Travel Series
2 Cars, 7Adults, 1 Kid And An Incredible Trip
A moment that will always stay in my heart.
It was early October ’08, when I lived in a small city near Boston with my husband. We lived in an apartment complex, and a few other friends (of my husband) along with their families, stayed in the same complex. Together, we have gone on some crazy trips.
One Friday evening, on an impulse, we decided to go to the Adirondack Park that very night to experience the beautiful fall foliage. We didn’t have a child yet, but one of our friends had a child, who was merely a year and a half old. We still decided to give it a try.
We booked a hotel immediately online from Priceline.com. We couldn’t manage to find a hotel in the region for that night, so we decided to stay somewhere near Lake Champlain in Vermont — that was the closest place we could find, considering fall is a very busy season.
We packed our bags within a few minutes and started our journey, without any clue how, where, and when we would find dinner. We managed to find a small Chinese eatery though, in some remote place. I don’t remember what I ate, it wasn’t anything worth remembering.
But I do recall, one of our friends ordered General Tso’s Chicken for three of them only to throw away all their meals — it was absolutely sweet. But we still managed to take a couple of hours to ‘enjoy’ our dinner together.
We hit the road again and resumed our long journey. Sometime around midnight, we were driving down a pitch dark country road. From the navigation, we could understand that it’s through farmland, not even a state highway. There was pin-drop silence, two cars with high beams driving along with some fields at midnight when our navigation tells us “now take a ferry”.
In our navigation map, we could see water ahead, but nothing actually was visible. There was no sign of life anywhere. It was a new moon night and there was Zero visibility other than the high beam from our two cars.
We stopped our cars and got out in the freezing cold. We realized we were near Lake Champlain and our hotel was right on the other side of the lake.
Apparently, there was supposed to be a ferry during the day, but we reached at midnight and we had forgotten to disable the ferry option in our GPS.
We rerouted our navigation and now this time, instead of crossing the lake horizontally, we had to drive along the lake to the north point and reach the other side.
We finally reached the hotel sometime around 2.00 AM. Even the child, who had fallen asleep woke up because of the ruckus. After we checked in, we were hungry again. Now luckily, right beside the hotel, there was a 24*7 Walmart. Everyone wanted a drink too.
The cashier in the store, somehow, suspected that I wasn’t above 18, so asked me for my ID, which I had left in the hotel by mistake. They refused to sell any alcohol to an ‘underaged person’. I tried to explain that I was already in my late twenties, working for an IT company for the last many years and I don’t drink alcohol (which is true). But they still refused.
Yes, everyone was tired and they all desperately needed a drink, but because of me, they were denied that. Finally, we went to sleep in the early morning hours.
The next morning, after we woke up we realized we were in the middle of the forest and it was such a beauty to behold — the fall foliage. We headed towards Adirondack Park.
I couldn’t believe that nature could be so splendidly beautiful and all that trouble was still worthwhile.
It became a memorable trip and I hear myself repeating this story to all my friends and family. We were crazy to decide to go for a trip on a whim that too with a kid without any preparation whatsoever. But it was so worthwhile.
Although it was such a special trip, I never thought of writing it down until I read this article from Sharing Randomly about “Travel moments that will stay in your heart.” I thank her for tagging me and giving me an opportunity to write about one of my thrilling but almost lost memories.
And here’s another incredible journey in Vienna by writer Mulan.
