Leaving the cats to fend for themselves, my beautiful GPS-minded wife and I set out on the Great American Roadtrip. We were prepared to take risks, discover charming locales, and learn a little something about ourselves and each other — all during a montage featuring music by Journey and the Indigo Girls. (Not at the same time, though that would be a mash-up I’d like to hear.)
Instead, we discovered the long, dark tunnel of despair that is North Dakota at night.
The town we’d planned to stop at for the night had no hotels with vacancies. Odd, we thought, but no to reason to Stop Believin’. The next town was less than an hour away.
They were full too.
“Convention in town,” explained one helpful hotel hostess. “Jehovah’s Witnesses, as far as the eye can see!”
The next town? Construction workers.
We’d planned to stop well before midnight. This was our last night without parental responsibilities, and we’d hoped to celebrate by not driving for 12 hours straight, and maybe vegging to whatever schlock showed up on the hotel HBO. Instead, it was 2:30 by the time we found a place to stay. It was an act of steely willpower not to wrap the night clerk in a sleep-deprived bear hug.
I’ll spare you the rest of the trip. Really, there’s not much to tell. If you want to read stories of my truly fantastic (and far less fact-based) adventures, you should follow me on Twitter. I’m visiting a strange land there. It’s quite exciting.
One more thing before I abandon the machine and go wallow in a weekend: This week’s Worth a Thousand entry is up. It’s a story called Pitstop and is, quite coincidentally, about a group of people having their own version of the Great American Roadtrip.
