Death On The Highway (Almost)

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The fabulous Jen of Absolutely Bananas has a writing/blogging prompt for everyone today. You know, to counteract all the “OMG so and so wore this at BlogHer! And then A did this and B said that and C gave me her card!” ‘Cause you know that’s all we’re gonna hear for at least the next week. The theme is travel horror stories, and I certainly have one to share.

Back in ‘05, about two months before Katrina hit, we got the crazy idea to drive 12 hours down to the gulf and along to New Orleans. I don’t know what insanity had temporarily overtaken us, but we were left delusional that driving for hours with a toddler and Dearest’s mother would somehow be a good idea. We were wrong, so very wrong.

I should have taken it as a bad sign when about half way there, in the middle of the night, we almost died. We were driving along the highway and trying to find the intersection we needed to turn off onto. It was dark, starting to rain, and Dearest’s mother and I were having a disagreement over who was really navigating this thing. I said we needed to turn, she said it was still miles ahead. Dearest was white knuckles gripping the steering wheel trying to get us there in one piece. Suddenly he whips over into the emergency lane, still not sure whether to go on down the road or turn off right then. Then, right before our eyes, was a wall of concrete. The emergency lane was suddenly ending due to the overpass a few feet right in front of us.

We survived, obviously. Dearest whipped us onto the on-ramp just in time and away we went. A few more gray hairs added to my head we managed to make it to New Orleans. Of course the rest of the trip went about as badly as that. The hotel was less than a one star affair, Evan and I both ended up food poisoning, and Dearest’s mother and I had several more disagreements over what to do and where to go. Don’t even get me started about getting lost looking for a bottle of water before Evan got heat stroke. Not that there weren’t some fun vacation moments, like ignoring the “Keep Out” sign and feeding the alligators from a couple feet away, but there were more moments of hair pulling and beating my head against the brick wall in my mind. Just a tip, but when people suggest buying travel insurance think about it.

But hey, we made it back home in one piece. And I didn’t leave anyone behind in the swamp. That’s gotta count for something.