The Way Home
After a week in the Outerbanks, we were tan and relaxed, and reluctantly ready to leave the sandy beaches, warm days and lazy lifestyle of OBX for work and routine. That and we were a bit tired of eating out.
So we loaded up our SUV for the long trek home. We weren’t sure how it would go. Coming out we had essentially broken our trip into three days since we made a detour to Sesame Street Place. Now we had only two days to get home before we were expected back at the office. That meant long days in the car for Austen and Adler.
Adler, used to many long road trips, was the dream passenger. Quiet and easy – in fact, you hardly knew she was back there. Austen was surprisingly good too. For the first hour of the trip, we kept him entertained by pointing out things that we wanted him to see as we drove by – boats, tractors, trucks, etc. Then he watched a video. Austen isn’t a big TV person (kind of like his mom; there’s too many other things you could be doing) so on the way out he only watched about an hour of a DVD but on the way home, he must’ve realized that there was nothing better to do so he watched the same two DVDs over and over. He napped too and we played games.
In fact, I taught Austen how to get trucks to beep their horns by pumping his arm in the air. I’m not sure this was a good thing. Even after I wanted to stop playing, Austen would spy another truck and yell “Mommy, another one!” and frantically pump is arm up and down!
Austen was so good on the way home that we almost ran out of gas in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. He didn’t have to pee and he wasn’t asking to get out of the car, so I told Tom to keep driving until Austen got antsy. Of course, we needed to pay attention to the gas gage too. Knowing we had at least 50 miles worth of fuel, we ventured on, thinking we’d find a gas station within the next 30 miles or so. No such luck. At 20 miles with nothing but trees in sight, we shut off the air to preserve gas (sorry, Adler) – it was 80 degrees outside. Then Tom started taking his foot off the gas and coasting downhill. When we got to 5 miles, I saw Tom getting very nervous as he envisioned having to hike miles to a gas station leaving Austen, Adler and I to fend for ourselves in the mountains. At 0 miles we started to pray. There wasn’t much else we could do at that point besides look at it as an adventure. We drove at 0 for at least three miles and coasted into a gas station. We exhaled.
We ventured on to Charleston, West Virginia, for the evening and took a walk around the state capitol building with Adler and Austen to stretch our legs. We found a playground and let Austen play for awhile. Then it was back to the hotel to rest up for our long stretch home in the morning. The next day was much the same. Adler was perfect. Austen was great. One of the roads Google Maps said we should take was closed so that caused us to backtrack about 20 minutes but we were home and back to reality by 7pm on Monday.
Great trip. Good times. Better memories.
I'm already planning our next vacation.
So we loaded up our SUV for the long trek home. We weren’t sure how it would go. Coming out we had essentially broken our trip into three days since we made a detour to Sesame Street Place. Now we had only two days to get home before we were expected back at the office. That meant long days in the car for Austen and Adler.
Adler, used to many long road trips, was the dream passenger. Quiet and easy – in fact, you hardly knew she was back there. Austen was surprisingly good too. For the first hour of the trip, we kept him entertained by pointing out things that we wanted him to see as we drove by – boats, tractors, trucks, etc. Then he watched a video. Austen isn’t a big TV person (kind of like his mom; there’s too many other things you could be doing) so on the way out he only watched about an hour of a DVD but on the way home, he must’ve realized that there was nothing better to do so he watched the same two DVDs over and over. He napped too and we played games.
In fact, I taught Austen how to get trucks to beep their horns by pumping his arm in the air. I’m not sure this was a good thing. Even after I wanted to stop playing, Austen would spy another truck and yell “Mommy, another one!” and frantically pump is arm up and down!
Austen was so good on the way home that we almost ran out of gas in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. He didn’t have to pee and he wasn’t asking to get out of the car, so I told Tom to keep driving until Austen got antsy. Of course, we needed to pay attention to the gas gage too. Knowing we had at least 50 miles worth of fuel, we ventured on, thinking we’d find a gas station within the next 30 miles or so. No such luck. At 20 miles with nothing but trees in sight, we shut off the air to preserve gas (sorry, Adler) – it was 80 degrees outside. Then Tom started taking his foot off the gas and coasting downhill. When we got to 5 miles, I saw Tom getting very nervous as he envisioned having to hike miles to a gas station leaving Austen, Adler and I to fend for ourselves in the mountains. At 0 miles we started to pray. There wasn’t much else we could do at that point besides look at it as an adventure. We drove at 0 for at least three miles and coasted into a gas station. We exhaled.
We ventured on to Charleston, West Virginia, for the evening and took a walk around the state capitol building with Adler and Austen to stretch our legs. We found a playground and let Austen play for awhile. Then it was back to the hotel to rest up for our long stretch home in the morning. The next day was much the same. Adler was perfect. Austen was great. One of the roads Google Maps said we should take was closed so that caused us to backtrack about 20 minutes but we were home and back to reality by 7pm on Monday.
Great trip. Good times. Better memories.
I'm already planning our next vacation.
posted by Adler's Mom at
8:27 PM
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