What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?
It’s in a Truck, a rented one.
We were married in Pennsylvania, but we had to drive to San Diego, California to get my husband back to NAS Miramar in less than a week. The Navy doesn’t take late excuses.
Here are some of the highlights. Shall I list? We had very little furniture, and the truck bounced and banged around. We got very, very bad gas mileage. We ran out of money before we got to Oklahoma, and I had to call my Dad to wire us money. The truck’s heater did not work well. (Did I mention it was the last week of December? No?) We had to sleep in the truck cab. The desert is freezing at night. We forgot to bring blankets or couldn’t find them. I forget which.
The stars were beautiful, and we were together. I’m thinking there should be an Eagles song in here somewhere…..ah, yes! We were running short on time, taking turns driving, and thank God for Denny’s where we got a cheap meal and lots and lots of coffee. The Arizona sunrise was gorgeous, but cold, and we were in the foothills of the Rockies. To save time, we decided to take Alternate Route (some number), and climbed the mountains as far as we could go.
Suddenly, there was a dwelling with people on the porch. It wasn’t a village, but the road ended at the end of the house, and it was a steep drop down hill from there. We were driving forward and stopped. The people on the porch just stared at us like the idiots we were. Fortunately, there was just, and I mean inches for my husband to maneuver the truck around. I was sure we were going to die. So back down we went, but somehow, we got turned around and ended up in front of the same house again. I knew we were dead.
But an older man came over to us and thoughtfully gave us directions. We stayed on the main highways after that and got to San Diego the night before my husband was supposed to check in with his Squadron. We were broke. We had our stuff. We had the rental truck, and that was our honeymoon across the country.
