The trip East, which was beautiful but planned on the fly and therefore, harder on the packer of the family than the four year old who just looked out the window. We now have bear stories, freezing stories, glacier stories, three wildfire stories and a half dozen bad-air-quality stories. There's the river story and the time Todd and I were so excited to take the kids to the Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground (which was seriously amazing!) only to realize our kids have no idea who Yogi Bear is. Oops. We now have a serious collection of Junior Ranger Badges and there are multiple plans for "when we go back" and the "next National Park" depending on who you are talking to.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the trifecta of power, internet AND cell service, I'll tell a funny story... cause we have definitely had a few of those, just to get back into the groove.
We stopped somewhere in New Mexico... maybe Arizona?? I'm a little fuzzy on the details but I know the State Park had the name "Rosa" in it. I bet a more tech-savy person would know how to look up her husband's Instagram whatever and find that information. Alas, I'm not her. We started the day on the war path to buy a bus (totally different story) but there was a rain delay getting out of the house which made us question the intelligence of bus-buying in the middle of Oklahoma when we were already driving two cars. Amidst a torrential middle-America rain storm, we said our (late) goodbyes to our nephew and carried the kids out to the car (no wet feet in an itty bitty little Honda thank you very much!) and were off. It was a long day made longer by the rain and the late start, so by the time we got to whatever state in the Southwest we were in, I was cranky. Todd had taken the movie away from two kids and of this I swear, if you are not the parent administering the punishment, there should be some form of instant rewind or mute button by the parent who IS administering the punishment.... I know I'm not the only one who has dealt with this scenario.
Normal driving days in a tiny Honda with four kids, one mama and too many bumper stickers is about 6 hours. Driving. Not road time. Add in another 1-3hrs for potty, gas, food and some form of play that doesn't involve the side of a highway (safety first now). So an 8 hour day. If you're smart about it, you wake said children up, so that a few hours in, they nap, even the older ones who are too "sophisticated" for naps. This particular day had nearly 9 hours of drive time. Nine. That's a big number. Factor in 7 of those minus any form of entertainment save me, car BINGO, and quiet time books and you can see where this day could be headed. We pulled into the campsite and the first thing I realized was that there would be large amounts of bugs. My windshield told the whole story. We were right near some reservoir and you could feel a storm coming in so the air just hung heavy and all I could think was "Please dear Lord in the Heavens above don't let the river come rushing through at 0'dark-thiry again." (Again, another story for another time.) The bugs, however, were loving the heat and humidity. Some might say they were downright giddy.
The kids came tumbling out of the car in fits of wails and squacks. They are always completely useless to me when they squack. Useless to everyone really. And it's not like I could blame them, I wanted to beat something with a stick or eat a whole pan of brownies and lay comatosed in front of an AC unit! Todd, who had the luxury of satellite radio, a quiet car, and plush cushy seats was in a slightly better mood than the rest of us but when they've reached that point of crazy, any sane person just backs away slowly. Which is what he did.
Tired. Sweaty. Hot. Grumpy beyond words and realizing that the only meal I have to make requires rice. Rice requires my InstantPot. My InstantPot requires electricity. This is me, standing on the brink of complete implosion of the whole lot of us, with my pot and I did what any other mama in my shoes would have done. I grabbed the kids, lied through my teeth that we were going on an "adventure" and we proceeded to hunt out a fully-equipped RV site that had the necessary electricity for the 12 minutes I needed for my rice. As we headed back to the site peppered by screams and whines of not having a "single good adventure!" we just kept marching. Past the site, past the cars, down to the water or river or reservoir or whatever it was that drew people out to the middle of that hot, dry, gnat-swarming area. We marched with purpose and with gusto because I was afraid if we slowed, even a half step, we wouldn't make it before the gravitational force would suck us all down into the black hole. When we reached the water's edge, after many attempts to get down in an orderly fashion, the kids indignantly looked around for their bathing suits.
Eyes big and sad, as if to say they couldn't fly to Neverland for lack of simple fairy dust, I started unceremoniously taking their clothes off. At some point, Todd tried to join in on our March of Misery but had left for actual swimming things (he's so practical like that sometimes). I knew better. I knew, deep in my mama-bones, that if we tried to do things "appropriately" or "civilized" that my children would burst at the seams and all would be lost. They deserved better. It wasn't their fault rain had chased us through three states and made a long driving day longer. It wasn't their fault we got off late. It wasn't their fault that it was blazing hot and they were acting, well, like kids who had been stuck in a car all day. Civility and clothing aside, we jumped into the mostly murky water and bit by bit, savored the taste of forbidden. I even had an English lesson with the kids. We learned the various ways to use and describe "skinny dipping" and how sometimes it's with underroos and sometimes, not. They were completely not okay with the second portion of that description and none could fathom why ANYONE would want to swim completely naked. It was at that very moment that Todd rejoined us, baffled but totally game for whatever mischief we were in. I love this man. He just rolls with my nutty because on some level, he knows my nutty is usually okay.
On this particular occasion, as with many others, he not only rolled with the whims of his wife, he threw himself, headlong into the challenge of helping the kids shed a day's worth of cramped disappointments and half the state of Texas. How I'll never know, but he even got Harper, who (much like her mama) doesn't like swimming in anything that might be misconstrued as "mucky" to cross the channel to the other side.
All in their underwear.
Sometimes, the days are just freaking long. Sometimes, there's no end in sight... no end to the rain, the screaming, the whining for food or water or air that someone else isn't breathing on you. Sometimes, you need to make rice and you don't have a straightforward way to do it. Those are the days when you just need to break the rules. This particular spot, Something-Or-Other Rosa, somewhere in the Southwest, is still talked about amongst the kids. We've seen Four National Parks, two National Forests, a National Recreation Area, gotten three Junior Ranger badges and witness a fire being put out on a hill from a Target Parking lot in Burbank. This place, they still talk about. They watched their first thunderstorm roll in, two actually, and were mesmerized by lightning bolts. The sunset just before the storm was glorious, and some odd refraction behind it even more stunning.
They were eaten by mosquitos and two had slightly major battle scars from a round with the Playground (Playground-2, Leslie Zoo-0) and yet they still talk about going back to this place.
This happened.
And this happened.
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