"Whoever said you can't take it with you has never packed their car for vacation!"
Isn't that a great quote? Certainly prophetic of my own impending woes as I, once again, get ready to load down the family jalopy - this time around to see The Mouse.
While we aren't scheduled to leave until Saturday, I'll start packing suitcases on Tuesday: and that's just the clothes. I still have to stockpile the snack hoard and cooler cache, videos for the portable DVD player, extra film, batteries, and medicines. Oh, and don't forget spare pillows and towels, first aid kit, each kid's favorite blanket and toy...the list nears endless.
Why is it that I go into survivalist mode whenever we have to leave the house for more than twelve hours?
It's not like we're fleeing a hurricane and have to pack up our most precious belongings for a trip of indeterminate length. I mean really, I'm leaving the comfort of home for the comfort of a Disney hotel room: not exactly roughing it!
Though I guess in everything, one can always look back on this trip or that one when a little better planning could've saved the day.
Darling hubby and I had our own Donner Party-vacation moment during our honeymoon. While planning this romantic odyssey, for some reason, the province of Nova Scotia looked deceivingly compact, and populated, on the map.
Our arrival in Halifax, a wonderfully clean and modern city, was inauspicious enough but then we turned north. Once past the municipal limits, we crossed into no-man's land. I say ‘no man's' because that's what we saw; no man, no woman, no child, no gas, no grocery store, no restaurant.
When you read in a cultural tour guide that an area's population was greatly reduced after the fishing industry bust, trust me, take their word for it.
Our first night in the Great White North was spent in a race of time between locating the quiet, little lakefront cabin we had booked and finding something to eat other than leaves and twigs.
You see unlike our usual overstuffed car excursions, this trip we flew. Rules on luggage size and weight seem to have a profound limiting effect on one's typical packing habits.
So on that October eve, we drove for hours ever nearing our cabin destination with a few darkened houses for company but no real sign of civilization, meaning no food! It didn't help that we missed the end of the traditional tourist season by a month or two.
Behold, a light beckoned to us from out in the gloom. We couldn't believe our good fortune: a restaurant! And even more unbelievably, within a mile or - oops! kilometer or two of our nuptial bed.
Be thankful for small blessings. We surely were, as we had no choice but to become first name-friendly regulars at this establishment with the two or three other people touring Eastern Canada that week. The meals were delicious, but with no other dining option for a hundred kilometers in every direction, that hardly mattered.
The remainder of our honeymoon was fraught with other exciting adventures such as moose loitering in the road, desperately searching for Petrol and then trying to calculate liters versus gallon pricing, exploring the survival huts placed with alarming frequency along Nova Scotia's roads, and avoiding getting shot - who's bright idea was it to plan a hiking honeymoon during hunting season?
So this year as I set my sights on Florida, I hope those flying missiles sporting Canuck license plates charging down I-95 will forgive our sluggish, snack-laden, toy-burdened, jam-packed van as we too head out on vacation - this year in search of a mouse and not a moose!
Laura Douglass writes for the Seven Lakes Times where this column originally appeared.
