Destin: Part Two

as if part one wasnt long enough...
but i really want to get to the fun part of the trip.

So lets see...I see the shark. I get out of the water. Then my mom, because she talks to everyone in the whole world even if she doesn't know them, started talking to this lady. Then the lady informed us that the hotel/condo thing we were staying in was suggesting that everyone pack up and leave due to the storm that was destined to hit 48 hours LATER. Gay. So my dad went to the front office to find out what was going on and the told him that if we could get out of our room by 1:00 they would refund us for one night. One night. Gay. They proceeded to tell him that they were going to shut the power off at 9 o'clock the next morning. So basically it was, "you dont have to leave, but if you dont, you'll have no power, and we'll make your stay miserable until you do." Well my dad decided that we didn't really have a choice, so we left the beach at 11:30am, packed, showered, and left by 1:08pm. Aparently, the rest of Florida had the same idea, and we sat in traffic for 2 hours waiting to just get out of destin, much less Florida. Well needless to say we were not happy people, our vacation was cut short, and we were sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. And may I just say, if you have not been around my dad when he's in a bad mood, then you have no idea the hell that it really is. I love him, but really, he's ridiculous sometimes.
Anyway, so we drove for the rest of the day, stopping for gas and food only until we reached Mobile, Alabama. My sister and I were both born there, we moved 6 months after she was born but its pretty much where I grew up. We took a small detour to our old house. It was much smaller than I remembered, but just as cute. It's a 3 bedroom, yellow house with a huge back yard. Well huge on Highland Village standards, for Alabama its decent sized. We stopped by our neighbors to see if they remembered us, and of course they did. I was 7 when we moved away, Brandon was 10, and like I said, Bridget was just a baby, so it was definently weird to see them now that we're so much older. I grew up with their kids. We played in our back yard mostly, and the empty lot next door to us which now has a house on it. They of course are grown up now too, and it was crazy to see them. But we had fun. We were there for about 30 minutes which my Dad wasn't too happy about but I didnt care. It was a really great experience.

We heard rumors along the road that there were no vacancies in any hotels through Louisianna. Well they weren't lying. We drove, and drove, and drove. For 15 hours actually. We stopped and asked at hotels everywhere, and no one had a room. I mean NO ONE. Then, at four in the morning, we found a crappy Motel 6 in Monroe, Louisianna with one room left. Two twin beds. Nothing else. And there are 5 people in my family. Four of which are adult sized. But we took it. And we slept. You have to understand that my car, with all of our luggage and our bodies, has absolutely no room whatsoever for movement of any sort. I sat indian style, leaning over completely sideways onto the cooler. The whole time. So any way of stretching out to rest was magnificent, regardless of lack of space and breathable air. 3 hours late, 7 am to be exact, my dad woke us up to head back out on the road. He's INSANE. But he's also bigger than us so we complied. Back in the car for what should have been a 5 ish hour drive. But no. It took 9.
We reached Terrell, Texas which is really only about 60 miles out of Dallas, and hit more bumper to bumper traffic. According to the lady in the Suburban in front of us there was a 6 hour delay on highway 80 due to a multiple-fatality/18-wheeler accident.

Well my parents weren't about to sit in our car for 6 more hours so we made our own way. We ended up driving way north of Dallas and then back down, or something like that, I dont really know. But what I do know is that we drove through a lovely, scenic part of Texas. Complete with tiny, southern towns that I didn't even know existed in Texas. I spend way too much time in the Flowerplex.

We finally pulled into our driveway at 4:30 pm. We unpacked the car and slept. In our own beds. Stretched out. And it was great.

So as a whole, the trip kinda blew. But at least I came out of it with some pretty good stories. Sun burn and Marinara sauce burn. Bad service and bad weather. But it was cool. And we accomplished our goal of spending family time together. 24 hours in a car, and a day at the beach.

I guess it's good to be home though. We'll See.