Road tripping

On a Friday afternoon not so long ago, I loaded up my sister’s Volkswagen Jetta hatchback to the brim and voyaged off on a 1,400-mile round trip adventure with two of my sisters and my 18-month-old nephew. We travelled to Kentucky where my oldest sister and her family live.

Once loaded, I drove from Rochester all the way into Indiana on the power of adrenaline. Getting into the left lane and flying was my internal motto as I drove fast enough to make the GPS tick time off our estimated arrival but not so fast that I was guaranteed to get a ticket or crash the vehicle. I mentally justified to myself that deep down everyone in the car appreciates someone sacrificing their moral integrity to drive faster than they ought so we could all get where we were going.

& Flowers by Amy Kyllo

As is often on road trips, our vehicle was packed to the brim. I’ve visited Kentucky before for a similar amount of time and flown with literally just a personal item, but since we were driving, I decided to break out the kitchen sink because I could. I was even able to bring a partially eaten stale box of Kwik Trip Blueberry Dunkers and throw them away uneaten in Kentucky instead of Minnesota.

My sister decided to stock us up on endless road trip snacks before the trip so we traveled in salty, high calorie style. My personal favorites were the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos which were spicy enough for my mild tongue to require me to eat them slowly yet oddly delicious and adventurous enough to make me feel as cool as my older sisters who like hot food.

In the back seat rode the true boss of the trip, my sister’s 18-month-old. Road tripping with a toddler under the age of 2 has its advantages and disadvantages. There is always the secret dread of a possibly impending, extended high-decibel meltdown, which luckily for us, didn’t happen. He did, however, play with a little vehicle equipped with a convincingly realistic sound of a car honking that regularly psyched me out that some invisible car I hadn’t noticed had road rage at me.

On the advantage side of bringing a toddler, we could always blame extra breaks to stretch our legs on the 18-month-old, and people in rest stops smile far more when you have a cute baby than when you do not.

Vacation itself was very low key – another distinct advantage of going with toddlers on vacation is that everyone has excuses to take afternoon naps. For all of us, it was good to just spend some time together. Between taking naps, making nummy food and then eating it, we stayed a vacation version of busy.

Every night we watched one movie or TV show with the nieces and nephew. Though “The Last Unicorn” and Disney’s “DuckTales” would not generally be titles on top of my watch list, sitting on the couch with a couple well-loved little munchkins around me, watching their show with them, made for some sweet moments.

The littles bring a lot of laughs. Whether it is the horror of a 2-year-old at the idea of having to share their toys or my niece loudly whispering to her mom something random with the instruction at the end to “Tell ‘The Aunts,’” – one or more of whom were generally within earshot – made me smile.

We started the trip home with a really magical audio book rendition of C.S. Lewis’ “Prince Caspian” and except for stop and go traffic in Chicago, and a quick accidental tour straight through Gary, Indiana – whose problems are much more than little boys spending time in pool halls like “The Music Man” suggests – the trip home was uneventful.

I can’t say long road trips aren’t without fault. The mood swings from elated for vacation, to bored we are aren’t there yet, to chilling and enjoying the ride to shifting into grumpiness in direct proportion to the stress level of the traffic we were riding through, are very real. However, I love my family and salty snacks, so if you twist my arm with a little time off work and some of my favorite people, I just might bite again.