Unintentional Road Trip

I’ve discovered the reason for getting up and around as early as possible.
Rising early may not make someone healthy, wealthy, and wise. It will give you more time to do what you want to do.

We should have risen earlier today.

Last night, the boys went to sleep early in the evening. They played hard and long on the water slide. My wife read a book to our oldest, and he fell asleep in record time. We were elated! We wanted to go to Topaz Creek today.

We thought we had the rest of the evening to ourselves. I drove to town to finish some things. Then I came back home and wrote for a little while. Charity (my wife) cleaned up the kitchen. We headed to bed.
Then both boys woke up at the same time.
We ended up not getting to sleep until 2:00 A.M. Despite our best intentions to get up and start the day early, we slept in.

Around 9-9:30 this morning, we woke up, ate breakfast, then got ready to head out. Packing everyone into the car — It’s easier to sum it up in a sentence than to do it. Especially with small children, getting everyone ready takes patience and precious time.

Going to any body of water requires taking a few essential items.
Life jackets, sunscreen, swimwear and a cooler stocked with water and food.
We needed to buy some ice for the cooler, so we stopped at a gas station along the way.
I bought the ice, but when I opened the car hatch, I realized I didn’t put the cooler in the car.
We left it at home.

Sigh.

Across the road from the gas station was a Dollar General. We hopped over and grabbed a few things. You could buy three packs of drinks for $12. The regular price is $6.00 each. The third one was free. Chester’s Cheese Puffs are to die for. I had to buy a couple bags of those. After a several-minute detour, we finally made our way back to the route.
Google was happy, and so were we.

The drive was stunning. We kept commenting on how beautiful it was! We couldn’t get over it. We would drive that way again to see the scenery. It was gorgeous. But then the pavement ended. When blacktop turns into dust and rock, things change. The dirt road kept narrowing. Finally, it turned into a lane. We entered the town of Topaz: with a total population of 4. There were two houses across the road from the population sign. There must be two people per dwelling, but we only seen a man and ten dogs.

Once we arrived at the river, we knew we’d made a mistake. It was inaccessible. We didn’t feel like submerging our vehicle to cross over to the gravel bar down the river.

So we kept driving; over the homemade concrete bridge onto the never-ending stretch of rocky road. We didn’t even stop to survey any possible stopping points. We kept rolling down the narrow country lane that desperately needed a road grader. We hadn’t planned to go off-roading. We slowed to a crawl, desperately wanting to get back to civilization and as Was into some water.

Do you know how many miles of dirt road we drove today? 630 miles.
It was only about twelve miles. But it felt like so much more. Twelve miles of dirt road feels like a thousand. We bumped and jumped, and our poor car needs a front-end alignment now. I’ve never seen so many boulders in the middle of a road. I asked several times if we were going in the right direction. Charity kept saying that we were. We just had to keep going straight to reach a road that didn’t have rocks the size of El Capitan.

We had reached a somewhat smooth portion of county road. And I was breaking dirt road speed records when suddenly Charity says, “That was your turn.”

I slammed on the brakes. We slid to a dusty halt. I hadn’t even seen another road. Just tall grass along this entire stretch of the barren road.

“What?” I sighed with extreme exasperation. No sigh had ever been sighed like this one. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

There wasn’t enough room on the road to turn around. I put the car in reverse and backed up for a quarter of a mile. Thankfully, this far out in the country, there’s no possibility of running into another human being, much less another car.

Sure enough, behind the skyscraper blades of grass was another road. I turned right onto what looked like a driveway. I hadn’t thought the road could get narrower.
It did.

Thankfully, after traveling a million light-years worth of county roads, we finally reached the pavement again. We rejoiced and applauded. I might have gotten out and kissed the road if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get to the water.

We decided we might as well go to the lake like we originally intended.
However, en route, we decided to change course and go to “Patrick’s” on the river. We found a “shortcut” going through the country. Ha!

Hills and valleys don’t mix well with children. Instead of going 70 mph on a smooth and flat interstate, we’re in the boondocks getting sick from going up and down and around without reprieve. I know the freeway isn’t flat but compared to this back highway, it’s as flat as a one-sided pancake.

At one point, the car in front of us disappeared. We were coming down a hill, but this hill had an even steeper hill halfway down. The car in front of us disappeared almost as if it fell off a cliff. We said to each other, “Where’d that car go?” We knew two seconds later: down the steepest, shortest half of a hill in Southern Missouri. That’s where it went.

In time, we reached our second destination. It was crowded. People were lining the edge of the water with tubes and kayaks. There was no room to park or play. We were so disappointed, but all we could do was laugh. We had such high hopes at the beginning of our expedition! Now, after 100 miles of blacktop and dusty rocks, we were getting frustrated.

We decided to head across state lines to the lake. We just hoped that it wasn’t crowded and we would be able to swim. Finally, after over two hours of driving, we reached the lake!
No one was there, and we had the place to ourselves!

We were able to frolic in the water on this 100-degree day and be refreshed; for two hours. It was wonderful. Son #2 almost choked to death after unintentionally intaking a gallon of lake water, but we still had a great time.

When we got home, there was the cooler. It was still in the living room.

Why didn’t we go to the lake first?

Well, because we’re adventurers. We like to go and find something out. We’re explorers. We’re scratching that travelers itch. We’ve got to get out and see the world.

No, that’s not it. As it turns out, we will venture out and see what happens without a plan but with plenty of gas. Next time, we’ll scout out the swimming hole before we spend half the weekend riding in a car because we were unprepared.

The moral to the story is this:
You won’t regret just going to the lake. And don’t forget your cooler.

to those whose day doesn’t go as planned,
– Caleb