By Kelli Bowen
Nothing says summer like a road trip! Hubby, the girls, the pugs and I loaded up the camper and headed west! It’s been a challenging year and we could use a little less stress and some much-needed family time.
Take your kids places they said, it’ll be fun they said. Miss E is eight and I don’t know when life became SO HARD. Everything is boring. She just wants to go shopping. There are a lot of “whatever”s and “I don’t know”s. She has proclaimed already: this is the WORST vacay ever.
Miss A is freshly five and is in a physically delicate state. Every time she jumps, runs, bounces or shrieks Hubby and I hold our breath and say a prayer. This is going to be fun.
Our destination is Medora. After 4 bathroom breaks, one pull onto and then immediately off the interstate to lock the camper door, and a pit stop for Burger King (their lobby was open and my children have to pee every 37 minutes) we made it!
We drove to the campground outside of town and only had to call the manager twice to figure out getting situated and hooking up. Pro tip: push and twist the water spigot.
There are no children at this campground, which I think is great. It will be more quiet which is what the doctor ordered. Miss E does not agree and apparently this was another plot to wreck her vacation. The girls want to go walking and the road is a highway with vehicles moving highway speeds. Enter anxiety.
Hubby gets the camper all hooked up and pulls out the grill. The girls and I get camping chairs out. Miss A sits in hers and immediately tips over smacking her head against another chair. Hello panic.
Tugger, our 15 year-old pug, decides to jump out of the camper, but forgot to tell his legs and just flops out of the camper face-first. Hubby picks him up and gives him the once-over before Tug angrily stomps over to some grass to relieve himself. Fingers crossed he doesn’t decide to go into the light while on this trip.
We arrived on the 4th of July. Miss A is instructed to avoid fireworks and Miss E loves them so Hubby volunteers to hang back with Miss A and an adult beverage at the camper while Miss E and I go into town to see the fireworks.
There’s a difference in Mountain and Central time, so we were 1 1/2 HOURS early for the show. We drove around. We listened to tunes. Miss E chatted, nonstop, about things. Then as we closed in on 1/2 hour before the show, it rained. It rained and there was lightning and it rained some more.
A couple times as we waited, we debated just going back to the camper to go to sleep and not wait for fireworks, but ultimately decided we’d stick it out for the 10:30 show.
At 10:45 we figured the fireworks show was canceled due to rain and we went back to the camper to sleep off the first day of vacation. Nothing says summer like a road trip, and a plastic cup of wine in a dark camper while your children and dogs are snoring 20 feet away from you. Happy camping!
