Lake Placid vacation part one: Murphy takes a vacation

Just got back from four days with my extended family in Lake Placid, New York. We went with my parents and my brother and his wife and their two kids. It was a — hmm, what’s the word I’m looking for? It was a memorable vacation. For a few of the right reasons, and a few too many of the wrong reasons.

This was our drive down to Lake Placid:

  • A stomach virus has been working it’s way through the family in the days leading up to the vacation. It comprises fever and wickedly painful stomach cramps with serious diarrhea. The morning we leave, one of the boys leaks through his underwear and leaves a poop stain on my 10-day old couch. We stop at a drug store on the way out of town to buy some overnight (thus oversized) pull-ups for the four hour drive. Just in case.
  • The weather forecast is for rain, rain, rain, and then for a change of pace, rain. The skies are grey and heavy with complaint as we leave town.
  • We’re not even out of the city limits of Ottawa when my iPod seizes up. The one I bought to replace the one that was stolen. Seriously, Steve Jobs must hate me or something.
  • We make it across the border okay, and begin to follow Google Maps’ instructions. It tells us to turn left and go east when my intuition tells us we should be turning right and going west, but we follow it because we have no other directions. After another turn, I ask Beloved if it feels to him like we’re doubling back. After about 20 minutes, it tells us to take a non-existent right turn. We follow the tiny county road we’re on, hoping to stumble out onto a main route that’s marked on my four-state New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine map left over from last summer. After another half hour of increasingly agitated driving, we spill out onto Route 37, and two minutes later we’re once again at the bridge where we crossed over from Canada an hour before. We’ve just done an hour-long circle.
  • By the time we stop and buy a new, more detailed map and get on our way, Lucas is starting to get fidgety in his car seat. He cries for the best part of the next two hours, but by this time we’re into Adirondack State Park and there are precious few spaces to stop.
  • He finally cries himself to sleep after reaching a fever-pitch of hysteria. About twenty minutes later, barely enough time for me to unclench my jaws, I am greeted by the sounds of retching from the back seat. Simon, always a tad motion sensitive, has awoken from a nap and the twisting and dipping mountain roads have unsettled his stomach. He barfs all over himself, the back seat, his backpack full of car diversions and his new Webkinz.
  • As I’m cleaning out the back seat, I notice that we’ve pulled over beside a lovely little bay. At first, I think “At least the boys have some nice scenery to look at while I clean up the barf.” I quickly realize that it’s not so much a lovely little bay as a bug-infested swamp. Biting bugs.
  • Props to the Huggies people: diaper wipes do an admirable job of cleaning up barfy back seats. Note to the Dodge Caravan people: you might want to consider some sort of leak-proofing system for the back seat, so liquids spilled (or barfed) into the back seat don’t leak into the trunk. I’m just sayin’. And I’m sending the bill for the detailing of my van to the Google people. If not for the one-hour detour, we’d’ve been in Lake Placid by the time Simon lost his lunch.
  • We’re finally on the home stretch about 15 miles out of Lake Placid when traffic comes to a dead halt. We don’t move for about 45 minutes. We’ll find out later that a traffic accident has stopped traffic in both directions.
  • While we’re stuck in traffic, I call ahead to my folks to let them know we’ve been delayed. We find out that the people occupying the first-floor walk-out-to-the-beach room we have reserved have failed to leave, and for the first night of our three-night stay, we’ll have to stay on the second floor.
  • We finally pull into Lake Placid a little more than six hours after we left Ottawa, two hours longer than the trip should have taken.

That was the worst of it. Thank goodness! More to come…

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

7 thoughts on “Lake Placid vacation part one: Murphy takes a vacation”

  1. Oh Dani,

    I’m waiting for the good parts. Come on, good parts! Sadly vacations and barf seem to go hand in hand. It kind of explains the scent of airplanes and rental cars, no?

  2. Uhh, yeah that sounds fun. Not!
    I’m sure it’s gonna be so much fun tomorrow, you’ll barely be able to stand it!

  3. I’d like to laugh….but I can’t….I just finished cleaning two rounds of ‘barf’ out of my back seat/booster seat/toys/anything my son was wearing at the time……ugg not really funny yet….LOL!!!!!

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