The Drive through Hell

It is so much easier to write about my hilarious tragedies than my fun “look at a picture of what we did today”.  This day and subsequently the next day were by far the most tragic days, including the most humiliating moment of my life (yes even more humiliating than backing my rv into my house).  Don’t worry, I’ve included illustrations.

As you know, I have a “tell it it like it is” personality and that means that when you look at yourself and see how cute you look and decide to take a selfie is the opposite of when I want to snap a picture.  I take pictures of my children while they are crying so that I don’t just remember the good times, because that’s not life, plus how much worse would it be if (let’s say for arguments sake) that your husband died. Do you really want to look at picture after picture of all of your “happy times”, but throughout life there are happy and sad times…. I DIGRESS the point is, I want to take a picture of how horrible the situation is.

Ok, I’m done with my rant, onto the story.

So we left Illinois and I wanted to take the kids to “Indiana Dunes” which is Dunes and Beaches in Indiana.  Well, first we got lost and when we finally got back on track, I had to take a sharp turn.  It was too sharp for me, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t been towing a car, but I was! So I was blocking most of the lanes and there was nothing I could do except get out of the RV and start unhooking the jeep in front of 20-30 cars.  Once I was unhooked, I had to get myself unstuck.  Once that was done, a certain underage driver in our group (who’d like to remain nameless lest the police come hunt him down) had to get in the jeep and follow me until we got to a place where we could rehook. While looking for this giant stretch of land that can accommodate 35 feet plus a tow car, there was a giant sign saying “Do not stop, this is a prison” or something like that.  Yes, folks, this all happened right in front of a prison, where you aren’t supposed to stop.  So I’m hoping a prisoner doesn’t just hop into the jeep with this underage driver and I had to drive a much farther distance until we could finally rehook.  Yes, humiliating.

So we finally got to a part of Indiana Dunes we wanted to look at.  I didn’t notice a sign saying “no trucks” or “no RVs” but this place was definitely NOT good for us.  We turned into the street to get there and it was a very narrow street, so narrow that we heard a horrible squeeking sound as we avoided hitting the cars waiting to turn.  My son swears that I knocked an entire sign over, and although I don’t know the veracity of that statement, I don’t doubt it.

It was so pretty with all the branches overhanging the roads (see picture), however, assume those branches are hanging a foot down on top of your car and are apparently made from the heaviest, strongest wood in the world.  It sounded like we were going to get a window knocked out about every 3 feet.  Oh and the road was not shareable. There was no place to park as we were driving past the beach and wishing we could go to it.  But what was worse was there was no place to turn around. The last thing I needed was another incident of unhooking the jeep just to get ourselves turned around.  This road was so narrow, however that even without the tow car we might have gotten stuck.  Luckily, we took the last possible cross street and eventually found our way out of the mess.  I told the girls that we were not going to the beach, but had to leave.  I was emotionally frazzled but I was able to drive far enough to find a winery. Don’t judge me.

After that we made it to Kalamazoo, Michigan, but had forgotten to GPS the Walmart we were to stay at.  My daughter quickly found one, but she didn’t look under the app to find “good Walmarts” that actually allow you to stay (all Walmarts allow you to stay unless there is a local ordinance against it).  So, of course, the Walmart we found was part of one of those local ordinances and we had to drive to yet another one 30 minutes away.  That was fine, but apparently, right around Kalamazoo is when the time changes again and all of a sudden it was 10 o’clock at night!

We stayed the night and found a local Church the next morning to attend and proceeded our route to Hell.  Yes, Hell is actually a city in Michigan. The only reason we wanted to go there was because it was only a little off our route and apparently everything cool in Michigan is all around the edges of it and we were smack dab in the middle of Michigan, so we drove to Hell.  Oh why of why would anyone choose to drive to Hell?  Don’t.  Please. Don’t ever do it.  We got there and it was… just…ughh…nothing you would care to see.  I mean there was 3 biker bars and nothing else as far as we could tell. Apparently there were signs saying “Welcome to Hell” but we didn’t see them, so then we had to drive out of there and things got horribly worse.

We were on our way our when we happened upon a sign that said “Warning, low clearance ahead”.  Crud, because I know they are talking to me.  We were using the regular GPS and not the RV GPS and Caleb kept directing me towards this bridge that I knew we couldn’t fit under.  At this point, I’m scared to death of anything like this happening again, so thankfully we found a street that turned off right before the bridge and then it led to another sharp turn.  No way was I going to do that, so we went around the block again and got to another road.  This time, I passed it a little too far so although it wasn’t supposed to be a sharp turn, it was…. and yes, it was too sharp and I got stuck again (not quite as bad, but if I had tried to jump the sidewalk I would have driven straight into a box that said something about a gas main) and the cars started lining up again to stare at me. I told Caleb to get out and direct traffic because these people we waiting for me to back up and backing up when I’m on a turn is NOT good (yes I’ve learned this on other occasions on the trip, but all privately where no one could see my humiliation).  After Caleb got rid of most of the angry cars I actually was able to carefully backup just a little.  Just enough to be able to make the turn and get out of Hell for good.

We eventually made it to Detroit (in a little less than 5 hours, although it should have only been a 2 1/2 hour drive)

Blessings:

1. It was so awful that it was hilarious so I wasn’t as upset
2. I no longer care about how other people think of me, it doesn’t change anything. I’m not perfect and when I make mistakes I can’t change. Feeling bad that people are mad at me doesn’t help the situation.
3. I have this hilarious story to tell

Harmony’s Corner

We went to the Indiana Dooms we drove for A WHILE mom kept on screaming. Yesterday we drove and we stayed at an RV park. (Sorry I couldn’t think of anything else….)