What could possibly go wrong?
Picture this: it's Christmas break and everyone's excited.
We've got Christmas presents in the trunk, Christmas music playing over the speakers, bellies full of hot cocoa, and hearts filled with excitement to see family.
Picture. Perfect.
That was the vision, at least. But reality doesn't always shape up that way.
The holidays get a little tricky when you live in different parts of the country.
First, we have to fly 4 hours from Illinois to Idaho to pick up our two kids, aged 5 and 8.
Our to-do list looks like this: Haul the car seats, check the bags, sit through delays, get the rental car, and pick up snacks.
It's a whole production.
If you're a parent, then you know that getting children into a car is easy like a Sunday morning.
No one is ever protesting the fact that they have to wear a seatbelt, complaining about how much they hate being in the car, or crying because they wanted the blue fruit snacks instead of the red ones.
I mean, who in their right minds would road trip for a minimum of 12 hours if that was the case?
Apparently, us.
My husband's family lives on the Oregon Coast, which is where we typically end up spending the holidays. They live in a beautiful coastal town where basically no one lives besides Big Foot and his family.
If we're lucky, we can make this drive within 10 or so hours, but if we're unlucky - like we were in 2021 - then it would take us 24.
How did we go from a simple 10 hour drive to a multi-day trek? You'll have to ask Mother Nature about that one.
If you haven't noticed, these once in a generation storms keep happening around the country; and, at this time, a winter storm hit central Oregon that completely shut down all of the mountain roads necessary to get to the coast.
We should have been able to make it to the coast by nightfall, but once we reached Bend, we realized that the only way across....was to drive up an additional 6 hours to Portland and come back down on the other side.
At this point, we had been in the car for maybe 6 or 7 hours. It was Christmas Eve so of course most restaurants and rest stops were closed.
The kids were hungry, I was super irritated, and my husband was frustrated.
I urged him to let us stay the night in Bend and regroup in the morning, and he disappointingly obliged.
We found a room at the local DoubleTree which the kids LOVED because the front desk gives out free cookies.
Luckily enough, MOD Pizza had a location open for another hour, so we ordered pizza and bought a few sodas from the hotel's concession stand.
The kids and I were previously pretending to be on The Polar Express as a way to make the long car ride less boring. I was their stewardess, my husband was the conductor, and they were our valued guests.
At the hotel, we set up our own little Polar Express Hotel. I became the front desk agent who checked them into their rooms, and the conductor became our beloved bartender and server.
In true restaurant fashion, a soda was knocked over, some animals went flying across the room, and a dance party broke out in the dining area.
At the end of this completely normal dining experience, the kids began to conspire together.
The bartender/server/conductor and I didn't know what to think, but to our surprise, our valued guests found two free tickets to The Polar Express!
What a lovely surprise.
We congratulated them on their lucky break, and then, they did something we never expected - they gave the two tickets to us.
"We want you to come on The Polar Express with us!" they said. "Christmas is about doing nice things for others and we want you to join us."
After much deliberation, we obliged.
We spent the next day driving an additional 10-12 hours just to avoid the road closures on our original (and more convenient) route.
It was as tiring for them as it was for us, but we made it work as a family.
Back on The Polar Express, we sang Christmas songs, drank hot cocoa, ate a ton of pirates booty, and talked about how we wished it would snow on the Coast (Spoiler: it did).
Despite the rocky start and multiple mishaps, I'll always cherish the time that we turned a completely packed and messy 24 hour car ride into the wonderfully magical Polar Express.
What fun! Glory writes about her family‘s trip with subdued hilarity that almost anyone can picture! I‘m still laughing!