Road trip to Arizona

Hi

I created this blog to share my experiences about our great American road trip and the adventures that go with traveling with kids. Hope you like it.

This is the first in a series. I call it...The Beginning.

Hubby and I have always been fond of traveling. We like visiting new places, learning new things and meeting new people. My kids too have a thing for traveling. Although my younger one would be more than happy to just stay home with his beloved play station 2 and his TV. Nevertheless, they always join in our vacation plans with great enthusiasm (at least for the first five minutes).

My travel travails have always been a source of amusement for my family and friends. I seem to have the weirdest, quirkiest travel experiences. Few vacations have gone by without something wacky happening. Well, this time was no different.

Once again, we made our plans with great excitement. We wanted to go to Glendale, Arizona. We have family there and have always wanted to visit them, more so after the birth of their first baby. Well, we called them, told them of our intentions and said we would get back to them with further plans.

I started browsing the internet for good deals on airfares. My eyes popped out of their sockets when I saw some of the prices displayed. And these were supposed to be the “great deals". Of course, we planned to take our trip during the spring break, so cannot be too hard on the travel sites. Well, after days of despairing over the airfares, hubby dearest came up with a master plan! “Lets drive, it’ll be fun”! Again, my eyes popped out of their sockets. “Are you crazy? You want to drive across the breadth of the country in our poor old Honda Civic?” Okay, I was just going ballistic now. You see we live in Northern Illinois. “No silly, we’ll rent a minivan.” “Hmm…still it’s an awfully long distance. The kids are going to be tired, not to mention the two of us, after driving all those hours. It’s about 2000 miles. You do realize that. I don’t think it’s such a good idea.” “Actually, it’s 1800 miles” he corrected me. And of course, just as always, the idea grew and grew in hubby’s head till he had it all figured out. “It’s brilliant, we’ll drive. It’ll be the best trip ever.” I was still mumbling and grumbling, but he had to have his way.

So he called the car rental, booked a minivan and then, of course, told me about it. I asked him how much the car rental was and yup, you guessed it, once again…the eye popping. My eyes were tired from doing that so much!! “We could have got air tickets for that much.” “Oh, but think of the fun we’ll have and the adventure! It will be amazing.” After much persuasion, as always, I let myself be talked into another of his wild schemes.

Anyways, the travel arrangements were all made. The hotel was booked for our night stay at Oklahoma City. Our cousins were told of our plan. They thought we were nuts too, as did our friends. But we had to do what we had to do. I began thinking about what food I’ll have to take and agonizing over thoughts of the kids getting sick or about us having car trouble. Well, I’m a mom, it’s my job!

We were all set. We had a week’s time to pack, get our stuff together, and do just about everything one has to do even if going away for a day. I kept telling myself, it would be fun and all would be fine. But I couldn’t help being a little worried. Like I said, my job!

“You know, you’ve always wanted a minivan. Instead of renting one, why don’t we just buy one? We’ve been wanting to anyway and what better time than now. This way we won’t have to rent the minivan, we can just drive our own to Glendale.” You guessed it, hubby’s thoughts after just a couple of days of booking the rental van. I must concede here, I did always dream of a shiny new minivan. So I gave into that one quite easily. We went shopping and soon enough picked out a shiny silver minivan. The kids were thrilled and so were we. We cancelled the minivan rental and started packing for the trip.


The day of our great road trip arrived. It was a beautiful spring(?)morning.If you live anywhere near Chicago, you know that Spring mornings are not that beautiful always. We just fantasize about beautiful spring mornings. We decided to leave bright and early so we could make good time. We dragged the kids out of bed, got them ready, had a hurried breakfast and were on our way, praying for a safe journey.


...........to be continued.