Tag: safety

How to have a road trip that doesn’t drive you crazy

I’m sure that, at some point on my childhood travels with my family, I must have annoyed my parents. I remember passing the time by playing road games with my brother in the back seat – things like spotting Volkswagen Beetles (very popular at the time), or all the red cars, or red barns, or any other countable item we could think of.

Midway picnics were a welcome break. I also remember having reluctant naps that interfered with my trying to see everything new and interesting. Nevertheless, no doubt at some point we got impatient to reach the end of the journey. Highway scenery can only amuse so much – and that’ just as true for adults as for children.

A good road trip requires:

  • A road-worthy vehicle
  • Some planning around pit-stops, rest breaks and food, and places to stay overnight on multi-day transitions from your point of origin to your ultimate destination
  • Ways for your travellers to keep occupied on lengthy drives, and to stay comfortable
  • A sense of humour
  • A good navigator who’ll stay calm when something inevitably goes wrong

Road trips are special adventures. They feel so much more relaxed, even if you’re flying to another destination to hit the road. There’s freedom in wandering about a countryside that reminds me of the early explorers – getting your bearings with a map or a GPS instead of a sea chart and astrolabe, eating food at interesting ‘ports of call’. We have a cousin in Tennessee, and every time we drive down for a visit we always stop overnight in Polaris, Ohio so that we can have a cozy, delicious meal at our favourite on-the-road restaurant, the Polaris Grill.

Seeing a place from your road-ship is a much more intimate experience – you get to see everyday life, not just the highlights.

At special sites, like museums and historic places, you can build in time to explore at your leisure. Last year we visited Gettysburg, and spent a day-and-a-half following the battle trail with the aid of a DVD guide that we bought locally. The site is huge and so well-preserved that it was easy to envision the different parts of the battle. We also had time to play a round of golf, have Easter Brunch, see some wildlife and take part in a night-time ghost hunt.

Road prep

  • If driving your own vehicle, unless it’s brand new, check it out thoroughly before you leave. While a breakdown on the road isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, it will take up valuable time that’s better spent doing fun things, and will cost you.

    Sometimes accidents just happen, though, and you just have to make the best of them. On a high, narrow mountain road in Ireland another tourist car passing us in the opposite direction cut into our lane, forcing my hubby over onto the rocky shoulder on our side. We bounced off a rock and damaged both the undercarriage and a tire. We tried to limp back down the mountain, but the tire completely flattened out before we got more than a mile or so. We found a safe spot to pull over, and put on the spare. The next morning we were able to get everything repaired, at a reasonable price, and we continued on our way without too much disruption.
  • Depending on the bladder-capacity of your travellers, it’s a good idea to look at your route and plan for stops. In North America there are generally plenty of roadside stops, well-marked in advance. Things can become problematic if any of your party have special requirements like gluten-free meals, but there are ways to accommodate different needs.

    Picnic lunches are really fun to do, but here are some pointers:
    • Buy a nice blanket to sit on. That way, you can find cool places to enjoy your meal, like a big rock under maples and pines in the autumn sun.
    • Make food that will keep well, and is easy to transport and eat without making a mess. I like sandwiches, and they don’t have to be fancy. For one of our fall trips, I made fried egg and bacon on baguettes. Just about anything is delicious in the open air. My indulgence was some rather decadent pumpkin whoopie pies with marshmallow buttercream filling. Together with a thermos of hot tea, it was a perfect fall picnic.
    • Have a secure container to transport everything in, some paper towel for small cleanups, cups and plates, even some nice paper napkins if you want the atmosphere. Personally I prefer to pack food that doesn’t require utensils – remember that everything you use will need to be washed at some point on your journey, so keep the mess to a minimum.
  • Comfort is important on long drives. I like to take a lap blanket and small pillow – my hubby prefers to keep the temperature inside the vehicle on the cooler side, so the blanket is perfect to keep myself warm, and I can take short naps if I get sleepy riding along. (He likes to do the driving – finds it boring to be the passenger, although I can easily take over if he gets tired – and I’m a great navigator.)

    Have a pouch handy with bottled water (the air gets dry inside a vehicle), a couple of rolls of toilet paper (for roadside bathrooms that may have run out), some snacks in case it takes a while to find somewhere to eat, and napkins/paper towels/wet-naps to quickly clean fingers coated in potato chip salt or Cheezies dust.

    Traffic jams or spots of bad weather – I can’t tell you how many times we’ve run into unexpected fogs/rainstorms/short blizzards, and if you’re heading south to Williamsburg VA avoid the vicinity of Washington DC unless you want to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours  – can be wearing on the nerves. We’ve found it really helps to distract your mind a little from worrying by listening either to an audio book or a radio play.
  • Common sense prevails – don’t do anything you wouldn’t do at home. Keep your baggage out of sight while you’re stopped, doors locked, don’t flash large amounts of cash, keep an eye on the people around you. One of the last things you want to be is victim of a crime. We’ve always had good encounters on our trips, but that’s at least partly due to not being an easy target.
  • Be a good guest. Don’t litter, be polite and friendly, obey the rules. When we were driving around New Zealand we’d often not see any other vehicle for the better part of an hour, so the radar warnings on the GPS seemed a bit pointless, until we saw someone pulled over for speeding quite literally in the middle of nowhere.
  • Don’t overpack, but do have gear for different types of weather. I know it may be tempting to just throw stuff in the back of your vehicle, but remember that what goes in must be sorted through while on the trip and then taken back out at the end of it. Also, you’ll want to leave some room for whatever you buy on the trip. Do have clothing handy that you can layer in case of a storm or change in temperature. And footwear that will be comfortable during hours seated inside a moving vehicle.
  • If you’re travelling during peak season, book accommodations ahead of time. We’ve seen people show up unannounced at hotels that we already had a room at and watched them panic when there wasn’t any space to be had. After hours of driving, it’s great to know that you have a place to lay your weary head.

A great sense of humour and ability to not panic will be your secret weapons on any road trip, because things rarely go completely according to plan.

Keep an eye on news and weather reports. No matter how much you prepare in advance, Nature can still surprise you.

When we drove down to Virginia a couple of years ago to see explore the area around Williamsburg, we got a real bombshell. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, on our second day there, after we finished our first round of golf we were chatting with one fellow where we turned in our cart and he asked how we liked the course and if we were going to play again. We said we thought we’d do another round in a couple of days, which he advised might not exactly be possible because of the impending hurricane.

The what, now? Usually you start hearing about a hurricane days ahead of time while it’s still a tropical depression, but this one popped up out of nowhere. By the time we returned to our hotel after dinner it was all over the news, already bearing down heavily on Florida and due to head our way in less than two days while still Category Three.

We’ve been in worse, but with more shelter than we had at our hotel in Williamsburg. Luckily we were staying inland as opposed to out along the coast. That evening we did some rejigging to our touring plans for the week and kept an eye on the storm’s progress. Since tornadoes were also in the projected path, I also downloaded the Red Cross app to my phone so we could receive alerts. We made it through safe and sound, and still had an enjoyable trip.

Make a general itinerary but leave room for flexibility

Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens

Often the unplanned things you encounter become highlights of your trip. It’s essential to know opening and closing times of the important things you want to see, and then enjoy time in between for impromptu exploring.

We love to go to upstate New York along the Hudson River Valley in the fall, and we’ve had so much fun meandering around small towns and farm markets, where we’ve had amazing chocolate milk, pumpkin butter, baked goods and great ambience on a beautiful fall day. On a golfing road trip through Alabama, we had fabulous barbecue and southern food based on recommendations from golf course staff.

Based on years of our own road trips, those are my tips to make your own version really enjoyable. Beyond that, safety and comfort are the solid underpinnings, and a little research and planning, plus some common sense on the journey, will go a long way. If you have your own tips or insights, please share as well.

…and speaking of storms

Ah, the memories — rain lashing at our windows, wind howling, four of us huddled in our bedroom nervously riding out the category five hurricane on our honeymoon.

My hubby and I knew very little about hurricanes when we booked our honeymoon in late August in the U.S. Virgin Islands. No one really talked about them at the time, before the advent of satellites, the internet and instantaneous news.

Our travel agent sold us on the island of St. Thomas, and we chose a nice-looking resort on the north side called Point Pleasant. We liked the way it was tucked into the hillside; it had recently won an award for best preservation of the environment, and since the burgeoning field of ecology and environmental science was my major in university, it seemed like the perfect fit.

We arrived on a Monday morning after a series of connecting flights culminating in a hair-raising 30 minutes on a little island hopper airline called Prinair — the door to the cockpit was coffin-shaped, the bolts on the metal housing on the wings were loose and rattling as we flew along (I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, but my hubby could tell something was bothering me).

The resort was perfect — condo-style rooms built into the lush, steep hillside, with 25 feet of sliding glass doors opening onto a wide balcony draped with fronds from a tall palm tree, overlooking the most beautiful blue-green water.

That evening, after dinner, we were chilling out sipping rum punch on one of the terraces when someone mentioned that there was a storm coming in. Okay, we could handle a bit of rain, we thought.

On Tuesday as we explored the small island, the word “hurricane” came up. We asked in town, and found out that there was indeed a hurricane headed in our direction, forecasted to arrive the next day. I remember thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me, then, well, there’s nothing we can do but shelter in place.

Wednesday started out as a gorgeous, sunny day, so we went into town again to do some shopping. Building owners were taping up their windows, and in the harbour small boats were being tied down while the cruise ships fled out to sea. Hmm.

Back at the resort, the owners gave out instructions: the storm was expected to hit around midnight. We were to crack open the sliding glass doors a bit so that the hurricane’s weird air pressure could equalize and avoid blowing them out. Then we were to stay in our bedrooms and close the louvered doors — the bedroom and bathroom were at the back of our unit, almost completely set into the hill. If things got bad, we were to hide in our tub.

We had a nice dinner with another honeymoon couple from Michigan, but the wind began to pick up as darkness fell, and we were worried about them walking all the way down the hill to their unit, which was at the bottom past quite a bit of construction materials where new units were being added. There were no phones in any of the rooms, you see, so we would have no way of knowing if they made it safely.

As our building was the second closest to the main building and restaurant, we convinced them to do spend the night with us. So on the third night of our honeymoon, the other couple and I were in our king sized bed (fully-clothed, of course, in case we lost a wall!), while Mike was on the floor next to the bed, leaning against the nightstand.

Waiting and not knowing what was going to happen was the worst part. We had some drinks and chatted nervously for a while, then tried to doze off a bit. At one point the window air conditioner kicked in suddenly over our heads and startled the crap out of us.

As it turned out, we got lucky. Fifty miles south of us, Hurricane David suddenly turned due west and took out the Dominican Republic. We ended up with only the fringes of the storm, which was bad enough — a couple of other units in our resort did lose their sliding windows, and in the morning we no longer had a palm tree draped over our balcony.

The night had been stormy but not overly dangerous, although for months afterward I would tense up at home whenever the wind picked up. The skies remained grey and the waters continued to churn down on the beach, tossing boats around vigorously. We could see beheaded cacti all up and down the hillside.

There was a lot of debris on the roads, which were all closed, so most of the resort guests ended up in the restaurant and bar at some point. We met two couples from the southern U.S. and had dinner with them.

No one could call into the island, but we were able to call out and reassure our families that we were safe and sound. My dad had been frantic because news reports had said the island had been evacuated. My hubby’s larger family was still post-wedding partying around their pool when we got through to them.

We were playing cards in the glass-walled restaurant into the evening, fairly relaxed, when I noticed the big window next to me bowing in at least 12 inches, then popped back into place. I was just wondering if anyone else had seen that, when all of a sudden the wind picked up and began to howl strangely. We could see small trees flying past the window, the wind shrieked, and the lights went out. As a group, we dove under the table, not sure what the hell was happening.

After a few tense minutes, the staff said we could come back out. Everyone was shaken, and they told us to head for our rooms. The electricity was out throughout the resort, so we were given lanterns to use — and here’s a tip: in utter darkness, don’t hold the lantern in front of you, because it will effectively blind you to anything else. My hubby slipped on the wet wooden stairs and bruised a rib. The six of us headed back to our room, again because we were the closest; my hubby and I joked afterward that to the resort staff we must have looked like one kinky honeymoon couple!

The remainder of the night was quiet. We found out the next day that a tornado had torn through the other side of the hill that our resort was on. Lucky again (all in all)!

When we could get out and about again, we found out how bad our hurricane turned out to be, and how truly fortunate we’d been, ideally positioned in a resort on an island made of one big hill, tucked securely into the hillside on the north while the hurricane raged south of us.

What also saved us at the time was the speed at which the hurricane moved, unlike Dorian, which has hovered over the Bahamas this week to do extensive damage, and hurricane Harvey which dumped so much water onto Texas two years ago. There’s been a great deal of speculation lately regarding how much effect climate change has had on these storms to make them so slow and so much more damaging. Hurricane David resulted in over 2,000 lives lost, I think in large part because there weren’t fast and effective warning systems in place back then; now we have warnings that people often ignore, and storms that lurk in place like monsters.

Mother Nature always wins. Should you ever find yourself in the path of a hurricane, don’t risk your life.

Lion Tail Magic supports IFAW, which is collecting donations to help the animal victims of Hurricane Dorian.