My Car and our Big Road Trip

Jay - being the smart, wonderful, amazing husband that he is (why am I buttering him up? He doesn't read this blog!) - thought it would be a good idea to have the oil changed/car tuned up before our big drive. I thought this was a good idea - and we even had it in enough time to make it work. (the mechanics that we use are inexpensive, but SLOW!!!) I also wanted the cigarette lighter looked at since it wasn't working. For those of you who are worried - no - I didn't take up smoking. We wanted to take Jay's Sirius radio on our trip, and we needed a working cigarette lighter.

So, they called and said that the car was done, but Jay forgot to tell them about the cigarette lighter. Ok - so they were going to look into it, but they didn't get it done soon. Weekend passes, and the car is finally done the Monday before we were to leave. We go pick it up on Tuesday, I'm driving it home, and realize that the air conditioning was now not working. YIKES!!

We take the car back in Tuesday night - tell them that we need this fixed for our trip on Friday - and they assure us that they will look at it.

Yeah right! They didn't look at it until Thursday - found out it was something major ($800 +) and they wouldn't get it done in time for our trip.

I was SOOOOO mad. I just couldn't believe it. So, we ended up having to take Jay's car. He drives a 1987 BMW 3 series. (and please don't be impressed - it has over 250,000 miles on it and is starting to show it's age) It's MUCH smaller than my car (a 1997 Chrysler 300 - is that right, dad?) and I wasn't looking forward to the long drive in a small car. But - there was no way I was going to make this trip in a car without air conditioning. (Isn't that just so shallow!)

We did ok. We were able to fit everything in the car (with the car topper that Jay was smart enough to purchase). It was just a little cramped.

Alex did great. He slept, he ate, he read books, he slept some more. We ended up only stopping twice and we were on the road for 12 1/2 hours!! One of the places we stopped was Tamarack in Beckley, WV. We ate and let Alex walk around a little bit. There was this area outside that had things for kids to play on/around. Here's Alex having some fun.

Alex discovering mulch. I think he only got one handful in his mouth!

Our room was AWESOME!! It was a large room with a bed, a bar area, a sitting area and a fireplace. There was a room with closets, and a sink (kind of a changing area) and then another room with a door that had the tub/toilet/sink. Here are some pictures.

Here's Alex running around like a wild man when we first got there. It was very nice to have this little "room" to put his pack n play.

Those windows opened up to a nice balcony. We never went out there because 1) it was HOT and 2) there was a brick wall but it didn't go all the way across the balcony, and little man would have fit in the gap!! Yikes!!