I’m on the highway to hell
On the highway to hell
Highway to hell
I’m on the highway to hell
AC/DC
So as we all know I was pretty scared of the drive. Me alone. With the girls. In the mountains. Driving. Alone.
As we pulled out the driveway, a little bit late about 8:30am,
we were snacked,
Packed,
and we were singing Schools Out by Alice Cooper.
I thought this is going to be great. I love road trips. Ninja loves road trips. Of course our kids are going to like road trips! Right?
Just as I was leaving town crossing the bridge to the highway…
panic.
What the hell am I thinking???
And there right in front of me was a yellow butterfly 🙂
So I kept going.
All seemed well for a while. SBean even took a nap.
Periodically as my fears came back so did that yellow butterfly.
So I kept going.
We made many stops before we even left the valley, we even stopped in Gridiron. There’s this place that’s covered in hubcaps, I’ve always thought it super cute so we stopped to take a few pictures 🙂
We even stopped at the rest stop at Mara Lake for a diaper change and a selfie!
I was feeling so good about the drive that we even stopped right past the Shuswaps at D Dutchman Dairy for an ice cream and a stroll through the dairy farm. I thought SBean would be in her glory she loves to mooooooo at every animal! Seriously she is REALLY big into animal sounds. She calls every animal puppy and Mooooos at all of them. LOL
I was wrong and she screamed bloody murder.
Right after Revelstoke we hit construction, and it all went south from there.
Seriously, four days later when people ask me how things were going, I explained that SBean had started screaming at Revelstoke and hadn’t stopped yet.
Because of all the construction all the rest stops were out of commission and the first time we were able to stop for something to eat was in Golden, the kids were starved I was starved and it was already 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I was really hoping for a picnic by waterfall but…
I quickly pulled into Timmy’a for a much needed potty break. Of course I dropped the diaperbag all over the floor opening the door. After waiting in a little hallway for 10 minutes, we finally got into the family bathroom.
We shuffled back to the van while SBean screamed and HBear whined about being hungry and waterfalls.
Shit. Where are the keys?
OMG My heart stopped. I gathered everything up (I pulled everything out of the diaperbag looking for the damn keys.) and raced the girls across the HUGE parking lot and into the only Tim Horton’s for 300 Kilometers. Full of angry travelers…
Except for the woman walking out of the bathroom hallway, holding my keys!
We got back in the freaking van and drove to find a spot, any spot, for lunch.
I pulled out a blanket in the middle of downtown Golden and we pretended that we were in the mountains with a waterfall nearby 🙂
We saw yellow butterfly while having our lunch… so we kept going.
Usually it takes me 8 hours to get to Calgary it took us 9 1/2 hours to get there.
It was a long… long… long day.
When we got to my sister and BIL’s they had yummy spaghetti waiting and the kids were exhausted so they fell into their bed/playpen.
This was a big fear of mine, SBean not sleeping in the playpen. But there she was, out cold within minutes of being put down. HBear read a bit but fell asleep very quickly. This would be the first time her and I shared the bed. SBean slept with Ninja and I until she was 10 months old but this would be the first time HBear had ever slept in my bed.
After a nice glass of wine and great conversation with my hosts, I went upstairs to plug in my laptop. I, of course had been voice recording my timeline throughout the day so I could easily remember all of the things that were so good, bad… funny, so I was ready to get it down on the blog.
Of course SBean had been playing with my phone earlier…. Hmmmm
Yeah, my voice recording got erased.
A big sigh, a glance at the time… After midnight. Time for bed.
I really am proud of myself. I did it. I did something I didn’t think I could do. I’ve never even driven in the mountains before especially with both kids!!!
But I did it.
Little did I know, that may have been the easiest day of the next 11 days…
Stay tuned as my life takes a dive into the bowels of motherhood and funnels into utter frustration and complete loss of control…
I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain
