3,280 miles: A cross-country roadtrip to Disneyland, CA! (NEW x2! 5/22)

__may 22;

The morning went smoothly, and we were able to hit the road right around 6am as planned. We decided that I would drive first because Mitchel has morning issues. I loaded the rest of my bags into the already cram-packed car and adjusted my seat and mirrors. I had been driving Mitch's car around the past week so that I would be more used to it. (We were driving in Mitch's black 2012 Honda Accord)

:drive:

We hit the highway and about 20 minutes in, Mitch can't find his brand new iPhone 5. Greaaaat. I pull over on the side of the NY Thruway so that we can thoroughly check the car before we get too far away from home. Mitch tells me to pop the trunk so he could check to see if maybe it slipped in there while we were loading my bags. I pop what I "think" is the truck latch while he jumps out of the car and goes to check.

Wellll, the trunk won't open. I called my mom to have her check our driveway because "Mitchel lost his freakin phone already", but she said it wasn't there. While Mitch is furiously trying to pry open the stuck trunk, a State Trooper comes rolling in behind us. Every time he sees cops of any sort, Mitch panics even though he's doing nothing wrong. So naturally, when the Trooper asks us if we're broken down, Mitch acts like we're hiding a body in the trunk. Lol.

:rolleyes1
Heheh. Nothing to see here, Officer!

The Trooper drives away, and me and a stressed out Mitch decide to drive on to the nearest truck stop so that we can search the car more safely and away from traffic. Well, as I'm driving away and picking up speed, the hood of the car starts bouncing up and down! We started freaking out, wondering if we should pull over again just in case it flies up and smashes the windshield or something. We decided to just keep driving because the stop was only 5 miles away. Then I had a realization: I had popped the hood instead of the trunk and that's why it wouldn't open. Whoops.

This trip was already a hot mess.

:crazy:

We got to the rest stop safely, closed the hood...actually popped the trunk, and searched it furiously. Nada. Crap. What the heck are we gonna do?? Mitch can't start his new life without his phone!

After doing another search of the front seat, we found the phone. Where was it? Wedged in between the seats.

:sad2:

Well, at least we found it. The problem was behind us now and we could officially start this trip!

:woohoo:

We hit the highway again....

only to realize we had left the trunk open. #facepalm.
We stopped again and fixed the problem.


Okay...NOW we're on our way!

:rotfl:

Except for one (kinda minor) confusion....

Stay tuned!


(ps, sorry for the lack of pictures! There will be plenty, I promise! ;))
 
A roadtrip TR! Love roadtrips!

I'm always happy to be a backseat driver. Hopping in for the ride.

And I so totally sympathise with the hood/trunk situation. Push or pull, left or right.....always push and always take that left turn at Albuquerque. ;)
 


Oh my! What a start to the trip! :headache: I sure hope you got all those types of problems out of the way in that short distance.

Enjoying the report so far and will stay tuned for more adventures...
 
Hi! Love the start to your trip. So sounds like something that would start one of our driving trips! LOL

Subbing in from Arkansas
 
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After we had solved the few minor setbacks, we had to address another problem. Karen (the GPS) was telling us that we would arrive in Washington DC/Alexandria, VA at 9:30, which meant we would only be on the road for 3 & 1/2 hours.

Prior to starting our trip, we had plugged all of our destinations into Karen (the GPS) and also Google Maps to see how long each leg of driving would be. Well, we were getting all kinds of answers and we had to keep fiddling around with Karen's settings in order to get quicker times. In the end, we decided to take it one destination at a time as we go along.

We had calculated the drive to DC to be around 6-8 hours, so when we saw 3 & 1/2 this morning, we were pretty excited! We didn't think too much about the logicalness of it up until about 8:30, when we decided we might as well switch drivers because we were at our "halfway point". We pulled over at some random gas station off the highway and switched off.

Then we started to really think. There was no possible way that Karen was right. We checked her over multiple times to make sure we had the right destination in until it finally hit us. Karen's internal time was off. Crap. We kinda knew it was too good to be true that we would make it from Albany, NY to DC in less than 4 hours, but we had high hopes anyway. It was early...forgive us.

Now that I was the Co-Pilot, I had access to the camera! And here's the first shot of the trip using Mitch's DSLR...

euhizd.jpg

He was already chompin' down on our stock of roadtrip snacks. The big ol' carton of goldfish.

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And here's a lovely shot of Karen, displaying the CORRECT arrival time.

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Yet another picture of Mitch eating, because let's be real, what else am I gonna take pictures of on an endless, woodsy highway?

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But in case you were curious about our surroundings, of course I included them! You're welcome.

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And then I made the first video of the trip where I talked about Karen's mishap, our current music selection ("old man music") and our "environment". It was rainy outside, and I described the trees surrounding us as "wet and magical".

:wizard:

I won't be posting the videos here, as they are not very "Dis appropriate", but maybe once I get around to editing them, they'll make an appearance!

;)


Stay with us as we get closer to our absolute favorite* road, the NJ Turnpike.

*Note: heavy sarcasm implied

See ya soon!




 


Glad you are on the road. Looking forward to the trip.

Great! Thank you!

A roadtrip TR! Love roadtrips!

I'm always happy to be a backseat driver. Hopping in for the ride.

And I so totally sympathise with the hood/trunk situation. Push or pull, left or right.....always push and always take that left turn at Albuquerque. ;)

Thanks! Glad to have you along for the ride :)
Haha! It was so different from my car and I didn't really know what I was doing...whoops!

What a fun road trip! I hope you love love every place you stop!

Thank you! :thumbsup2

Oh my! What a start to the trip! :headache: I sure hope you got all those types of problems out of the way in that short distance.

Enjoying the report so far and will stay tuned for more adventures...

I know! It was crazy...luckily the problems stayed behind us.

Hi! Love the start to your trip. So sounds like something that would start one of our driving trips! LOL

Subbing in from Arkansas

Haha, thank you! It was a great feeling, having all those problems in the first 20 minutes when we had a whole week of driving ahead of us. NOT! :laughing: Glad to have you along for the ride!
 
Whenever I "lose" my phone, it is usually in the same place-between the seats:confused3

Also- is the GPS named Karen because of Plankton's computer wife?
 
Whenever I "lose" my phone, it is usually in the same place-between the seats:confused3

Also- is the GPS named Karen because of Plankton's computer wife?

Haha! It seems to never fail! At least you can always rely on that, though ;)

And actually...no! We had been naming every electronic with a "sexy" voice Karen long before we realized Plankton's computer wife was also named that! :p
 
We soon left our home state and crossed the border into NEW JERSEY! Now I know how New Yorkers are always hatin' on NJ and saying it smells like sewage, but I have to say...unfortunately, this time I had to agree.

It was like on cue; the moment we crossed the border we were hit with this overpowering smell of garbage. I mean, it was probably just the area...but seriously it was just too funny!

:cool2:

Ahh, oh well. The sewage-y smell isn't my least favorite part of NJ. That would be the Turnpike of Hell.

But before we can even get to that, of course we get lost. Neither of us are very good at following directions and we had already added 12 minutes onto our arrival time, making it now 1:00 p.m. Booooooo.

:(

Karen quickly "recalculated" and we were on the right path again. What up NJ Turnpike!?

The first time me and Mitch ever encountered this road was en route to NYC for Comic Con. We stupidly chose to drive at night, and Karen had us on the NJ Turnpike the entire time. Well, it was our car vs. the entire deer population of New Jersey the entire time. Of course, I had just recently gotten into an accident in which I killed a deer, so we were both paranoid.

Well, we ended up having to stop literally every 3 minutes to let a (herd?) of deer pass. It was terrifying. And on top of that, there was a thick layer of fog limiting our visibility even more than the darkness of night was. Every tree, bush, rock and sign became a deer, and what should have been a 2.5 hour trip turned into a 4 hour one. Ugh.

ANYWAY.
We encountered no problems this time around. SO YAY!
:hyper:

Plz enjoi this photo of a random New Jersian weed wacker man.

29urkfn.jpg

And this Thomas English Muffins truck...which I SWEAR there was a reason behind me taking a photo of it, but I just can't remember why. URGH. Just keep it in the backs of your minds, just in case I remember moons from now! Lol

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And then Mitch doing this face as a reaction to something to do with the Thomas truck...I think.

:confused:

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We then decided that we wanted to cover up the time display in the car so that it wouldn't be constantly torturing us. How to do such a thing and make it stay throughout the entire trip? Hmmm...

We quickly realized that a gum wrapper would do just perfect. Mitch told me to bite off a small bit of my gum in order to stick it on the display.

So that is how we covered the time...throughout the entire trek. Stuck some chewed gum and a wrapper to Mitch's (practically) brand new car. He deemed it "worth it".

:laughing:

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ratchet.

We then made our first of many gas stops at a nice rest stop off of whatever highway/thruway we were on. We were amazed that they pumped our gas for us AND squeeged the windows! (to which Mitchel said "how convenient") I forgot all about this apparent law in NJ!

We had recently switched from "old man" music to "Disney" and Hakuna Matata was the track of the time. I made a secret video because we didn't want NJ gas pump man to know we were recording for some reason. Mitch commented on how good of a squeegee-er the man was and that was about all that happened.

I'm sorry to introduce you to the sheer reality of road tripping.

:laughing:

It'll get more fun, I swear!

STAY TUNEDSIES!
 

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