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Over the years we’ve gone on many road trips. Partly because we usually live far from family, partly because we kinda like road trips.
In fact, it was a road trip that jump-started our relationship.
The summer that I worked for UPS, Jeremy was also living at home and working. Our families lived just down the road from each other and we’d met at church. That summer we went to church activities together but we didn’t go on a real date until the night before I left to go back to college. Yes, Jeremy can be a procrastinator 🙂
We talked on the phone a few times that semester, but his work schedule, my course load, and the fact that we were in separate states didn’t help our fledgling relationship thrive.
As the semester came to a close, an opportunity to visit a friend came up. However, my car was having problems, and I didn’t trust it to make the long journey without breaking down.
What to do?
I knew Jeremy liked road trips, and while we’d gone on that one date in the summer, our relationship hadn’t gone anywhere and I wanted to see if it would progress. When I called to ask if he’d like to go on a road trip with me, he said yes. Jeremy drove from where he lived in Colorado to where I lived in Utah and we drove to southern Idaho to see my friend. We then drove back to Colorado since the semester was over and it was almost Christmas.
But it wasn’t as simple as all that.
The first two legs of the trip were pretty uneventful, but the third was a doozy.
We’d planned on leaving my friend’s house Monday morning, but ended up leaving late Sunday afternoon in an effort to outrun the winter storming that was moving into the area.
We started driving and didn’t have any problems at first. Then some time after darkness fell, one of the tires went flat. We were in the middle of nowhere, so we changed the tire on the side of the road by the light of a flashlight, surrounded by freezing cold darkness.
We continued our journey with three good tires and one donut tire.
Then the snow caught up with us.
We made it to I-80 in Wyoming, but weren’t able to go too far before they closed the highway. They were directing motorists to a Red Cross shelter, but we decided we didn’t want to spend the night in a Red Cross shelter. <I’m not sure that this was the smartest decision, but we survived>
Being young and confident in ourselves, we decided to keep driving. Since I-80 was closed, we took smaller country roads. It wasn’t a straight shot across the state, but our meandering eventually took us back I-80. It was still closed, but they were anticipating opening again soon, so we hung out at a truck stop for an hour or so before getting back on the road.
Not long after we started driving again the sun rose.
We’d driven all night. In a snowstorm. On a donut tire.
Morning meant we could finally find an open tire store, and after buying a new tire we were able to continue our journey home uneventfully.
Road trips will make or break a relationship
While we drove through the night, we talked. And talked. And talked some more. Jeremy’s radio <this was before iPods and iPhones> stopped working part way through the night (our parents lived in an area where the roads were dirt and full of washboards, which played havoc with car cd players) and the best way to stay awake was to talk.
We had the chance to talk about everything under the sun and by the time we got home we didn’t have any secrets left. Honestly, it was a great way to start a relationship. There were never any games or second-guessing what the other person meant.
On the other hand, we once took a road trip with one of his cousins, and it was a terrible experience for me. Let’s just say that I will never, ever travel in the same car as her again.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we’ve taken lots of road trips in the years since that first one. Just the two of us, then the three of us when Sunshine joined our family, then the four of us after River was born, and now the five of us since Ocean was born.
We’ve road tripped in a cramped Pontiac Sunfire (wouldn’t recommend it), a Honda CRV (lots of cargo space), a Chevy Avalanche and an 18′ travel trailer (the best!), and a Camry Hybrid (cramped, but great mileage).
This summer we’re planning on road tripping in a 25-27′ RV, which will be a new experience for us. With three kiddos it should make the experience a lot more enjoyable and less stressful than being crammed in on top of each other in a smaller vehicle. Because let’s be realistic, road trips with kiddos are on a whole other level from road trips with two adults in a blizzard.
What’s your most memorable road trip experience?