We’re Driving Where?!?!?!?!

My family thinks I’m crazy. They might be right this time, but the elephant is already in the room – we can’t really ignore it now.

{REWIND: We’re planning an epic trip – one we’ve been saving for a long time to be able to do – and we’re in the planning phase now. Super excited. What would make a trip to Disney World even more fun? Driving from Idaho to Florida. Yep, I said it. “Let’s drive – it’ll be fun.” Just under 3000 miles one way, leaving home on Memorial Day Weekend  – what could go wrong?}

Our journey finds us starting out the evening of the very last day of school. The plan is to drive all night long (Friday), taking turns and go as far as we can towards our first real stop, New Orleans. Sure there are quicker routes to take but if you’re going to be that close, you kind of have to visit the Big Easy. For the first leg of the journey, nothing is set in stone and it’s constantly changing due to the weather (tornado season is in full swing). We’re leaving on Friday night and we have to be in Orlando Monday. No problem.

The first part of the journey is relatively uneventful. We leave Idaho, stop in Utah to grab dinner, continue on through Wyoming and Colorado. We were making pretty good time and stopped somewhere in Southern Colorado at a Subway for breakfast to go. (Gotta keep moving!) I’m pretty sure one of the requirements to work there is you had to be high. No joke, but hey the sandwiches were good! Ha!

On into Oklahoma (with me singing songs from the musical and my kids groaning in the backseat) and down into Texas. We’ve been watching the sky pretty closely – we’re well aware of where we are, what time of year it is and the dark clouds not too far away. As we’re driving through Dumas, TX I hear something I’ve never heard before – tornado sirens – and I have no idea what to do. We pull over, listen to the warnings and decide to go for it. (My husband is a former truck driver so he’s done this before, me not so much.) There’s a pretty good chance if we stay where we are we’re going to be directly in the path, but if we keep going there’s a good chance we’ll miss it. Yeah…in theory that was a good idea.

I drove as far as I could on the freeway that was covered in water and getting deeper by the second, with windshield wipers that couldn’t even make a dent in what was pouring from the sky, gale force winds and then the hail started. All around me everyone is stopping. Not pulling over, not looking for a side road, just stopping wherever they can so I do the same. I will never forget looking in my rearview mirror and seeing the look of terror on my kids’ faces and knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to protect them from the beast that was tearing things up outside the passengers side window. I don’t know if it touched down, but we watched it spinning and spinning and moving back towards Dumas. My car (over a year later) is still covered with dents from the hail and how my windshield didn’t crack from the ferocity of those giant ice balls is nothing short of a miracle. I don’t know how long we sat there, but it honestly felt as if time stopped. I do not ever want to experience anything like that again and my heart goes out to the people that live under the threat of those things year after year.

As soon as I could make out some semblance of a road, I took off and got out of there as fast as we could! We got lost in Amarillo, got stopped in another flash flood in Vernon, almost ended up in a nasty pile up on the freeway in Dallas and found the very last hotel room available in Terrell on Saturday night,  but we survived our first 24 hours on the road. Whew!

The next day found us in Louisiana. Now let me tell you, that state was nothing at all like I had imagined it would be. It was gorgeous – such a beautiful, lush, green, farmland filled area. (Much like East Texas – who knew???) We drove South as soon as we hit Louisiana and traveled across the Gulf. It was a beautiful drive.

New Orleans…ahhh….what a town! I’m glad for the experience, but I’m good with not going back. First, those above ground cemeteries? Ummm…no thank you! I kept envisioning them in a hurricane with crypts flying everywhere!  We finally made it through the crowds to The French Quarter and Bourbon Street. By the way, apparently Memorial Day is also Pride-Fest down there. I am NOT judging anyone for anything, but let me just say some things will never be unseen. Ha ha! The architecture was incredible, the people were crazy and Bourbon Street really does smell like 100 proof! After a little time there, we headed onward. So we thought. I may have taken a wrong turn and ended up somewhere I really didn’t want to be. Whoops! On the plus side, in our driving all over we had to stop so Kareem Abdul Jabar could cross the road in front of us. For reals – man, that guy is tall!

Out of the chaos, we discovered the Gulf Coast and followed it around into Mississippi. We ended up having dinner at sunset at Shaggy’s on the Gulf. It was here, the love of the Shrimp Po’ Boy was born! It was also here that we discovered remoulade. The waiter explained what it was and I replied "Oh so like a kicked up fry sauce?" He looked at me like I was speaking in a foreign language. Ha ha! I forget fry sauce is kind of a regional thing too. But yes, remoulade is a kicked up cajun-ified fry sauce. And it's good!

That Sunday night we bedded down in Pascagoula after watching a scuffle at the gas station next to our hotel with a convenience store clerk and someone trying to pass fake $5 bills…we headed for the hotel as soon as the cops started pulling in. Never dull with us.

Monday morning, let’s get this party on the road! Off through Alabama (the welcome signs actually say “Sweet Home Alabama”! Love it!) and on into Florida we go! Are you aware that not only can you buy a freeway pass at the welcome center, but they also have vending machines with ICE CREAM in them? Yeah! Stopped and ate BBQ along the way, but it was a relatively uneventful drive to Disney World in what was blossoming into a genuine heatwave.

Idaho to Orlando in 3 days, totally do-able. No problem. Ha ha!