta the house, most days, but you can pick up this little cutie from oopsie2, on ebay. Oopsie!